Age of Revival Novel

Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471)

1. His works
   1. Le Morte d’ Arthur
      1. It is a compilation of tales of romance about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table
      2. First major work of Prose fiction in English literature
      3. First published in 1485 by William Caxton.
      4. divided into 20 books
      5. Follows the stories from Uther Pendragon’s rape of Igraine of Cornwell to the deaths of Launcelot and Guenevere.
      6. Inspired Tennyson who used it for his the Idylls of the King and TH White for his popular novel The Once and Future King.
   2. The Whole Book of King Arthur
   3. Knights of the Round Table
2. All his information is known from preface by Caxton who first printed the book.

William Caxton (1422 – 91)

1. born around 1422 in Kent.
2. First English printer.
3. In 1476, Caxton returned to London and set up a press in Westminister. First printing press in England.
4. First dated book printed in England was Lord Rivers’ translation (revised by Caxton) of The Dictes or Sayengis of the philosophers (1477)
5. Works:
   1. First literary effort was to translate books into English.
   2. Firat translated medieval romance of Troy, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, from the French of Raoul le Fevre, early in 1469.
      1. In 1470s , in Cologne he learned the art of printing, returning to Bruges in 1472, he first printed this book in a press set up by him and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher
   3. The Game and Playe of chess
      1. His second bookfrom the Libre de ludo scacchorum of Jacobus de Cessolis

Thomas Moore 1478 – 1535

1. lawyer, MP, Chancellor in the reign of Henry VIII.
2. Went to Oxford, started studying Greek and wrote comedies.
3. Works:
   1. Utopia (1516)
      1. The Greek word Utopia translates as no place or nowhere, but in modern parlance a Utopia has come to signify an ideal place. (eu-topia)
      2. It is a work of satire, indirectly criticising Europe’s political corruption and religious hypocrisy.
      3. Two parts, First part serves as an introduction. The second depicts what its narrator Raaphael Hythloday claimed to be an ideal human society, the island of utopia.
      4. The main feature of society at Utopia are elimination of private property, universal labour, moderated pleasure and family as a microcosm of the state. It is the perfect embodiment of humanist rational ideas.
   2. Latin Poems (1518 -20)
   3. the Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (1532, 1533)
   4. Apology (1533)
   5. The History of King Richard III (1513-1518)
   6. The Four Last Things (1522)
   7. Treatise Upon the Passion (1534)
   8. Treatise on the Blessed Body (1535)
   9. Instructions and Prayers (1535)
   10. De Tristitia Christi (1535)