Le Morte d’Arthur
Le Morte D’Arthur was written in Middle English, a period of the English language in 11th to 15th century England. Published in 1485, the year of Thomas Malory’s writing corresponds with the end of the Medieval English era. In comparison to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a significant piece of writing written in typical Middle English style, Malory’s language and use of English are much closer to Early Modern English. Although Chaucer’s writing was published 85 years before Malory’s, their work belongs to the same historical and language period, and as such are often compared, especially language-wise. Although the spelling of Malory’s text does not necessarily correspond with the spelling of Early Modern English, from a grammatical and lexical point of view, it reads similarly to early Elizabethan English. The reason for the modernization of Malory’s writing is believed to be the inspiration in French texts, which gave Thomas Malory the foundation for his story. It is generally agreed that the French language was what so heavily influenced Malory’s own style of writing, as it is with high probability what modernized the language. Concerning the style specifically, Thomas Malory has been both criticized and praised for his rich usage of connecting words such as “so–and–then,” usually used to transition between stories, and for his lengthy and repetitive sentences and phrases, which some scholars condemned as too simplistic, others have, however, praised it to be of high aesthetic quality.