Arthurian Literature


King Arthur isn't directly a roleplaying subject, except in so far as the legends of King Arthur often interest roleplayers. He has his own roleplaying game, Pendragon, which wasn't in the encyclopedia last time I looked (and before you ask David, no I can't review it for you, I've never played it). There is also a GURPS supplement for him which has greatly amused me by categorising The Mabinogian as non-fiction.

The aim of this article is partly to give a break neck overview of the development of the legends but more importantly as a forum in which I may exercise my various prejudices on the subject. Anyone wishing an alternative and probably more balanced overview (though only insofar as its prejudices are more schizophrenic) should take a look at As the French Book Sayeth... which is a boiled down version of the opinions of numerous members of the Oxford Arthurian Society.

The "Real" King Arthur

There is no actual proof that King Arthur ever existed, and there is unlikely ever to be any. If he did exist then it is likely that he was a British or Romano-British war-leader against the Saxons sometime in the 6th century. The first recorded mention of Arthur is in History of the Britons by Nennius, some hundred years later. There are no contemporary sources that mention him, although there is evidence that something halted the Saxon advance around this time. There is a contemporary writer, Gildas, who totally fails to mention Arthur at all, although it is possible that he simply thoroughly disapproved of him, given several sections of invective against the current leaders.

There are a several contemporary war-leaders who could be candidates, among them are Aurelius Ambrosius a Romano-Brit, who often gets cast as a relative in modern fantasy, and Owain of Rheged, who becomes one of Arthur's knights in the tales. Interestingly for many years welsh tradition cast Owain/Owen in a very similar role to Arthur, which partly accounts for the success of Owen Glendwr, since he was able to capitalise on a belief that he was Owain returned at the time of his people's need. If you wish to know more about the "real" Arthur I suggest you read Where didn't King Arthur come from ?. Perhaps the most important thing to remember about the "real" Arthur is that the scarcity of any real information from the Dark Ages means that 90% of any theory anyone may have on the subject is guess work. Never be conned into thinking you've read a definitive version of life in the dark ages. We simply don't know enough about them and are unlikely ever to know that much. However, if such things amuse you, there is much fun to be had reading the various way out theories spawned as a result, e.g. Long Barrows are imitation space ships!!

Dark Age and Mediaeval Histories

Many of the Dark Age Authors are writing history of one sort or another, though it is likely that their sources were, at best, questionable and it is unclear to what extent they considered fact and history to combine. The final culmination of the historians was Geoffrey of Monmouth's, History of the Kings of Britain which contains previously unknown facts such as Britain was founded by Brutus the Trojan and his followers and that Britain was never invaded by Rome. King Arthur takes up a large section of the book, during which he wages a large campaign all over Europe and eventually become Roman Emperor. There are some people out there who allegedly believe that up to 10% of it may be true.

Medieval Romance

The first flowering of Arthurian fiction was the medieval romance writers. It was in this period that Lancelot was first appeared, as did the Holy Grail, the cup used at the last supper and brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimethea, Saxons dropped out of the picture to be replaced by Saracens, lots of characters became three or four characters with similar names (Morgan and Morgause), (Gawain, Gaheris, Agravain and Gareth), (Elaine of Astolat, Elaine of Carbonek, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine, ...) and the cornish legends of Tristan and Isolde were linked to the Arthurian cycle via the cunning device of having Tristan go to Arthur's court and ... do things.

There are three different, though intertwining strains of medieval romance: Welsh, English and French. There is also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which is English but doesn't seem to fit in neatly with the other branches (don't ask me why, this is what those in the know appear to think). The neatest story says that the legends and romances first grew up in Wales, were passed on to France and finally claimed by the English during the Hundred Years War as part of a patriotic propaganda exercise. Though neat this story is not necessarily right. The earliest written example of Welsh romances, The Mabinogian, was set down around a hundred years after the most famous French romancer Chretian de Troyes was writing and thus it is hard to tell whether it is genuinely a record of ancient Welsh legends or welshified versions of popular French stories. To further muddy the waters it was a habit with mediaeval chroniclers to impose their own ideas upon a work - so even if the Mabinogian wasn't influenced by Chretian, the best that can be said for it is that it is what some monk (probably) thought the welsh oral legends should be.

Chretian de Troyes provides the first recorded mention of Lancelot and of his affair with Guinevere, though he appears to assume that his readers are already familiar with the character. He is also believed to have first mentioned the Holy Grail (but who unfortunately died before he got round to explaining what it was, as did the first person to try and finish off the story, the third continuator took heed and hurriedly finished it off leaving lots of loose ends dangling and giving the impression that he really had very little idea what the original story was supposed to be). Three of Chretian's romances Yvain, Erec and Enide and Perceval and the Grail have direct parallels in the Mabinogian's Owain, Gereint and Enide and Peredur and there is no doubt that they all sprung from the same source, however which retelling is closer to the original legends is anyone's guess.

It is undoubtedly true that there were legends involving Arthur in Wales before there were French romances involving Arthur and that the French nicked the idea from those welsh legends. However, be wary of any claims of the direct provenance of any individual legends. The characters of Arthur, Guinevere, Gawain, Modred, Owain, Kay and Bedivere probably predate the French romances in some form. The character of Lancelot is probably a French invention. The holy grail - who knows!!

The best (or at least the most amusing) description of the French romances I've ever encountered described them as the mediaeval version of Dallas or Dynasty. They contain a lot of detail on the clothes people where and a lot of bed-hopping, there is no real suggestion in Chretian (for instance) that the affair of Lancelot and Guinevere is some great tragic love affair, just a lot of will they ? won't they ? sort of stuff. Unlike Dallas and Dynasty the romances also contain blow by blow accounts of jousts, duels and the like.

Another notable medieval account is Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival in which everybody is related to everybody else and the grail (or graal) is a stone. I believe Wagner's opera of the same name is based upon this.

When the Hundred Years War started it became terribly politically correct to be English, speak English and not French and (most importantly) reclaim the legends of King Arthur. This led to such delights as the alliterative Morte Arthur which tries to be more alliterative than English poetry ever was and introduces us to the Jousting Giants of Genoa who, for some reason, never reappear in Arthurian Legend.

The culmination of medieval writing was the Vulgate Cycle written by (probably several) monks, which contains versions of most of the well known arthurian legends, as well as fairies with silly names.

All this was finally rounded off by Thomas Mallory who produced The Morte D'Arthur which is seen by many as the definitive version of the Arthurian legends. In it he draws together and at least attempts to rationalise much of what has gone before. Nearly all future works owe at least something to Thomas Mallory.

After Mallory

After that things went into a bit of a decline. There were the odd vaguely arthurian texts, such as Spencer's Fairy Queen and I believe Thomas Love Peacock wrote a novel in which Tom Thumb becomes a knight of King Arthur's Court (though I think - and I say this advisedly since I haven't read it), that like Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (the book, not the musical film starring Bing Crosby) that this was more a vehicle for satiric comment on the society of the time than an attempt to write a genuine version of the Arthurian Legends.

The Victorian Revival

All this was revolutionised by the Pre-Raphaelite painters and Tennyson, who painted lots of very pretty pictures on Arthurian themes and wrote The Idylls of the King in which they were terribly moralistic about the whole Lancelot-Guinevere affair, respectively. This generated a great deal of interest and other poems etc. such as William Morris's Defence of Guinevere ("I was having a mid-life crisis m'lud") - sorry it's getting late and I'm getting frivolous.

The Twentieth Century

The Twentieth Century started out with T.H.White's classic retelling of Mallory in The Once and Future King. The first book in this cycle, The Sword in the Stone is I think standard in many children's libraries, but the rest of the cycle carries on in a much more adult vein to cover Mallory's work in a manner more readable to (at least this) modern reader.

The recent rise of the fantasy novel has led to the legend's reappearance as a number of fantasy trilogies from Mary Stewart's excellent The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment to Stephen Lawhead's execrable Taliesin, Merlin and Arthur (Actually I'm exagerating here, Taliesin had sufficiently little to recommend it that I never bothered to read the other two. I'm told that Arthur shows some signs of improvement). Other good reads are Rosemary Bradshaw's Down the Long Road and Katherine Kerr's The Idylls of the Queen an excellent examination of one incident in Mallory framed as a murder mystery, but sadly hard to come by - at least if anyone can get me a copy I'll be very grateful.

Alongside this and almost indistinguishable from it has been a stream of books influenced by New Ageism. These books provoke a number of reactions from the derisory to the ecstatic. By far the best known is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon. It's critics dismiss it as "Californian Romanticism" and "all about women's problems", Christians dislike being portrayed, yet again, as the bad guys. It's devotees have praised it as "a realistic portrayal of Dark Age Paganism" and a "feminist Arthurian Legend". I'm going to take the plunge and offer my own opinion here. Firstly it would be foolish to think it is a genuine portrayal of Dark Age anything, very little is known about the Dark Ages (hence why they are called Dark). I also know wiccans who feel it has precious little to do with their religion (although not all pagans are wiccans much of New Age paganism is based on wiccanism). However, Camelot has always been about Utopia and the loss of Utopia through human failings and as such it is a good telling of the attempt to forge a New Age Pagan Utopia and its subsequent loss. I used to think it wasn't a feminist book, since although its protagonists are women but they are very silly women, however it would be true to say that everyone in the book is fairly silly, so in the end I can't fault it as a book that treats women the same as it treats men and moreover places them centre stage. This Camelot was not lost through great tragic flaws but the everyday weaknesses that make up human beings. The story is far more about how the position of women in Dark Age society and their religious beliefs combined to prevent the women either having a happy fulfilling life or saving their vision of Utopia. Another of its big selling points (at least among teenage readership) is the sex scenes including Arthur and Morgaine during a pagan ritual in which he is referred to throughout as a stag and a three in the bed scene with Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere.

In the end I find myself in the detractors camp. Partly because my sympathies do not lie with New Ageism, but more because I found most of the book worthy but dull enlivened only with rather sensationalised sex. However it is definitely worth reading once since it at least attempts to rise above being a straightforward fantasy novel and explore some interesting issues.

Perhaps the best and most original modern explorations of the legends have appeared in what could be classed as intelligent children's literature. The best and most prolific example of this are the works of the incomparable Rosemary Sutcliff who is one of my all time favourite authors. She has written both books based on the traditional legends and books based on historical guesswork. My all time favourite Arthurian book is The Lantern Bearers, though people expecting to find magic, wizards and knights in shining armour may be disappointed. Other exceptionally good books include the Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper which while not a direct retelling of the Arthurian legend is infused throughout with Arthurian characters and themes and The Owl Service by Alan Garner which draws upon the legends of the Mabinogian.