I'd like to read Arthurian legend but I don't know where to start, can you help?

Question

In case you're not sure by Arthurian legend I mean king Arthur, knights of the round table etc. I've read a fair amount of fantasy books of a similar vein and I've always liked these stories, if I could get a rough starting point I'd be off.

Answer 1

The best source is supposed to be Malory, so if you can get a translation of Le Morte d'Arthur, that would probably be a good start. I'm assuming that you are asking to read the actual legend because you enjoyed the adaptations, not asking for suggestions of more adaptations to read.

Answer 2

In 1930 or so, T.H. White wrote the classic on King Arthur, The Once and Future King, a truly fantastic book.

Still he owes much of his Arthurian knowledge to the author of Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, first published in 1485. White cites Malory in his book, which I own and will read many times before I'm through with it.

I read Le Morte D'Arthur in college and found it a bit heavy going at that time, and after discovering White's work, I never read it again.

Maybe I should, huh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Morte_D'...

I'd also recommend The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley for a feminine POV.

Mary Stewart wrote three books about Merlin: The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment. She's a good writer; sticks with Merlin in these books.

The author of Little Big Man, Thomas Berger, also wrote his Camelot version, a shorter book called Arthur Rex. I read Little Big Man but, though I have it, have not read Arthur Rex at this point. I'm trying to decide between four new books to read today. Maybe I'll pick that one up.

Answer 3

The Once and Future King.

The Crystal Cave.  Mary Stewart. The first book in the five book saga.

Answer 4

i started with the once and future king by T.H. White, which helps you grow up with Arthur, but throughout the way you see how other characters grow and what leads up to the end of arthur, which i think is the best for the first book

Answer 5

I agree with Joyce's answer.  Start with "The Crystal Cave" by Mary Stewart and read all 5 of her books, one right after the other.

Then you'll want to read "The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley.  This is the Arthur legend told from the viewpoint of the women, and it's nothing short of brilliant.  "Mists" is part of a series.  It was the first book written, but all the other books take place BEFORE "Mists."  I have 2 or 3 of the "prequels" and just didn't find them as appealing as "Mists."

Malory's "Le Mort d'Arthur" and T.S. Eliot's "The Once and Future King" are considered classics.  I slogged my way through them because they were mandatory reading in school, but I found both to be quite tedious.  You'll want to read them at some point, though, simply because so much what we know as the Arthur legend comes straight from them.

EDIT:  I knew I was experiencing "granny brain" this afternoon.  Not T.S. Eliot.  T.H. White.  Thanks for the reminder!!  :-)

Answer 6

"Le Morte d'Arthur" is the definitive (original) compilation of the Arthurian legends.  However, as it is written in the style of ancient English, it is difficult to read.  You might look for a more modern but faithful rendition of the stories.  Beyond those, there are countless interpretations of the legends by modern authors, including the ones by Mary Stuart:  "The Crystal Cave", "The Hollow Hills", "The Last Enchantment".  There is one by Marion Zimmer Bradley: "The Mists of Avalon".  Most of the recent versions tend to be trilogies, so there is obviously a ream of works devoted to the Arthurian tales for you to explore.  You really should start with a re-telling of the original if you can find one.

Answer 7

Malory’s version is usually considered the standard story in English, perhaps too much so, because Malory’s account is sometimes better than his sources — Malory was a superb writer on occasion — but sometimes much worse.

Also Malory is often incomplete, leaving out almost the entire story of Lancelot as found in French sources, the last third of his sources on Tristan, and the end of the story of Palamedes. Malory simply makes up the idea that Palamedes becomes a knight of Lancelot’s party.

Whenever a similar question is asked, it seems that numerous people will list modern novels, if which are fine as far as they go, but they are not the medieval tales that made the story famous.

Personally, I love Malory’s version, despite its many defects and inconsistencies. You can find many translations of the medieval Englsih poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and of Chrétien de Troyes’s medieval French romances including the first surviving version of the Quest of the Holy Grail. See my documentation for some version on the web. Also three of these same stories are found in the collection of Welsh medieval romances called “The Mabinogion”.

“Lancelot-Grail”, edited by Norris J. Lacy, is a translation of the French “Vulgate Arthurian Cycle” which introduced the Lancelot version of the Arthurian tales and was the foundation of later prose medieval tales, including Malory. It also contains the surviving parts of the “Post-Vulgate Arthurian Cycle”. it is now out of print, but used copies or individual volumes are available on many websites. Also a selection from the work with short connecting passages is available as “The Lancelot Grail” reader. I very much recommend this as a reasonable though much-abridged account of the main French Arthurian cycle as it appeared in its final version.

My sources below contain modern English versions of various medieval Arthurian works from the web, as well as a discussion of the Vulgate Cycle and a slightly modernized version of Malory. I don’t claim to include everything available on the web in all versions.  For one thing, Yahoo! allows only 10 links.