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Primary Sources: Le Morte D’Arthur, Book I Chapter VII — 4 Comments

  1. Merlin, the magical mystical PLOT ELEMENT.

    I’m trying to remember if Malory wrote this WHILE rotting in jail for rape and extortion, or afterwards.

    *wry* ( :

    • It’s unclear, is the impression I get from the Malory entry in Wikipedia. There was *a* Thomas Malory who was jailed for a laundry list of crimes including rape, but also several documented men named Thomas Malory at the time who weren’t. Folks closer to him in history thought he was one of the Malorys who wasn’t the criminal; modern scholars think he more likely was. Given that the book wasn’t written off the top of his head, novel-style, but is actually a translation & commentary of a bunch of French books, I dunno if he could have got it done while languishing in Newgate Prison, which working from the timeline as I understand it is when he’d have had to do the writing.

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