SOURCE: Thornton, Ginger. “The Weakening of the King: Arthur's Disintegration in The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones.” In Sir Thomas Malory: Views and Re-views, edited by D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., pp. 3-15. New York: AMS Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Thornton offers an account of Arthur as a king prone to failure and tragedy because of his inability to recognize weakness in those around him.

From its initial tale Malory's Morte Darthur is ostensibly the story of Arthur's rise and fall. Yet Arthur soon fades from view in the tales of Launcelot and Gareth, appearing only briefly to dispatch a knight on some “aventure” or welcome home the adventure-weary. Not until the middle of Malory's work, in The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones, does the Round Table's king re-emerge. Arthur's role in this book is not markedly different from his role in earlier tales; through much...