HKA-001630Literary Tradition
Malory’s Le Morte Darthur and the English Arthur
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
Archive record
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, composed in the fifteenth century and printed by William Caxton in 1485, gathered a wide range of Arthurian material into one of the tradition’s most influential English forms.
Malory did not invent Arthur, the Round Table or the Grail tradition. His importance lies in synthesis: tournaments, quests, loyalties, Lancelot and Guinevere, Mordred, Camlann and Arthur’s departure towards Avalon were given a form that profoundly shaped later English readers.
Source trail: British Library manuscript and catalogue material for Le Morte Darthur; editions of Malory.
Related Journal record: Legend of King Arthur.
Catalogue reference HKA-001630
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