British Lit: Le Morte d’Arthur “The Characters Who Built the Chivalric Code” Reading Activity

Description

PDF file. Cover page plus two pages. I created this activity because I literally became overwhelmed with teaching the monumental Le Morte d’Arthur. To make our excerpt of the text more manageable, I decided to focus on characterization.

Here is the text found at the top of the sheet: “One objective of reading Le Morte d’Arthur is that we understand how Sir Thomas Malory built his characters… that is, the characterization he used in the story to provide a chivalric code for the tales. Notice how Malory’s characterization teaches a code for behavior.” 

I found that narrowing our focus made this text more manageable for both me and my students. This activity required a fifty-minute class period with students working independently. During our read-aloud, I asked students to list characters as we approached them in the story. When we finished reading and discussing, students chose their four characters for this sheet from their lists.

• List three adjectives Malory used to describe each character and provide the line number from which you derived that characteristic.
• Explain how the character fits into Malory’s story, i.e. how is he/she introduced into the story?
• Explain the character’s motivation or purpose in Malory’s story. 

There is no key needed, since all answers will vary. Enjoy!