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The text is unabridged, with
original spelling and extensive, easy-to-use marginal glosses
and footnotes. No other edition accurately represents the actual
(and likely authorial) divisions of the text as attested to
by its two surviving witnesses—Caxton’s 1485 print
and, especially, the famous Winchester Manuscript. The Winchester
Manuscript is now generally agreed to be the more authentic
of the two earlier texts. The Norton Critical Edition is the
first edition of Malory to recover important elements of this
manuscript:
- paragraphing
- marginal annotations
- hierarchies of narrative division as signaled by size
and decorative intricacy of initial capitals and font changes
The Norton Critical Edition also represents, in black-letter
font, the striking rubrication of proper names in the Winchester
Manuscript, reconstructing for readers something of an authentic
medieval reading experience, one which gives visual support
to Malory’s extraordinary representation, in character
and setting, of a chivalric ideal.
No other student edition of Malory contains such extensive
contextual and critical
support.
• Click
here to visit Stephen Shepherd's Online Companion to Le
Morte Darthur.
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