SOURCE: Moorman, Charles. “All Whole Together.” In The Book of Kyng Arthur: The Unity of Malory's Morte Darthur, pp. 64-91. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965.

In the following essay, Moorman contends that the three main plots in Malory's Morte Darthur are interconnected, thus providing a sense of unity to a text based on a variety of disparate sources.

Two tasks remain to be accomplished: first, to point out how Malory's three plots—the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the Grail quest, and the Lot-Pellinore feud—interconnect and bind together the whole of the Morte Darthur and, second, to show, at least by example, how Malory integrates the seemingly unconnected strands of his sources into the whole fabric of his book. Taken together, these two accomplishments should go far to demonstrate the unity that Malory has impressed upon the waywardness of his sources.

Malory's use of his three major...