ABSTRACT
John Steinbeck, in one of his letters published as an appendix to his adaptation of the first part of Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, makes the following observation: “So many scholars have spent so much time trying to establish whether Arthur existed at all that they have lost track of the single truth that he exists over and over again.” 1 Steinbeck is by no means criticizing research concerning Arthur’s historicity; rather he is reminding us that the figure of Arthur is not unitary, but multiple, that there is not one Arthur, but that there are many. Concerned with re-creating the Arthurian legend for twentieth-century readers, Steinbeck understood that not only Malory, but also each of his predecessors interpreted the role of Arthur according to his own concerns.
