Reading King Arthur
A new (very) slow read-along of Sir Thomas Malory's classic
I think I’ll give it a try.
Recently, at From My Bookshelf, I floated the idea of a slow—a very, very slow—read of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the classic compilation of tales about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
That suggestion struck enough of a chord that I’ve decided to run with it. The read-along will operate according to a few basic principles, all of them derived from the underlying fact that I don’t really have time to do this:
We will go very, very slowly, reading only about ten pages or so per week. My hope is that anyone who is interested will be able to manage that pace—including me. It will take us a long time to get through the book at this rate… but as they say, slow but steady wins the race.
Posts will typically appear on Mondays, though I may occasionally need to modify that if I have other things going on.
Posts will be quite short. Reading ten pages a week is not very time-consuming; writing about them is the greater challenge. I plan to share only a few brief thoughts or reactions each week. If you want more than that, I’ll be counting on you to supply it in the comments yourselves!
I am not a scholar of Malory or Arthur or English history or anything relevant. If you are looking for that level of expertise, I’m unfortunately not your man. I’m simply an interested reader looking for a small community of other interested readers who will help keep me accountable for my ten pages per week.
Finally, I do not want to assume that all readers of From My Bookshelf want to receive a long-running stream of weekly e-mails about Le Morte D’Arthur. I am therefore launching this slow read as a separate Substack under the title “Reading King Arthur.” If you would like to subscribe and receive these weekly posts on Malory, you should do so separately, here:
I plan to use the Penguin Classics edition, which comes in two volumes. (Volume I is here; Volume II, here.) The Penguin version is based on William Caxton’s 1485 edition of Malory’s work. There is another edition, the Winchester edition, which is thought to be closer to Malory’s original text (or so I gather—remember, I am not an Arthurian scholar!). For my purposes, however, the Caxton version is more useful, because it is divided into very short chapters of just a couple pages each, which will let me produce coherent, quickly identifiable weekly selections. If you are reading along, you will find it easier to use a version based on Caxton’s text.
Next week I plan to read Caxton’s preface, along with Book I, chapters 1-2. In the Penguin version, these are pages 3-12. I will publish my first post about them on Monday, February 16.
I look forward to at least a few of you joining me at “Reading King Arthur,” and I also hope that you will consider sharing this new endeavor with others you think would be interested, even if you don’t plan to read along yourself. (You could even restack this post!)
I wanted to announce this in order to get the ball rolling, but I am also working on the next post in our ongoing read-along of Plato’s Republic. That should appear in the next day or two.
As always, thanks for reading, and please do share this news with others who might be interested. I’ll see you next time for another installment From My Bookshelf.
I read the Heritage Club edition when I was in junior high. Time to read it again. I remember one line from all those years ago. Guinevere, upon first meeting Lancelot on horseback, says “I’ll unwimple my visage if you’ll unwimple yours.”
Im in!