The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
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The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976) is John Steinbeck's retranslation of the Arthurian legend, based on the Winchester Manuscript text of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Steinbeck had been a long lover of the Arthur tales. The introduction to his translation contains an anecdote about him reading them as a young boy. His enthusiasm for Arthur and his affinity for Anglo-Saxon language are apparent in the work. The book was left uncompleted at his death.
Steinbeck took a completely new approach to the legend of Arthur and his twelve knights, and he detailed the quests of some of the knights, separating them into different chapters along the book. Although the book was left unfinished, it shows the monumental efforts he applied to writing the stories which compose the book.
He wrote it in a language accessible to children and adults, as he clarifies it in the introduction, because his intent was to raise the attention of the readers of his epoch of the importance of this well-known story. The importance lays on the fact that it ellucidates many honourable features of the lives of the knights depicted, such as Lancelot, Forte, Sir Kay and many others, adding a new perspective into the original work of Thomas Malory.
Nevertheless, he left many details without description. In the whole piece he explained everything richfully with his great imagination, attaining a very good result. The problem consists in the end of the story, which is nonexistent, since he simply stopped writing, and passed away shortly thereafter.
As Steinbeck states in the Appendix, "In a word I have not been trying to write a popular book but a permanent book." Here it is clearly shown that his intention was definitely to penetrate through the veils of remote times in order to give a full meaning to the beautiful and encompassing legend of King Arthur. His task was great, because he had to peruse a large amount of ancient books which told the very same story he successfully adapted to a modern and understandable language.
