Le Morte d'Arthur

Le Morte d'Arthur (originally spelled Le Morte Darthur, Middle French for “the death of Arthur”) is a reworking of traditional tales by Sir Thomas Malory about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table. Malory interprets existing French and English stories about these figures and adds original material (e.g., the Gareth story).

Le Morte d'Arthur was first published in 1485 by William Caxton, and is today perhaps the best-known work of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

Authorship

The exact identity of the author of Le Morte D'Arthur has long been the subject of speculation, owing to the fact that a number of minor historical figures bore the name of "Sir Thomas Malory", but scholarship has increasingly supported the notion that the author was the Thomas Malory who was born between the years 1400-1410 to Sir John Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire. Sir Thomas inherited the family estate in 1434 after his father died and is believed to have engaged in a life of crime punctuated with long periods of imprisonment. As early as 1433, he was seemingly indicted for theft and, in 1450, it was alleged that he was involved in attempted murder, robbery, rape, and extortion stemming from a cattle raid. He was imprisoned in Coleshill but escaped and soon after robbed the Cistercian monastery. Malory was once again arrested in 1454, but two years later he was released through a royal pardon.

Merlin

Merlin is a legendary figure best known as the wizard featured in Arthurian legend. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt (Merlinus Caledonensis), a North Brythonic prophet and madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the composite figure he called Merlin Ambrosius (Welsh: Myrddin Emrys). He is allegedly buried in the Broceliande forest, near Paimpont in Brittany.

Geoffrey's rendering of the character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image of the wizard. Merlin's traditional biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus, the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities. The name of Merlin's mother is not usually stated but is given as Adhan in the oldest version of the Prose Brut. Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have Merlin serve as the king's advisor until he is bewitched and imprisoned by the Lady of the Lake.

Merlin (protein)

Merlin (also called Neurofibromin 2 or schwannomin) is a cytoskeletal protein. In humans, it is a tumor suppressor protein involved in Neurofibromatosis type II. Sequence data reveal its similarity to the ERM protein family.

The name "merlin" is an acronym for "Moesin-Ezrin-Radixin-Like Protein".

Gene

Human merlin is coded by the gene NF2 in Chromosome 22. Mouse merlin gene is located on chromosome 11 and rat merlin gene on chromosome 17. Fruit fly merlin gene (symbol Mer) is located on chromosome 1 and shares 58% similarity to its human homologue. Other merlin-like genes are known from a wide range of animals, and the derivation of merlin is thought to be in early metazoa. Merlin is a member of the ERM family of proteins including ezrin, moesin, and radixin, which are in the protein 4.1 superfamily of proteins. Merlin is also known as schwannomin, a name derived from the most common type of tumor in the NF2 patient phenotype, the schwannoma.

Structure

Vertebrate merlin is a 70-kDa protein. There are 10 known isoforms of human merlin molecule (the full molecule being 595 amino acids in length). The two most common these are also found in the mouse and are called type 1 and type 2, differing by the absence or presence of exon 16 or 17, respectively). All the known varieties have a conserved N-terminal part, which contains a FERM domain (a domain found in most cytoskeletal-membrane organizing proteins). The FERM domain is followed by an alpha-helical domain and a hydrophilic tail. Merlin can dimerize with itself and heterodimerize with other ERM family proteins.

The Sword in the Stone (film)

The Sword in the Stone is a 1963 American animated fairy tale film produced by Walt Disney and originally released to theaters on December 25, 1963 by Buena Vista Distribution. It was the final Disney animated film released before Walt Disney's death. The songs in the film were written and composed by the Sherman Brothers, who later wrote music for other Disney films like Mary Poppins (1964), The Jungle Book (1967), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

The film is based on the novel of the same name, first published in 1938 as a single novel. It was later republished in 1958 as the first book of T. H. White's tetralogy The Once and Future King.

Plot

After the King of England, Uther Pendragon, dies, leaving no heir to the throne, a sword appears inside an anvil in London. The sword bears an inscription proclaiming that whoever removes it will be the new king. No one can remove the sword, which is eventually forgotten, leaving England in the Dark Ages.

Years later, a 12-year-old orphan named Arthur, commonly called Wart, accidentally scares off a deer his foster brother Kay was hunting, causing Kay to launch his arrow into the forest. In retrieving the arrow, Arthur lands in the cottage of Merlin the wizard, who declares himself Arthur's tutor and returns with the boy to his home, a castle run by Sir Ector, Arthur's foster father. Ector's friend, Sir Pellinore, arrives with news that the annual jousting tournament will be held on New Year's Day in London, and the winner will be crowned king. Ector decides to put Kay through serious training for the tournament and appoints Arthur as Kay's squire.