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Reference
>
Cambridge History
>
The End of the Middle Ages
>
English Prose in the Fifteenth Century. II
> Style of the
Morte dArthur
Malorys
Morte dArthur
Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(190721).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.
XIV.
English Prose in the Fifteenth Century. II
.
§ 4. Style of the
Morte dArthur
.
The prose in which is unfolded this scarcely Christianised fairy talefor the
Grail
was to Arthurian legend something as the Crusades to feudalismis, apparently, of a very simple, almost childlike, type, with its incessant soandthen, but, unlike mere simplicity, it never becomes tedious. There is a kind of cadence, at times almost musical, which bears the narrative on with a gradual swell and fall proportioned to the importance of the episodes, while brevity, especially at the close of a long incident, sometimes approaches to epigram. But the style fits the subject so perfectly as never to claim attention for itself. A transparent clarity is of its essence. Too straightforward to be archaic, idiomatic with a suavity denied to Caxton, Malory, who reaches one hand to Chaucer and one to Spenser, escaped the stamp of a particular epoch and bequeathed a prose epic to literature.
12
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Malorys
Morte dArthur
Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners
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