# FR: Le Morte d'Arthur - gender change



## Tower of Babel

I am puzzled by the title of Sir Thomas Malory's 15th century book, _Le Morte d'Arthur_. I realize that the title is in Middle French (moyen français), and that modern French would render it as _La Mort d'Arthur_. But do I understand correctly that the masculine word "morte" actually changed gender to feminine "mort"? This seems quite surprising to me. Are there many French words that have changed gender?


NOTE DE LA MODÉRATION : Ce fil comprend plusieurs discussions existantes sur le même thème.
MODERATOR NOTE: This thread includes several existing discussions on the same topic.
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## Maître Capello

That's weird because the original latin word (_mors,-tis_) is feminine…


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## Bléros

The book was written by Thomas Malory, an Englishman. He obviously either didn't understand grammatical gender or heard the word wrong. The only significant gender changes in French are the _-eur_ words like _couleur_, _peur, frayeur_ which for some reason are feminine but have masculine origins in Latin (color, pavor, fragor)


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## mplsray

Rather than acting out of ignorance, Malory was following an established tradition. Via Google Books, I found the title explained on pages 92 and 93 of the 1901 version of _Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature_ by David Patrick (note that a 1902 version is also available, but page 92 was badly scanned and omits some of the material). The author explains that Malory based his work on a number of existing English romances (a couple of which used _Morte_ in the title, one without an article and one with the article _la_). In a footnote about this group of romances, the author says:

"It may be noted that the English romances are indifferently called _Le Morte_ and _La Morte,_ the masculine referring to the title regarded as a phrase, and the feminine to the proper gender of _mort._ How thoroughly the title had passed into a phrase is shown by Malory's own choice of it for a work which tells of Arthur's whole history, beginning with his parentage."


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## Tower of Babel

Hi *mplsray*,

Fabulous information! I didn't think it very likely that Malory could have given such a title in error.

Only one thing surprises me even more than the answer itself--namely, that the answer is so hard to find! _Le Morte d'Arthur_ is such a celebrated work, and anyone who knows even a modicum of French must see right away that there is something odd about the title. How peculiar that one has to find a footnote in a book over one hundred years old to learn the answer.

Thank you for the fine detective work!


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## francois_auffret

Hmmm this thing is weird, knowing that the French versions of the same book (which are older than Mallory's) are all called *La Mort Artu* or *La Mort le Roi Artu. It maybe a feature of Anglo-Norman French???*

*Gender changes *from old French to Modern French is nothing new.... 
In the Middle-Ages, the following words were masculine and became masculine in modern French: _*amour, art, évêché, honneur, poison, serpent*_; On the other hand, the following masculine words used to be masculine: _*affaire, dent, image, île, ombre.*_

Never heard about mort being masculine though...


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## mplsray

francois_auffret said:


> Hmmm this thing is weird, knowing that the French versions of the same book (which are older than Mallory's) are all called *La Mort Artu* or *La Mort le Roi Artu. It maybe a feature of Anglo-Norman French???*


 
It doesn't appear to be a matter of Anglo-Norman French. I took a look at the entry for "mort" in the Oxford English Dictionary and was surprised to find that it was treated as being completely naturalized into English (non-naturalized terms, or terms which once were naturalized but became non-naturalized again, are preceded by a special symbol). The etymology includes a reference to "Anglo-Norman and Middle French _mort_ death." If there had been an alternative form in those languages, I think it would have been listed by the editors there. "Morte" seems to be an English variant only: Among the variants given are "ME-16 *morte,* ME- *mort*." That is, the spelling "morte" is limited to the 16th century while "mort" is not so limited.

The first meaning, identified as obsolete, is "Death, slaughter." The first citation is "*c1330* (?_a_1300) _Arthour_ _&_ _Merlin,_" from which I take "in periil of mort." The second citation is "*a1470* MALORY _Morte Darthur_ (Winch. Coll.) 1154 The Moste Pyteuous Tale of the Morte Arthure Sauns Gwerdon par le Shyvalere Sir Thomas Malleorre, Knyght."

Under that definition, four more cites are given in a non-Arthurian context, two of them using the spelling "morte" and two using "mort."

The original title of Malory's work did not include the article. It did include the preposition "d," however, without an apostrophe, which makes it seem to me that the title was intended to be at least partly French--See the English works below which did not use a preposition.

I also took a look at _The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English_ by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press, (C)1988. Ousby says that Malory had five main sources, two English (_Morte_ _Arthur,_ _c._ 1400, and _Morte Arthure,_ _c._ 1360) and three French (_Tristan,_ the Vulgate Cycle--which consists of a number of stories--and _Roman du Graal_). Malory is described as having done a masterful job joining all these stories into his work. It seems to me that he must have known French in order to do that, so that is another argument against Malory having named his work the way he did out of ignorance of French.



> *Gender changes *from old French to Modern French is nothing new....
> In the Middle-Ages, the following words were masculine and became masculine in modern French: _*amour, art, évêché, honneur, poison, serpent*_; On the other hand, the following masculine words used to be masculine: _*affaire, dent, image, île, ombre.*_
> 
> Never heard about mort being masculine though...


 
The words in red are not what you intended, are they?


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## francois_auffret

mplsray said:


> The words in red are not what you intended, are they?


 
Oops... Sorry, Did I really write that?????? My bad!!! 

Of course, you understood what I meant... feminine... masculine & masculine... feminine...

Thank you for pointing out this mistake, and thank you for your interesting and scholarly posting!

Although I don't have as many sources at hand, I quite agree with you that thinking that Mallory was that bad in French is ridiculous!!!

There is no doubt that he knew perfectly French (and by the way, you don't even have to know perfectly French to know the gender of *mort*), so I personaly think (and I can't quote any source for back up here) that he purposedly named his book *le morte... *Why???? 

My guess: I think at least two Old French books bore this name (I mean: *La mort(e)*...) before Mallory's. He gave his book this title so as *Le morte* is understood as the English version and is not mistaken with the two (?) French ones...
This way he hit two birds with one stone: keeping the same title and showing thus what it is about, which tradition he is following and with the slight change / mistake, he leaves a mark, a sign of his own which means: 'Mallory's English version'.... 

????


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## Tower of Babel

Thank you to all for your information and ideas!

After searching through additional electronic and printed resources, I have finally located a recent and reputable statement on the puzzle of "Le Morte." The following explanation appears at a website for a college course on medieval literature:
Of those [Arthurian narratives], the greatest single work is Sir Thomas Malory's, the narrative written in 1460-71 and published by William Caxton in 1485 as a single work he titled _Le Morte Darthur_. (The title's mistaken use of the masculine article, "le," for the feminine noun, "morte," is the result of Malory's shaky grasp of formal French grammar and Caxton's occasional reverence for loyal reproduction of his source manuscript.)
[http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/romance.htm and search for the word "morte"]​
Also, the introduction to _Le Morte Darthur_ in the Oxford World's Classics series provides a further interesting note regarding the original version of the book:It has no title page; the traditional title of _Le Morte Darthur_ is announced at the very end of the work, in Caxton's own colophon rather than as part of Malory's text. It is retained in this edition, partly on account of its familiarity, but also because the defensiveness with which Caxton cites it suggests that he found it incorporated in some form in his copy-text, rather than that he made it up himself....​That Malory could have made such a basic grammatical error is a reminder of just how difficult it must have been to obtain information in a world where the printing press was as new as the Internet is today.


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## mplsray

That nouns and other words have gender is such a basic aspect of French that I find it inconceivable that Malory would have made such an error. He worked with French source works, after all, which in a work such as this would often have had occasion to refer to "l*a* mort" ("death" or "the death") and "s*a* mort" ("his/her/its death"), clearly showing that "mort" was feminine.

I just found another scholarly source that seems confused about the whole business. For no reason that I can identify (the text itself refers to "Le Morte") the Project Gutenberg version of Malory's work refers to it as "Le Mort d'Arthur"!


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## Tower of Babel

At the least, I agree that it still seems surprising if Malory had given the title in error.

In fact, because the title was stated only in the colophon applied by the printer William Caxton, there seems to have been some suspicion that it might have been Caxton himself who made the error. It's probably worth presenting the colophon here to show the "defensiveness" mentioned in the Oxford edition:
'Thus endeth this noble and joyous book entitled Le Morte Darthur. Notwithstanding it treateth of the birth, life, and acts of the said King Arthur, of his noble knights of the Round Table, their marvellous quests and adventures, the achieving of the Sangrail, and in the end the dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all.'​The word "notwithstanding" does appear to indicate that Caxton himself would have preferred something other than "Morte" as a title, since the work also tells of the birth, life, and acts of King Arthur. This lends weight to the idea that the title was indeed chosen by Malory, not by Caxton. What is not as clear, however, is whether the article "Le" was also in Malory's text, or was added by Caxton. As previous posts have noted, the article was sometimes omitted in the titles of other works.


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## CapnPrep

mplsray said:


> It doesn't appear to be a matter of Anglo-Norman French. […] "Morte" seems to be an English variant only: Among the variants given are "ME-16 *morte,* ME- *mort*." That is, the spelling "morte" is limited to the 16th century while "mort" is not so limited.


If you look up *morte* in this Anglo-Norman dictionary, most of the citations contain the feminine adjective/participle, but several of them definitely involve the noun "death".
Derechef aprés la morte de chescun tenant en fé
Mesme cel an lendimaygne aprés la morte del pape Johan le xii
il fuist mys a morte saunz processe de ley
qi voele la plaie garrir et le homme de morte garrantir
si ele aprés le morte son baron relés al gardein toutz maners d'accions
Note in particular "*le* morte" in the last example, from a 15th century legal text. (Speaking of which, Malory's title is probably 100% correct in Law French.)


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## temp1234

It is not at all surprising that Malory "made a mistake". For several centuries after William of Normandy invaded England most educated Englishmen were trilingual in French, Latin and English. By Malory's day it was not unusual for even well educated people to be fluent only in English with a little poor Latin and French. 

The shock(!), shock(!) that has greeted the realisation that Malory probably created a grammatical or spelling error would have been quite inappropriate in his day. This bureaucratic fussiness about spelling and grammar only arose a century later as governments grew large clerical departments that required standards in written English.


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## AlistairCookie

Why is this title "Le Morte" and not "La Mort".  Is it because it is Middle French and not Modern French.


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## SwissPete

Basic research yields the following, from *wikipedia*:





> _*Le Morte d'Arthur*_ (s'écrivant _Le Morte Darthur_, sans apostrophe, pour la première édition et pour certaines éditions modernes), qui signifie « *la mort d'Arthur* » en moyen français, est la compilation de romans arthuriens français et anglais de Thomas Malory.


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## fdb

This is actually wrong. In Old and Middle French the noun is written “mort” and is always feminine (as already in Latin). Malory’s “Le morte” is simply an Englishman’s faulty French.


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## jann

Actually, I think the relevant bit is in the first footnote to the English version of the wikipedia article that SwissPete cited:


> ^ Since _morte_ (or _mort_) is a feminine noun, French would require the article _la_ (i.e., "la mort d'Arthur"). According to Stephen H. A. Shepherd, "Malory frequently misapplies _le_ in titular compounds, perhaps on a simple sonic and gender-neutral analogy with 'the'". Stephen H. A. Shepherd, ed., _Le Morte Darthur_, by Sir Thomas Malory (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 1n.


You might also note the English spelling of the title Malory's apparently originally gave to his work... it didn't exactly follow modern spelling conventions either. 

_The hoole booke of kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table_


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