Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur condenses and summarizes a vast amount of earlier French and Middle English Arthuriana. Mark Twain called Malory’s big book “enchanting…a rich feast of prodigies and adventures.” Tennyson characterized it as a work “Touch’d by the adulterous finger of a time/That hover’d between war and wantonness….”
Choose any character who appears prominently in the parts of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur that we have read together in class this semester. Then, discuss how he or she appears in Morte d’Arthur and in Knight of the Cart, Story of the Grail, and The Romance of Tristan that we have read this semester. Does the character change? Does it evolve? Are there qualities that remain consistent? You must include at least one work by Chrétien de Troyes in your discussion, and you must discuss Knight of the Cart, Story of the Grail, and The Romance of Tristan , otherwise you are free to include whatever seems relevant to you.
