The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (1976) - John Steinbeck

Written by John Steinbeck
Read by Robert Fass
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 48 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: BBC America/Blackstone Audio
Pulication Date: 2007/2017
Length: 13hrs 58min

Penguin Modern Classics

Foreword by Christopher Paolini.

Steinbeck’s first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. In this highly successful attempt to render Malory into Modern English, Steinbeck recreated the rhythm and tone of the original Middle English.

His translation of Thomas Malory’s version of the Arthurian legend is almost strangely faithful, seldom veering from that 15th century work in order to modernize the language enough for today’s reader. And it is immensely readable! I breezed through from start to finish. Certainly not every story is a winner. Movies, tv series and books often skip a good number of the stories and stick with the most well-known. This gives you the lesser-known stuff in full color and it is often beautiful.

However, this faithful translation dismayed and disappointed the publisher, who expected a Steinbeckized version of the Arthurian tales, something more like a Grapes of Wrath-gritty tale of down-and-out knights. Don’t you too make that mistake when reading this! Steinbeck was a childhood fan of these stories and with childlike devotion; he captures their essence with a picture-perfect imitation intending to flatter via flattery’s sincerest form. Well done and highly worth a read!

Steinbeck is not the only author to have an out-of-character project uncompleted at their death. Georgette Heyer was writing the biographer of John Duke Of Bedford 1493-1413. My Lord John (unfinished) is uploaded.

My thanks to the original uploader.