This study of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur centres on its main narrative interest, armed combat. The description of knightly combat, with its complex thematic affinities, is seen as Malory's chief expressive medium. In the analysis of the discourse of fighting, some repeated descriptive preoccupations - to do with name, vision, blood, emotion and gesture - are treated as 'needs of meaning' with relevance for the whole text, and related to political, religious, genealogical, sexual and medical views of Malory's period. The critical discussion thus rests more on these elements of discourse rather than on the broader concepts such as 'chivalry' or 'love' normally applied to Malory.

This study innovatively explores how Malory's Morte D'Arthur responds to available literary vernacular Arthurian traditions which the French defined as theoretical in impulse, the English as performative and experimental. Negotiating these influences, Malory transforms constructions of masculine heroism, especially in the presentation of Launcelot, and exposes the tensions and disillusions of the Arthurian project. The Morte poignantly conveys a desire for integrity in narrative and subject-matter, but at the same time tests literary conceptualizations of history, nationalism, gender and selfhood, and considers the failures of social and legal institutionalizations of violence, in a critique of literary form and of social order.

Malory's world explored, from the battle of Towton to the "grete bokes" of chivalric material composd for aristocratic families.

This English version of the stories of King Arthur, "Le Morte D'Arthur" was completed in 1469-70 by Sir Thomas Malory. Malory charts the tragic disintegration of the fellowship of the Round Table, destroyed from within by warring factions.

This volume constitutes a search for the identity of Malory, author of the Morte Darthur. Field considers all arguments and gives an account of the life of the man identified, setting him in his historical context.