Rating: 
Summary: A new definitive edition.
Review: The Norton Critical Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur edited by Stephen H. A. Shepherd partly replaces Eugène Vinaver's The Works of Sir Thomas Malory and is in many ways a better effort.
This edition stands somewhere between a scholarly, critical edition and a popular edition. It is based mainly on the Winchester manucript with emendations and additions from Caxton's 14th century printed version. Abbreviations are expanded, major (but not minor) corrections of the text are noted, the obsolete characters thorn and yogh are replaced by modern letters, use of u and v, i and j follow modern usage. and word division, punctuation, and capitalization also edited to follow modern conventions, including use of quotation marks.
But otherwise spelling is not modernized, large capitals in the manuscript are indicated in the printed text by lombardic capitals of approximately the same relative size, paragraphing is mostly followed exactly (with even the // paragraph break marks being rendered by indentation followed by the symbol ¶) and further paragraphing without ¶ where other punctuation or capitalization anomalies indicate sectioning. Vinaver's edition became, eventually, notorious for ignoring the divisions given within the manuscript itself, an especially unfortunate defect since Vinaver's theories about Malory's composition supposedly depended on paying especially close attention to such matters.
In the mansucript, rubricating (that is, red lettering) was employed in scribing almost all personal names as well as on some other names and in marginal notes and is here represented by a black-letter font. One quickly becomes used to this odd convention which actually eases and clarifies reading to the point that one wonders why something like it should not be universally adopted.
And, most pleasantly for a modern book, the notes appear as true footnotes, not endnotes, which means no constant turning of pages.
The text itself is followed by over 200 pages of related source material and reprinted essays, followed by a glossary, a selected guide to proper names, and a bibliography, but, rather oddly, no index.
For any general reader willing to encounter fifteenth century spelling on its own terms and to delight in it, this is probably the best edition to own and use, one which brings the user closer to the Winchester manuscript than any previous edition.
As to the tale itself, Malory himself sometimes seems bored and unitenested in his material, especially in the massive maze of subsidiary episodes that make up his Tristram material. But at his best there is no writer in English who campares with him. Readers having difficulty with the early sections of any edition of Malory's Le Morte Darthur might try jumping to "The Tale of Sir Launcelot and Quene Gwenyvere" (Book XVIII in Caxton's edition) and start at that point, where a mature Malory in control of this story tells it better than anyone before or after.
Rating:
Summary: Le Morte Darthur: Winchester edition
Review: The Oxford World's Classics edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur is a superb text for students and the casually curious reader alike. It is the first publication of Le Morte Darthur based on the Winchester Manuscript designed for the general reader; more prominent are the editions which are compilations of Caxton's print version.
Editor Helen Cooper does a wonderful job of tackling the problem of presenting a coherent and comprehensive version of a medieval text for a twentieth century audience. Although this rendition of Le Morte Darthur is slightly abridged, it still retains its original charm. The preservation of a good deal of the vernacular in the text and the convenient glossary and footnotes really help to define the medieval setting of the story. The actual story of the life of King Arthur is most enjoyable as well, especially now that Cooper's introduction and explanatory notes enhance it. Malory's exposé of the Arthurian legend is lively enough that one can easily read this book for pleasure - the story-line and plot are more cleverly developed than, say, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which seems to present itself as a chronology of dubious events. In her introduction, Cooper provides a bit of a factual background for Malory and explains many of his subtle allusions intended for his contemporary medieval audience, all of which adds to the reader's understanding of Le Morte Darthur in the context of the fifteenth century. Scholarly readers may also find Cooper's annotated bibliography quite useful.
Rating:
Summary: Le Morte Darthur: Winchester edition
Review: The Oxford World's Classics edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur is a superb text for students and the casually curious reader alike. It is the first publication of Le Morte Darthur based on the Winchester Manuscript designed for the general reader; more prominent are the editions which are compilations of Caxton's print version.
Editor Helen Cooper does a wonderful job of tackling the problem of presenting a coherent and comprehensive version of a medieval text for a twentieth century audience. Although this rendition of Le Morte Darthur is slightly abridged, it still retains its original charm. The preservation of a good deal of the vernacular in the text and the convenient glossary and footnotes really help to define the medieval setting of the story. The actual story of the life of King Arthur is most enjoyable as well, especially now that Cooper's introduction and explanatory notes enhance it. Malory's exposé of the Arthurian legend is lively enough that one can easily read this book for pleasure - the story-line and plot are more cleverly developed than, say, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which seems to present itself as a chronology of dubious events. In her introduction, Cooper provides a bit of a factual background for Malory and explains many of his subtle allusions intended for his contemporary medieval audience, all of which adds to the reader's understanding of Le Morte Darthur in the context of the fifteenth century. Scholarly readers may also find Cooper's annotated bibliography quite useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Even in modern prose, this remains tedious reading.
Review: The tales of King Arthur and of the knights of the Round Table are well-known and have been the subject of many books, poems (Tennyson), at least two musical works (Purcell's "King Arthur", and the famous Broadway musical, "Camelot"), and films ("Camelot", based on the musical, and "Excalibur"). The most famous English-language book version of these tales is this version by Sir Thomas Malory, yet this is not easily readable, even in modern prose. The modern English rendition by Keith Baines is excellent, for it allows those of us who do not have Ph.D's in English literature to get an idea of what the original was like, but the book itself is tedious in its very nature.What you should expect with this book is a very good beginning and ending, and a "will it ever end ?" middle. Arthur himself cannot be called the central character, for he is virtually absent, except in the first tale of the book, which deals with his coming to power, and the last one, about his death. The rest of this book is concerned with jousting and tournaments, so much that in the end one gets bored with this never-ending succession of fights with knights whose names you'll only read once and which have no consequence on what is supposed to be the larger plot (such as the quest for the Holy Grail, or the famous Tristram and Iseult tale). Of course, the better-known knights of the Round Table, such as Launcelot, Tristram, and Percivale, are present, but only from time to time, and narration often shifts from one to the other for no reason. What this book lacks most is continuity. Apart from the first and last tales, everything in between is not in chronological order, which gets confusing. In one tale one character is dead and another is well-known; in the next tale the first character is living and the second one is unknown (just take the example of King Pellinore and Sir Percivale). All tales were obviously separate ones, and the reader, at some point, will simply stop trying to understand how Malory ever came up with such an order for his tales. If Malory (or his original publishers) had any idea in mind when they chose this setup of the tales, it will appear unclear to most readers. One of the few good points of this book is that, since it was written in the late Middle Ages, it avoids to a certain extent the over-romanticization of the Middle Ages, which is what later authors, such as Sir Walter Scott, did to such an extent that even today we cannot think of the Middle Ages without having in mind the picture-perfect version of it (which I will not delve into -- I'm sure you know what I have in mind). Even though chivalry as described in the book has some romantic elements attached to it, it is never fully exploited, and "Le Morte d'Arthur" certainly does not fit the requirements to be classified into the romantic genre (which was not fully described until the nineteenth century). This book therefore does not use romanticism as we now know it. But this good point may also be one of the book's weaknesses, because the topic is a legend, and not fact. Because this subject is not historically accurate (and some parts of the book are hilariously improbable), Malory could not use realism to replace romanticism, and I believe that if he had used more romanticism in his book it would only have made it better. In the end, Malory used neither style, and this makes his writing style very dry. His characters are mere fighting machines with no emotional depth, his narration is action, action, and action: no description, either of his own characters or of the scenery (a castle is a castle, nothing more). The scenes he depicts cannot be located, for the setting is never described. Malory, above all, was an awful storyteller. He could only describe his characters jousting and fighting, and since this had nothing to do with the larger plot, this only lengthens the book for no reason. (If you want a modern comparison, just think of a public orator who just tells personal anecdotes that are not related to his topic.) Furthermore, anyone interested in the Middle Ages has nothing to gain from reading this book. It holds no historical interest (apart from a study of the English language, but then I would not go for this modern rendition) for the reason that its subject is not based on fact and its description of society in the early Middle Ages is simplistic. This book is certainly no "Canterbury Tales", in which a lot can be learned about what was life during the Middle Ages. So if you are mainly interested in history I'd skip "Le Morte d'Arthur" and I'd go for "The Canterbury Tales" instead. In conclusion, "Le Morte d'Arthur" is worth reading only if you have the patience to go through it, for this book is overlong and repetitive. Keith Baines's rendition makes this task easier, and his appendix on the main characters is very helpful if you intend to skip parts (which you should not do because the whole is chronologically inaccurate).
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