Don’t give up!
Imprisoned for life, Sir Thomas Malory reframed an existing story. In the process, he created a timeless classic. After his death, Malory’s retelling of the tales of King Arthur was among the first books ever printed, when Caxton got a printing press. Malory’s works have come down through the ages and are now widely considered the standard canonical text of the King Arthur legends.
Sir Thomas Malory was a soldier. After the war, he seems to have failed to adapt to civilian life. One might speculate that his behavior (and his writing style) may have been consistent with PTSD with underlying bipolar disorder. The details are obscure, but in one way or another this eventually led to his being imprisoned for many years.
Self-righteous judgmental modern haters (such as the pathetic weak-faced coward who I saw interviewed in a recent TV documentary) love to exaggerate the salacious nature of the alleged crimes of which Malory was accused. That’s because losers try to make themselves feel better about their useless lives by lobbing false accusations at the great.
But the learned and highly esteemed Professor Helen Cooper of Cambridge University (editor of the Winchester Manuscript) has suggested that Malory’s alleged crimes may have been completely misrepresented in the legal record.
According to Cooper, Malory’s actual crime was probably that he had an affair with another man’s wife. In those days, women were treated as property, and her husband did not give consent. Therefore, Malory was imprisoned on what we would now consider false charges.
When he got out of prison after many years, Malory apparently took revenge by breaking into a parsonage, among other things. One might speculate (based on nothing but pure imagination) that he went on a drunken crime spree. This poor choice resulted in his being sent back to prison for the rest of his life.
While in prison, Sir Thomas Malory created one of the pivotal works of English culture: Le Morte d’Arthur. This inspired, romantic, adventurous, magical book has become the source of all the familiar tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Malory compiled, translated, paraphrased, condensed, and expanded his comprehensive handwritten version of the King Arthur stories from a variety of extant texts, most of them written either in French or in an already-antiquated dialect of English. It was a very scholarly endeavor requiring considerable thought, enthusiasm, inspiration, and boundless love for his subject matter. Malory’s frenetic prose style reveals a manic, unstoppable personality that shines through in his endless run-on sentences and limitless creativity. One pictures him, shivering and coughing in his prison cell, frantically scribbling on stacks of parchment paper, trying to get the entire Bible-sized tome completed before his life runs out.
One feels Malory’s personal connection to his subject matter in his (for the times) risque description of Lancelot’s love affair with Queen Guinevere. One senses Malory’s tormented soul as Lancelot confesses his sins and receives forgiveness from the hermit Nacien. Time and again, Malory’s narrative (especially later in the book) returns to themes of forgiveness, grace, and the pure love of the Creator spirit.
No matter what mistakes this man may have made in his life, his work has something to teach us all in our lives.
So don’t give up! Never give up. No matter what mistakes you may have made in your life, you still have something of value to share with the world.
