LE MORTE D' ARTHUR - Sir Thomas Malory (BEARDSLEY) - ENGELS

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LE MORTE D' ARTHUR - by Sir Thomas Malory (BEARDSLEY)
Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley

ENGELSE UITGAVE

It is in the many battles fought by the Britons against Saxon invasion in the 5th and 6th centuries AD that the legends of Arthur have their origin. The Romans had left the then almost wholly. Celtic inhabitants of Britain to their fate against the waves of Angle and Saxon marauders from the north European mainland, and it was through Arthur's military prowess as dux bellorum that the western regions of Britain remained in Celtic hands. And it was the reports of these victories, and of Arthur's personal courage and valor, which fed the rapid growth of stories and romances around his name.

Refugees from the Germanic invasions, however, fled south across the Channel and founded themselves a new homeland, a `Little Britain' or Brittany, taking the legends with them, and through these Bretons the stories of Arthur grew into French romances, merging with mainstream Christianity and the legend of the Holy Grail. It is from these romances, these blends of pagan Welsh and Christian French, that Sir Thomas Malory drew his material for Le Morte d'Arthur.

Malory (c. 1400-1470) was himself a soldier and also sat in Parliament as knight of his native Warwickshire, but in 1451 was accused, among other things, of the attempted assassination of the Duke of Buckingham and imprisoned. It was while he was thus incarcerated that he wrote his famous work, and finished it in 1469 shortly before his death.

Caxton (c. 1422-1491) was the first English printer, having probably learned his craft in France, and indeed many of the books he printed were his own translations of French legends and romances, so his printing of Le Morte d'Arthur was particulary appropriate. In his own preface to the work (page xxxiii) he states that the printing of "the noble history of the Sangreal, and of the most renowned Christian king... King Arthur" had been urged upon him by "many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm".
They did well to do so. Certainly Le Morte d'Arthur is one of the landmarks of English literature, and takes its place alongside Tennyson's Idylls of the King in gloriously preserving the legendary deeds of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table in the popular imagination.

AUBREY BEARDSLEY (1872-1898)
Aubrey Beardsley in his short but fruitful life went on to become one of the most famous — indeed infamous — illustrators of the period. He concentrated on stark black and white images, bringing to the prevailing convolvular orientalism of the Art Nouveau style a disciplined and dramatic use of space, with large areas of black set against large areas of white, which he had learned from his study of Japanese art in particular. His illustrations for Le Morte d'Arthur are by turns superbly evocative an wryly idiosyncratic, but they give the whole work a setting of dark, almost Gothic splendor, bringing to the medieval Christianity perhaps just the right balance needed by the Celtic, pagan origins of this legendary tale.

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Uitgeverij Harrison House, 1985, 538 pag.
Formaat 30,5 x 22 x 6 cm.
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