Arthurian legend

Information about Arthurian legend

History of Literature
The Medieval and Renaissance Periods
Matter of Rome
Matter of France
Matter of Britain
Medieval literature
Arabic literature
13th century in literature
14th century in literature
European Renaissance Literature
15th century in literature


Series on
Celtic mythology
Enlarge picture
Coventina
Celtic polytheism
Celtic deities
Ancient Celtic religion
Druids · Bards · Vates
British Iron Age religion
Celtic religious patterns
Gallo-Roman religion
Romano-British religion
British mythology
Welsh mythology
Breton mythology
Mabinogion · Taliesin
Cad Goddeu
Trioedd Ynys Prydein
Matter of Britain · King Arthur
Gaelic mythology
Irish mythology
Scottish mythology
Hebridean mythology
Tuatha D Danann
Mythological Cycle
Ulster Cycle
Fenian Cycle
Immrama · Echtrae
See also
Celts · Gaul
Galatia · Celtiberians
Early history of Ireland
Prehistoric Scotland
Prehistoric Wales
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The Matter of Britain or the Arthurian legend is a name given collectively to the legends that concern the Celtic and legendary history of the British Isles, especially those focused on King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The 12th century French poet Jean Bodel created the name in the following lines of his epic Chanson de Saisnes:

Ne sont que iii matières à nul homme atandant,
De France et de Bretaigne, et de Rome la grant.


(translation: "There are but 3 literary cycles that no man should be without: the matter of France, of Britain, and of great Rome". Jean Bodel, Chanson de Saisnes)


The name distinguishes and relates the Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "matter of Rome", and the tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constituted the "matter of France". While Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain, other lesser-known legendary history of the British Isles, including the stories of Brutus of Britain, Old King Cole, King Lear, and Gogmagog, is also included in the subjects covered by the Matter of Britain: see King of the Britons.

Themes and subjects

Legendary history of Britain

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Artist Britton LaRoche. In Welsh legend, Arthur's sword is known as Caledfwlch.
It could be said that the legendary history of Britain was created in part to form a body of patriotic myth for the island. Several agendas thus can be seen in this body of literature.

The Historia Britonum, the earliest known source of the story of Brutus of Britain, may have been devised to create a distinguished genealogy for a number of Welsh princes in the 9th century. Traditionally attributed to Nennius, its actual compiler is unknown; it exists in several recensions. This tale went on to achieve greater currency because its inventor linked Brutus to the diaspora of heroes that followed the Trojan War, and thus provided raw material which later mythographers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Michael Drayton, and John Milton could draw upon, linking the settlement of the British Isles to the heroic age of Greek literature, for their several and diverse literary purposes. As such, this material could be used for patriotic mythmaking just as Virgil linked the mythical founding of Rome to the Trojan War in The Æneid. Geoffrey of Monmouth also introduced the fanciful claim that the Trinovantes, reported by Tacitus as dwelling in the area of London, had a name he interpreted as Troi-novant, "New Troy".

More speculative claims link Celtic mythology with several of the rulers and incidents compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniæ. It has been suggested, for instance, that Leir of Britain, who later became Shakespeare's King Lear, was originally the Irish sea-god Lir. Various Celtic deities have been identified with characters from Arthurian literature as well: Morgan le Fay was often thought to have originally been the Irish goddess Mórrígan. Many of these identifications come from the speculative comparative religion of the late 19th century, and have been questioned in more recent years.

William Shakespeare seems to have been deeply interested in the legendary history of Britain, and to have been familiar with some of its more obscure byways. Shakespeare's plays contain several tales relating to these legendary kings, such as King Lear and Cymbeline. It has been suggested that Shakespeare's Welsh schoolmaster Thomas Jenkins introduced him to this material, and perhaps directed him to read Geoffrey of Monmouth. These tales also figure in Raphael Holinshed's The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which also appears in Shakespeare's sources for Macbeth. A Welsh schoolmaster appears as the character Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Other early authors also drew from the early Arthurian and pseudo-historical sources of the Matter of Britain. The Scots, for instance, formulated a mythical history in the Picts and the Dál Riata royal lines. While they do eventually become factual lines, unlike those of Geoffrey, their origins are vague and often incorporate both aspects of mythical British history and mythical Irish history. The story of Gabhran especially incorporates elements of both those histories.

The Arthurian cycle

The Arthurian literary cycle is the best known part of the Matter of Britain. It has succeeded largely because it tells two interlocking stories that many later authors have been intrigued by. One concerns Camelot, usually envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of Arthur and Sir Lancelot. The other concerns the quests of the various knights to achieve the Holy Grail; some succeed (Galahad, Percival), and others fail (Lancelot).

The medieval tale of Arthur and his knights is full of Christian themes; those themes involve the destruction of human plans for virtue by the moral failures of their characters, and the quest for an important Christian relic. Finally, the relationships between the characters invited treatment in the tradition of courtly love, such as Lancelot and Guinevere, or Tristan and Iseult. In more recent years, the trend has been to attempt to link the tales of King Arthur and his knights with Celtic mythology, usually in highly romanticized, early twentieth century reconstructed versions.

Additionally, it is possible to read the Arthurian literature in general, and that concerned with the Grail tradition in particular, as an allegory of human development and spiritual growth (a theme explored by Joseph Campbell amongst others).

Characters and subjects

Legendary kings and founders

Arthur and his entourage

Knights of the Round Table

Other important figures

Noteworthy authors

Medieval

Modern

Anonymous

See also

References

  • Derek Pearsall, Arthurian Romance: a short introduction, Blackwell, Oxford, 2005
  • D. H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and fiction, 1150-1220, CUP Cambridge 2005
  • Carol Dover (ed), A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, Boydell & Brewer, 2005

External links





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Matter of Britain
Key PeopleKing Arthur Sir Ector Guinevere Lady of the Lake Merlin Mordred Morgan le Fay Morgause Uther Pendragon
Knights of the Round TableAgravaine Bedivere Bors Calogrenant Galahad Gareth Gawain Geraint Kay Lamorak Lancelot Percival Sagramore Tristan
ObjectsExcalibur Holy Grail Round Table
PlacesAvalon Camelot Corbenic
In MediaBooks Films
The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempt to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of
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According to the mediæval poet Jean Bodel, the Matter of Rome was the literary cycle made up of Greek and Roman mythology, together with episodes from the history of classical antiquity, focusing on military heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
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The Matter of France, also known as the Carolingian cycle, is a body of legendary history that springs from the Old French medieval literature of the chansons de geste.
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Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (encompassing the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca.
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Arabic literature (Arabic ,الأدب العربي ) Al-Adab Al-Arabi, is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by speakers (not necessarily native speakers) of the Arabic language.
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-1210-  1211 . 1212 . 1213  1214 . 1215 . 1216 . 1217 . 1218 . 1219 .
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-1310-  1311 . 1312 . 1313  1314 . 1315 . 1316 . 1317 . 1318 . 1319 .
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Renaissance literature refers to European literature usually considered to be initiated by Petrarch at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, and sometimes taken to continue to the English Renaissance and into the seventeenth century.
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Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, apparently the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure.
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Celtic polytheism refers to the religious beliefs and practices of ancient Celts until the Christianization of Celtic-speaking lands. At various times those lands included Gaul, Ireland, Celtiberia, Britain, certain territories on the Danube, and Galatia in Asia Minor.
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The gods and goddesses of Celtic mythology are known from a variety of sources. From the classical and pre-classical period, many statues, dedications, votive offerings, and cult objects survive.
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druid denotes the priestly class in ancient Celtic societies, which existed through much of Western Europe and in Britain and Ireland until they were supplanted by Roman government and, later, Christianity.
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bard was one of a caste of poets and scholars of medieval and early modern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

Etymology

The word is a loanword from Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwerh2:
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The earliest Latin writers used vates to denote "prophets" and soothsayers in general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil [1] . Then Ovid could describe himself as the vates of Eros (Amores 3.9).
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Gallo-Roman religion was a fusion of Roman religious forms and modes of worship with Gaulish deities from Celtic polytheism. It was a selective acculturation.

Deities


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Welsh mythology, the remnants of the mythology of the pre-Christian Britons, has come down to us in much altered form in medieval Welsh manuscripts such as the Red Book of Hergest, the White Book of Rhydderch, the Book of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin.
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Breton mythology is the mythology or corpus of explanatory and herioc tales originating in Brittany, now in France. Bretons were a subset of Celtic people that adopted Christianity.
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Mabinogion is a collection of prose stories from medieval Welsh manuscripts. They draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and on early medieval historical traditions.
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Taliesin (c. 534 – c. 599) is the earliest poet of the Welsh language whose work has survived. His name is associated with the Book of Taliesin, a book of poems that was written down in the Middle Ages (John Gwenogvryn Evans dated it to around 1275).
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Cad Goddeu (English: The Battle of the Trees) is a sixth century Welsh poem from the Book of Taliesin. It is set during a battle fought between Gwydion and Arawn, the god of the underworld, Annwn, in which Gwydion animates the trees of the forest to
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The Welsh Triads (Welsh Trioedd Ynys Prydein, literally "Triads of the Island of Britain") are a group of related texts in medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three.
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King Arthur is a fabled Brython leader and a prominent figure in Britain's legendary history. A real individual may have been the inspiration of the legend, but later stories of Arthur are almost entirely fictional.
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The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity, but much of it was preserved, shorn of its religious meanings, in medieval Irish literature, which represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branches of Celtic
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Scottish mythology may refer to any of the mythologies of Scotland. Myths have emerged for various purposes throughout the history of Scotland, sometimes being elaborated upon by successive generations, and at other times being completely rejected and replaced by other
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Hebridean myths and legends. It is a part of Scotland which has always relied on the surrounding sea to sustain the small communities which have occupied parts of the islands for centuries, therefore, it is natural that these seas are a source for many of these legends.
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The Mythological Cycle is one of the four major cycles of Irish mythology, and is so called because it represents the remains of the pagan mythology of pre-Christian Ireland, although the gods and supernatural beings have been euhemerised by their Christian redactors into
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The Ulster Cycle, formerly known as the Red Branch Cycle, one of the four great cycles of Irish mythology, is a body of medieval Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly
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The Fenian Cycle or Fiannaidheacht (modern Irish: Fiannaíocht), also known as the Fionn Cycle, Finn Cycle, Fianna Cycle, Finnian Tales, Fian Tales, Féinne Cycle, Feinné Cycle and Ossianic Cycle
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An Immram (pl. Immrama) is one of a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld (see Tír na nÓg and Mag Mell). Written in the Christian era and essentially Christian in aspect, they preserve elements of Irish mythology.
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