King Arthur

A Casebook

Edward Donald Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780815304951
• eBook ISBN: 9781135367275
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria inglese

Examining the origins of the Arthurian legend and major trends in the portrayal of Arthur from the Middle Ages to the present, this collection focuses on discussion of literature written in English, French, Latin, and German. Its 16 essays, four published here for the first time, deal with such matters as the search for the historical Arthur; the depiction of Arthur in the romances Erec and Iwein of Hartmann von Aue; the way Arthur is depicted in 19th-century art and the Victorian view of manhood; and conceptions of King Arthur in 20th-century literature. Six of the essays, originally published in French and German, are translated into English especially for this book. Two essays have been substantially revised. An introduction offers a general discussion of the development of the legends in the countries of Europe. Works discussed include medieval and Renaissance chronicles (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, Wace's Roman de Brut, Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia, Scottish vernacular and Latin chronicles), medieval romances (the Lancelot en prose, the Mort Artu, the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, and works of Chrétien de Troyes, Hartmann von Aue, and Sir Thomas Malory), Spenser's Faerie Queene, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and T.H. White's Once and Future King. A bibliography lists selected major secondary studies of King Arthur as well as major reference works.

INTRODUCTION

King Arthur is probably the best-known character from medieval literature. Most readers of English are familiar with some of the stories about him: the boy Arthur pulls the sword from the stone and is proclaimed king; with the help of Merlin he establishes the Round Table, which becomes associated with the ideals of chivalry; his incestuous union with his half-sister results in the conception of Mordred, the son/nephew who will betray his father/uncle Arthur; the love of Arthur’s wife Guinevere for his preeminent knight, Lancelot, leads to a civil war that ultimately destroys his kingdom; Arthur kills the usurper Mordred in combat; the wounded Arthur is taken to the Isle of Avalon, from which, according to some accounts, he will one day return. He is rex quondam rexque futurus, the once and future king.

Many of those familiar with stories about King Arthur know them not through medieval versions but through modern retellings for children; nineteenth- and twentieth-century poems and novels such as those of Tennyson, Mark Twain, T.H. White, Mary Stewart, Donald Barthelme, or Marion Zimmer Bradley; or films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and John Boorman’s Excalibur. New versions of the story of King Arthur appear in some form almost every year. Legends associated with him probably rank with the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology as popular sources for literature, music, art, and film. In the early 1960s T.H. White’s The Once and Future King became the basis for the Broadway musical Camelot, the title song from which, with its suggestions of an ideal society, provided a theme for John F. Kennedy’s campaign. Over thirty years later the July 5, 1993, issue of Time carried a review of its revival, with Robert Goulet, the original Lancelot, now playing King Arthur. John Steinbeck, who as a child was fascinated with Malory’s Morte Darthur, attempted to rewrite it in modern American English, but gave up and left an incomplete manuscript that was published after his death as The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976). In the summer of 1990 a seven-hour dramatization of Malory’s book had a brief run at London’s Lyric-Hammersmith theater. The list goes on and on. Over 1,200 nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of literature, film, and art have been influenced by the Arthurian legends; and more are on the way: at the beginning of 1993 Hollywood had plans for at least ten film projects concerning King Arthur.¹

Although most modern Arthurian works were produced in Britain and the United States,² in the Middle Ages writing about King Arthur and his knights was much more of an international phenomenon, with medieval Arthurian stories found in most European languages, including Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Welsh, Serbo-Russian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. From Italy there are also medieval versions with most of the Christian references omitted, written in Hebrew and Yiddish for Jewish audiences.³ The fascination of writers from so many countries with King Arthur is not, however, due to any uniform conception of his character. Although Arthur usually enjoys a popular reputation as a great king, the ways in which authors, both medieval and modern, present him vary widely. Few have chosen to portray Arthur as a villain⁴ (for then there would be no reason for noble knights to associate with him); he often, however, falls short of the ideal king, and many writers assumed considerable freedom in presenting him as they rewrote the Arthurian stories. In both medieval and modern literature there are many King Arthurs.⁵

ARTHUR IN HISTORY AND THE CHRONICLES

Whether King Arthur and the stories about him have any basis in history has been a topic debated by scholars through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and while some argue vigorously for Arthur’s existence, if not as a king, at least as a fifth- or sixth-century military leader who led British (i.e., the later Welsh) forces against the invading Angles and Saxons, others are more cautious and would agree with Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson that “nothing is certain about the historical Arthur, not even his existence.”⁶

Although there were also some skeptics in the Middle Ages, most people in England at that time seem to have believed in a hero named Arthur. Legends about him circulated orally for centuries, particularly among the defeated British, who had fond and exaggerated memories of his triumphs. The elegy Gododdin, written about 600, includes a brief reference to Arthur: it says of one hero that although he had killed his enemies, he “was not Arthur.” If this reference is not, as some suspect, a later interpolation,⁷ it indicates that: 1) by the early seventh century Arthur had become a figure to whom other heroes could be compared; and 2) he was so well known that no explanation of his identity was necessary. Occurrences of his name found in several Welsh Triads, or summaries of groups of three stories told by Welsh bards, offer further evidence of oral circulation of the stories, and his appearance as a character in early Welsh works such as The Spoils of Annwfn and Culhwch and Olwen indicates his reputation as a robust and vigorous, but far from courtly, leader to whom many warriors were attracted.⁸

Of more significance to the later development of the legend, however, are references to Arthur in chronicles. The Historia Brittonum (“History of the British,” ca. 829–830), traditionally attributed to a chronicler named Nennius,⁹ describes Arthur not as a king but as a dux bellorum (“leader in battles”) and lists twelve great victories. At the last of these, the Battle of Mount Badon, Arthur is said to have slain 960 men—a statement that indicates that whatever historical basis existed for Arthur, by this time he had developed into a medieval Superman. Another reference to the Battle of Badon appears in the entry under the year 518 in the Annales Cambriae (“Annals of Wales,” ca. 950), a work that also refers to the Battle of Camlann in 539 where Arthur and “Medraut” were killed.¹⁰ The twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury refers briefly in the first book of his De Rebus Gestis Regum Anglorum (“Deeds of the Kings of the English,” ca. 1125) to the distinguished service of the warlike Arthur (eximia bellicosi Arturis opera), whose reputation, William thought, should be based on “truthful histories” (veraces … historiae) rather than on fallacious fables (fallaces … fabulae). Shortly after this, Henry of Huntingdon incorporated into his Historia Anglorum (“History of the English,” ca. 1129) the Arthurian material from the chronicle attributed to Nennius; Henry of Huntingdon’s work, however, indicates a significant change in Arthur’s rank, for here he is described as “dux militum et regum Britanniae” (“leader of soldiers and kings of Britain,” Chambers, 16–19, 249–51). This change was based upon a popular conception of Arthur as king that developed some time before Henry had written his chronicle: evidence for this is found in the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen (ca. 1100), where Arthur is “sovereign prince of this island,” and early eleventh-century saints’ lives, such as those of Goeznovius and Cadoc, where Arthur is described as a king. Moreover, MS 1097 of the Bibliothèque Municipale of Reims, a manuscript of English origin that includes a list of Anglo-Saxon kings written between the late eleventh and the first half of the twelfth century, lists the names “Artur” and “Wyrtgeorn” (Vortigern) at the head of a list of Anglo-Saxon kings, a context that indicates that these British leaders were also considered kings.¹¹

William of Malmesbury’s hope that Arthur would be remembered through “truthful histories” seemed to be realized with the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain,” ca. 1138), supposedly a translation into Latin of “a very ancient book written in the British language” that was unknown to other chroniclers. Although the Historia covers what, according to Geoffrey, was the history of Britain from its founding by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, until the death of Cadwallader, the last British king, in 689, the most fully developed section concerns King Arthur. While some at the time questioned the truth of the Historia,¹² it offered to many a convincing account of Arthur’s reign and elevated the legends of Arthur to the status of serious history.

According to Geoffrey, Arthur became king at the age of fifteen, defeated his enemies in Britain and Scotland, and married Guinevere, a lady of noble Roman lineage. Included among his knights were his nephews Gawain and Mordred, sons of Arthur’s sister Anna and King Loth of Lothian. After conquering Ireland and Iceland, he began to attract knights from distant lands and became so powerful that he was able to conquer Norway, Denmark, and Gaul. By this time Britain surpassed all other kingdoms in its affluence. As Arthur was holding a great plenary court, however, ambassadors arrived from Lucius, procurator of Rome, and demanded that Arthur pay tribute. Arthur responded by declaring war on Rome. After conquering much of the rest of Europe and defeating the Romans, Arthur was ready to march on Rome when he learned that his nephew Mordred, whom he had left in charge of Britain, had usurped the throne and was living in adultery with Guinevere. Arthur returned home; in the ensuing battle Mordred was killed and Arthur was taken to Avalon so that his wounds could be healed.¹³

Many of the characters, episodes, and themes now commonly associated with King Arthur are missing. Merlin, who in later works appears as Arthur’s advisor, disappears from the story before Arthur is born. Mordred is simply Arthur’s nephew, not a son born of Arthur’s incest with his sister. There is no sword in the stone, no Round Table, no Grail Quest, no Lady of the Lake, no Morgan le Fay, and no Lancelot. Although Guinevere commits adultery, it is with Mordred.

What Geoffrey presents is the basic story of the rise and fall of King Arthur, with the destruction of his kingdom resulting from the treachery of Mordred. Although Fortune is not mentioned, the story nevertheless follows the pattern of a Boethian tragedy in which a great hero at the height of his power falls, not because he has committed some sin or has some flaw, but because earthly things are transient and one may lose them at any time through no fault of one’s own.

Geoffrey’s Historia was one of the most influential books written in England in the Middle Ages. According to E.K. Chambers its effect on the legends of Britain was comparable to that of the Aeneid on the legends of Rome (Chambers, 20). It firmly established for many readers of later generations the conception of Arthur as a great king and conqueror. Surviving in at least 215 Latin manuscripts, the Historia circulated widely in England and on the Continent. It was translated into French verse by Geffrei Gaimar in the 1140s and by Wace in about 1155 and, through Wace’s account, into English alliterative verse by La3amon sometime between 1188 and 1250.¹⁴ Much of its importance, however, is due not merely to its circulation as an independent work but also to its influence on later chroniclers in England. As Felicity Riddy points out, Geoffrey wrote a Latin chronicle for a fairly select and learned group; but the group influenced by the Historia expanded in the later Middle Ages (“Reading for England,” esp. 318–29). As chroniclers incorporated Geoffrey’s Historia into their own Latin, Anglo-Norman, and English chronicles that told the whole history of England, the history not just of the British but also of the Anglo-Saxons and post-conquest English, they transmitted it to an ever-widening audience, and it changed from what was supposedly a work of Latin scholarship for a learned group of readers to one that became known to a much larger group, particularly as vernacular literacy increased in the later Middle Ages.

The later chroniclers sometimes modified Geoffrey’s account by summarizing, questioning some points, and adding minor details and occasionally even whole episodes drawn from romances and other sources.¹⁵ But although some chroniclers added romance material and although medieval readers did not make the distinction between history and fiction that modern readers do, for almost 400 years following the appearance of Geoffrey’s Historia most of the chroniclers seemed to accept it as a reliable account of past events and used it as the basis for the history of the British up to the time of the Anglo-Saxon conquest. By incorporating the Historia into their chronicles, they gave it an authenticity that it would never have had if it remained simply a history of the British, as it was in Geoffrey and in the adaptations by Wace and La3amon. It was one thing for the late twelfth-century chronicler William of Newburgh to dismiss Geoffrey’s book as impudent and shameless lies disguised under the honorable name of history; but when that history of the British was incorporated into a history of all of England, when it was included as the first part of a chronicle that also told of the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, and the post-conquest English, it became more difficult to dismiss.¹⁶ A fifteenth-century reader of a chronicle that began with the history of the British but that continued, giving the history of England up to his own time, would know that there had been a Henry V and a Richard II, and he would believe that there had also been a William the Conqueror and a King Alfred; and if he believed that those rulers had lived, he could also believe that there had been an Arthur who, like Henry V, had achieved great victories on the Continent. The context in which the later chroniclers placed Geoffrey’s work gave it legitimacy as history.

The Arthurian chronicles after Geoffrey, Wace, and Laʒamon have been ignored by historians as being worthless and by scholars of literature as having little merit. There are no modern editions or translations of most of them, and scholars’ comments have done little to encourage interest in them.¹⁷ These later chronicles we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• LOOKING FOR ARTHUR
• DUX BELLORUM / REX MILITUM / ROI FAINÉANT: THE TRANSFORMATION OF ARTHUR IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
• KING ARTHUR AND THE ROUND TABLE IN THE EREC AND IWEIN OF HARTMANN VON AUE
• KING ARTHUR IN THE PROSE LANCELOT
• THE EVOLUTION OF THE THEME OF THE FALL OF ARTHUR’S KINGDOM
• APPEARANCES AND REALITY IN LA MORT LE ROI ARTU
• KING ARTHUR AND FORTUNA
• MALORY’S KING MARK AND KING ARTHUR
• KING ARTHUR IN THE SCOTTISH CHRONICLES
• POLYDORE VERGIL AND JOHN LELAND ON KING ARTHUR: THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS
• THE ARTHURS OF THE FAERIE QUEENE
• THE FEMALE KING: TENNYSON’S ARTHURIAN APOCALYPSE
• TO TAKE EXCALIBUR: KING ARTHUR AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF VICTORIAN MANHOOD
• T.H. WHITE AND THE LEGEND OF KING ARTHUR: FROM ANIMAL FANTASY TO POLITICAL MORALITY
• CONCEPTIONS OF KING ARTHUR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY