Year of Epic Fantasy Reading 2017: Day 17 (Le Morte D'artur Vol. 1)

Title: Le Morte D'artur Vol. 1
Author: Thomas Mallory
Themes: Misogyny
Quotes: "And so every knight thinketh his own lady fairest." 
Reading/Listening Time: 15 hours, 50 minutes

Review:

I kind of went back and forth with this one: wondering if it's more of a legend, or a fairy tale, or a fantasy story...

I kinda came to the conclusion that it depends on which version of the story you read. This one, I think, very much reflects the views of the time it was written just like a lot of contemporary fantasy does in our day. For that reason, I prefer to read it as a fantasy story.

The whole book is supposed to have been transcribed by Mr Mallory from a french book that he translated into English. I like to think that 'The French Book' reflected a bit of prejudice that the northern people may have had at that time, in regards to their southern counterparts, because I think a lot of it does not reflect positively on them. (I don't know if that was intentional, but there are definitely several bits that are quite laughable to readers of the modern persuasion.)

I didn't really feel that Arthur was the primary character in this story. It starts with him, but then it branches out to all these colorful figures: knights and ladies, sorceresses and Merlin...and what they're all going through. I particularly enjoyed Tor, and the whole story of how he was discovered. It just paints a delightful picture in my mind to imagine Tor and his siblings standing side by side in front of the royals and Arthur goes:

It's probably the happiest of the stories, at least it was to me.

It's also interesting to me that almost all of the sorcerers in this book are female, and unless they happen to be romantically attached to one of the knights, or to the sole male sorcerer (Merlin), they are almost invariably malign.

There's this whole ridiculously hilarious scene where this knight comes upon a group of women who are really pissed off at this other knight guy cuz apparently he was really disrespectful or something...

The Knight automatically get's all defensive and goes into #NOTALLKNIGHTS mode...

And it turns out he's completely justified in that reaction because the women are actually sorceresses. and they vaguely intimidated that other knight guy so obviously they're bad news...

Even though I've read a bit of classic literature over the years, and I've become a lot more accustomed to antiquated language, some parts of this book were a bit confusing and I had to work through them. There are some words that they used back then that clearly had a bit of a different meaning than they do today. If you're not familiar with the more archaic word use, or perhaps even if you are, I would recommend reading an annotated version of this book.

Rating: Oddly enough, I didn't rate this one after I'd read it. I guess I kinda had some mixed feelings about it. Several parts were funny to read, but mostly I felt like it was so fragmented that it was kinda hard to figure out the chronology of events. A lot of that was fixed (or at least explained) later in the year when I studied and read more about Medieval England.

So I'd give it 3/5 Stars.