Alliterative Morte Arthure

The Alliterative Morte Arthure is a 4346-line Middle English alliterative poem, retelling the latter part of the legend of King Arthur. Dating from about 1400, it is preserved in a single copy in the 15th-century Lincoln Thornton Manuscript, now in Lincoln Cathedral Library.

History

The author of the Morte Arthure is unknown. In his history of Scotland, Andrew of Wyntoun mentions a poet called Huchoun ("little Hugh"), who he says made a "gret Gest of Arthure, / And þe Awntyr of Gawane, / Þe Pistil als of Suet Susane" [great history of Arthur, / And the Adventure of Gawain, / The Epistle also of Sweet Susan]. This "Gest of Arthure" has been claimed to be a reference to what is now known as the Alliterative Morte Arthure; but the fact that the Morte Arthure seems to have been written in an East Midlands dialect, the fact that Huchoun may have been Scottish, and the dialect of the extant Epistle of Sweet Susan, which appears to be that of North Yorkshire, all argue against "Huchoun"'s authorship.

The poem was probably written in the late 14th or early 15th century. The only surviving manuscript source for the text is the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript, written sometime in the mid-15th century by Robert Thornton, who copied an older text, now lost, which presumably derived from south-west Lincolnshire.

Contents

The story is adapted from books IX and X of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. It contains numerous episodes which are not in Geoffrey's work such as the Round Table and suggests the poet using other works such as Wace's Roman de Brut or Layamon's Brut, the first texts to mention the Round Table. Some parts do not have a clear source and may have originated with the poet.