When I say "King Arthur," what do you see? Probably not just the king himself, but a whole montage of characters and places: Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, Camelot, Avalon. All of these are very familiar names in today’s society. But how did this become? Where did it begin? Who created the Round Table? Did King Arthur even exist? Sometimes extracting fact from fiction is hard, especially in the case of Arthur. But I am not going to try to discern what is truth and what is not. That is an impossible task. I am merely going to take you on a journey through literature and history to discover how the Legend began, its development across the centuries, and how it exists and affects our lives today.
In 465, as Ambrosius Aurelianus was leading the Britons against the Saxons, a legend named Arthur was born. Oh, Arthur was almost surely a real person, but history and literature changed him, made him grow into the hero of legend we know today. Pieces of Arthur’s life do appear to be historical. He seems to be a prince of “the tribe of Britons called Silures, whose country was South Wales” (Bulfinch 291). Nearly all who feel Arthur existed — and there are definitely some who doubt — concur that Arthur did in fact have twelve victories against the Saxons. Arthur changed the literature as it was creating his legend; the genre of Arthurian romance created itself around the Legend eight centuries ago, and has been a preferred genre for many since. From Geoffrey of Monmouth and Alfred Lord Tennyson to Broadway and Hollywood, Arthur has continued for centuries in the popular culture of the time, and will probably extend into the future for centuries to come.
Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first person to write a continuous, detailed account of Arthur and his adventures, with approximately one-fifth of his “History of the Kings of Britain” devoted to the subject. He did so in the twelfth century, some six hundred years after his date of the death of Arthur, and it has had lasting impact even to today, in 1998. Richard Barber, in “King Arthur in Legend and History,” describes this work as “the greatest single contribution to Arthurian romance.” At intervals, Geoffrey actually cites facts; but for the most part, his account was made up as he went (Britannia geofmon.html). Despite this, the scholars regarded it as truth for six centuries more (Barber 47). Even after the work was recognized for what it was — 90% fiction — it inspired dozens across the centuries to think, talk and write about the adventures within. One of the most astonishing facts about Arthur’s legend is that it all began as the work of one man (Geoffrey) seeking political favour. Several details point to this, the most obvious being the fact that Geoffrey had three dedications of the book made, one for each change of political situation (Barber 38).
Most of Geoffrey’s sources were from Breton and Wales. There are details within the text which support this, such as the name Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father, possibly resulting from a misunderstanding of ‘Arthur mab uthr.’ In Welsh, this means Arthur the Terrible, but Geoffrey may have thought it meant Arthur son of Uther (Barber 40). Welsh legends speak of Arthur early on, and spread over a century, which leads some to believe that the Arthur we know of is really an amalgamated account of several men (Britannia geofmon.html). Recently one man, Geoffrey Ashe, has documented that perhaps Geoffrey had heard of a man whom he thought to be Arthur (Britannia artorig2.html). Ashe takes this stand on the basis of two ruling emperors and a pope Geoffrey mentions during one of Arthur’s campaigns. He has found proof that they, as well as Anthemius, existed. Anthemius was a man who campaigned in the very short time which spanned the three mentioned rulers, and who fit nicely into Geoffrey’s account of Arthur. This could very well mean that Geoffrey of Monmouth took ideas not only from his imagination and from folk tales, but also from actual historical events. This supports the idea that possibly Arthur existed in more than one human being. Geoffrey also quoted sources which, for all accounts and purposes, never existed, though countless scholars have tried to locate them.
Both Barber’s account and Britannia Internet Magazine’s timeline credit Master Robert Wace as the inventor of the Round Table. Barber says that a quarrel over precedence motivated Arthur to engage a carpenter who ‘offered to make him a table which could be carried anywhere, and at which sixteen hundred men could sit without one being higher than the next’ (Barber 51). As a symbol of chivalry and equality, the Round Table is one of many Arthurian symbols used frequently in our society. Roundtable discussions are common occurrences in business and societies as an opportunity to express opinions in an equitable atmosphere. These perhaps aspire to a “secular path to virtue in a chaotic world, a means of righting wrongs and combating evil” (Barber, 83).
The next author to contribute greatly to the legend was Chretien de Troyes, around 1160-90. He invented Lancelot, the name Camelot, and the grail, three important pieces of the Legend which have carried across the centuries to not only serious literary articles, but also to popular culture in movies and spoofs, the most memorable of these being “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in 1975. Ashe facetiously calls this “the most realistic of all celluloid Arthurian depictions’ (Britannia timeart3.html). In 1210, Robert de Boron took Troyes’ grail and made it the Holy Grail, with all its Christian implications.
Near the end of the fifteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwichshire finished his work, “Morte d'Arthur,” one of the definitive chapters in Arthurian romance (Britannia timeart3.html). This introduced the concept of Avalon, and reinforced old folktales that Arthur was simply in stasis, and would return to save Britons in their hour of need. These tales, a foreshadowing of Christ the Saviour, existed in more than a dozen locales; and even as late as a century ago, “a local villager asked some archaeologists if they meant to dig up the King” (Britannia artiorig2.html).
In the nineteenth century, especially during the last half, Arthurian romance gained momentum. Great writers such as William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alfred Lord Tennyson took on the legend and added beautiful works like “The Lady of Shalott” and “The Egyptian Maid.” Society, as always, welcomed the age of chivalry into their libraries and into their lives. Perhaps the best-known works of this time are those of Tennyson. “The Idylls of the King” describe the adventures of such characters as Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur himself. These beautiful stories of chivalry and courtly love bury themselves in our souls, and are absolutely timeless.
Geoffrey of Monmouth marks Arthurian times as the creation date of Stonehenge, the huge megalith structure on Salisbury Plain in England (Mystic Places 82). Apparently Merlin, at the behest of Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon — uncle and father to Arthur, respectively — used his magical powers to put the stones in place as a monument to nobles who had been massacred by the Saxons. The stones, which Merlin said had been carried from Africa to Ireland by a mysterious race of Irish giants, were said to have had magic healing properties. Later, Geoffrey says, Stonehenge became the resting place for both Ambrosius and Uther. In an example of how some small bit of ancient information can make an impact on today’s society, contemporary bestselling author Anne Rice makes allusions to both Arthur and Stonehenge in her book Taltos. In this fictional work, the Taltos are giant creatures which resemble humans. Rice has her characters build Stonehenge as a place to dance and sing — Merlin called the stones the Dance of the Giants (Mystic Places 82) — and it evolves that the remains found in Glastonbury Tor, thought to be Arthur’s, were really those of a Taltos. Rice’s superb writing twines fact with fiction so skillfully that one is drawn into the story and is in danger of believing it. I feel that Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History” must have been like this; otherwise, how could it have been regarded as truth for 600 years?
As the centuries ticked by, Arthurian legend grew ever more popular, coming to us from all sides. Today, it can be found almost everywhere one looks: in children’s cartoons such as Gargoyles, which in one episode had the title characters make a time-trip to Avalon; in movies such as “Excalibur” (1981), “A Kid in King Arthur’s Court” and “First Knight” (both 1995); and in television, such as the upcoming mini-series “Merlin.” One would be hard-pressed to find someone who has not heard of King Arthur, Camelot, or the Round Table. It is an integral part of our culture, in the same category as Robin Hood, Star Wars, Davy Crockett, and the Red Baron. And the question of whether or not any of these were fact or fiction is a moot point. They have changed how we perceive the world in many ways, just as Arthur has — from Lord Tennyson’s poems to Saturday morning cartoons. And how interesting it is to me that because ‘some guy’ from 800 years ago wanted to make good with his superiors, we now have the phenomenon known as Arthur. And how fascinating it is that the modern man with the answers (Geoffrey Ashe), has the same first name as the man who started it all 850 years ago (Geoffrey of Monmouth) . Perhaps they were both sent by Arthur, to assert his will upon and tell his story to the world. Perhaps, in an even more far-fetched hope, they were both Arthur himself, emerging briefly from his Avalonian sleep to keep us from forgetting.
I certainly like to think so.
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Works Cited
Barber, Richard. King Arthur in Legend and History. Suffolk: Boydell, 1973.
Thomas Bulfinch. Bulfinch’s Mythology. Ed. Edmund Fuller. New York: Dell, 1959.
George Constable and Ellen Phillips, eds. Mystic Places. U.S.A.: Time-Life Books, 1987.
Britannia Internet Magazine. http://www.britannia.com/history/h12.html
Posted by nightingayle at March 30, 1998 04:30 PM