Caxton, Anthony Woodville, and the Prologue to the Morte Darthur.

PHILOSOPHY; CAXTON, William, ca. 1422-1491 or 2; LE Morte d'Arthur (Book : Malory); POLYCHRONICON (Book); GOLDEN Legend, The (Book)

This article discusses the philosophy of William Caxton, in his well-known and often-quoted preface to Malory's Morte Darthur. The Malory text is certainly a large and costly book. In terms of length, the two most comparable texts are the Polychronicon and the Golden Legend. The preamble to the Golden Legend casts an interesting light on Caxton's approach to the editing and printing of this text. It has been noted, in examining the collation of the Malory text, that the first two gatherings, containing Caxton's prologue and the table of contents, are unusual. According to a critic, the use of Roman numerals as signatures and the fact that one gathering is a quaternion and the other a quinternion can be explained only on the assumption that these two gatherings were printed after the rest of the book. While this need not mean that the contents of these two gatherings, Caxton's prologue and the table of contents, were written after the rest of the book was in type, this is the most natural explanation. There is one more factor to be considered of possible relevance both to the dating of the publication of the text and to Caxton's loyalty to the Woodvilles. This factor is the alteration that appears in Caxton's version of the battle between the two creatures as dreamed by King Arthur in the Roman War section of the Malory narrative.