Le Morte D'Arthur is at once a tumultuous adventure story and a guide to chivalric ideals. Its characters constantly attempt to live by the codes of chivalry — a system of beliefs that holds that the strong must defend the weak; a knight must struggle to maintain his purity; and that the individual must subsume his own desires and even his identity — under the wings of a greater good. Malory's book begins with the betrayal of Cornwall by Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father, and ends with the death of Arthur at the hands of Mordred, Arthur's ill-conceived son. In its pages can be found the now-famous stories of Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, the Quest for the Holy Grail, and the adultery of Lancelot and Guenever. All of these tales serve as moral instruction as well as inspiring reading. Like many other epics, Le Morte D'Arthur features a central figure who desperately tries to maintain his ideals despite the constant threats to undo them. Also like many mythical figures, he falls because of his own actions (conceiving Mordred with his half-sister, Morgan Le Fay) and is destroyed because of an event that occurred far in his past.
Since Malory's time, many other writers have shown an interest in the Arthurian myth. The Puritan poet John Milton considered the Arthurian myth as the basis for an epic poem, but eventually decided to use Adam and Eve (the result was Paradise Lost). The Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson reworked many of the legends into his Idylls of the King; Mark Twain saw the legends as a means by which he could satirize his contemporaries and composed A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The twenty-first century is showing a great resurgence of Arthurian literature and scholarship: Novelists still draw on the Arthurian legends for inspiration, and universities widely offer courses in Arthurian literature. Although King Arthur is forever associated with England, the values he struggles to preserve and the conflicts he faces are universal, making him a figure with worldwide appeal.
