Morte D'Arthur, Le

Morte D'Arthur, Le, the title generally given to the lengthy cycle of Arthurian legends by Malory, finished in 1470 and printed by Caxton in 1485, divided into 21 books. But in 1934 W. F. Oakeshott discovered in Winchester College Library a manuscript of the same period as Caxton's but without his division into 21 books. This superior manuscript, dividing the whole into eight parts, was used by Vinaver as the basis of his new standard edition of Malory. Though Malory refers throughout to a ‘French book’ as his source, it is clear that his sources were more various. Vinaver divides the cycle into eight Works to be treated as separate romances:

1. The Tale of Arthur and Lucius, based principally on the Alliterative English Morte Arthure;

2. The Book of King Arthur, based largely on the Suite du Merlin (Huth Merlin) (see Merlin);

3. The Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake, mostly from two sections of the prose Lancelot in the Vulgate cycle;

4. Sir Gareth of Orkney;

5. Tristram de Lyones, thought to be a translation of part of a lost 13th-cent. prose Tristan in French;

6. The quest of the Holy Grail, principally from the prose Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal (see Grail);

7. Launcelot and Guinevere; and

8. The Morte Arthur, both based to a considerable degree on the French Vulgate Mort Artu, and the 15th-cent. English stanzaic Le Morte Arthur (above). Since the publication of Vinaver's three-volume edition in 1947 criticism of Malory has concentrated on whether his work is to be regarded as a single ‘whole Book’ or as eight Works (Vinaver). The traditional view of Malory as a single whole, compounded of disparate parts, now prevails.