New video: How to read Le Morte D’Arthur

Greetings lovely ones, I just posted a video to my site called “How to Read Le Morte D’Arthur,”  which, as you might have surmised, gives my perspective on how a new reader should approach Sir Thomas Malory’s famed Arthurian work.

Go to the video right here.

It just occurred to me that most people’s entry point into the Arthurian legend is Le Morte D’Arthur,  yet when the average reader of today picks it up, it’s a lot more difficult to read than they expect. It is also, for people who have only been raised on the King Arthur TV and movies, not at all what they expect. So I try to address some of these issues before they come up and give the newbie some advice on how to handle the pacing, the language, and some of the things about the work that simply don’t make sense.

Basically I just thought about my own experience reading Le Morte D’Arthur  and what a shock it was. I had decided I was going to read “the real story” of King Arthur, and was in for a series of surprises. I was shocked at what happens to Merlin, I expected a lot more swashbuckling and romance, and I couldn’t believe how fast it moved. At first I was reading on the New York City subway, in small chunks at a time, so the whole thing just created a surreal music in my brain as all these tiny impressions of the Arthurian world broke through the bustle and noise. 

I also address the issue of Tristram, because my experience—and I’m sure I’m not the only one—was to come up against all these Tristram chapters smack dab in the middle. I knew Tristram from Tristan and Isolde, but I did not know this was an Arthurian character. So all of a sudden there’s this completely unrelated character in the middle of the story and his adventures just go on forever. Perhaps when I am older I will return to the Tristram chapters and find them beautiful and moving, but for now I advise the average reader to just skip them.

You might also notice some hypnotic background videos. Those are all shot by me. Basically I just like to take slo-mo videos of patterns in nature or anything that could be described as “trippy,” and now I get to use those in my videos. Some of the ones in this video are from Iceland and one is this cool lava lamp with metallic fragments floating that I found in Chicago. 

I’m going to continue making videos such as this one, some “educational” like this, and some with interviews or readings from the books. If you have a suggestion of anything you think would be interesting, please let me know. Otherwise, go take a look at the video for How to Read Le Morte D’Arthur.