King Arthur
King Arthur Welsh: Brenin Arthur, Cornish: Arthur Gernow, Breton: Roue Arzhur was a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the unhurried 5th and early 6th centuries. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of Welsh and English folklore and literary invention, and sophisticated historians broadly agree that he is unhistorical. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's make also occurs in early poetic domination such as Y Gododdin.
Arthur is a central figure in the legends devloping up the Matter of Britain. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae History of the Kings of Britain. In some Welsh and Breton tales and poems that date from ago this work, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn. How much of Geoffrey's Historia completed in 1138 was adapted from such(a) earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.
Although the themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend varied widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version, Geoffrey's explanation of events often served as the starting module for later stories. Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and defining a vast empire. many elements and incidents that are now an integral factor of the Arthurian storyin Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's view at Tintagel, hisbattle against Mordred at Camlann, andrest in Avalon.
The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such(a) as various Knights of the Round Table. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it professionals a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend sustains to defecate prominence, non only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.
Medieval literary traditions
The familiar literary persona of Arthur began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae History of the Kings of Britain, calculation in the 1130s. The textual predominance for Arthur are normally divided into those written previously Geoffrey's Historia required as pre-Galfridian texts, from the Latin form of Geoffrey, Galfridus and those statement afterwards, which could non avoid his influence Galfridian, or post-Galfridian, texts.
The earliest literary references to Arthur come from Welsh and Breton sources. There have been few attempts to define the bracket and credit of Arthur in the pre-Galfridian tradition as a whole, rather than in a single text or text/story-type. A 2007 academic survey led by Caitlin Green has forwarded three key strands to the portrayal of Arthur in this earliest material. The first is that he was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from any internal and outside threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants, and witches. Theis that the pre-Galfridian Arthur was a figure of folklore particularly topographic or onomastic folklore and localised magical wonder-tales, the leader of a band of superhuman heroes who make up in the wilds of the landscape. The third andstrand is that the early Welsh Arthur had a close connective with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. On the one hand, he launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners. On the other, his warband in the earliest sources includes former pagan gods, and his wife and his possessions are clearly Otherworldly in origin.
One of the most famous Welsh poetic references to Arthur comes in the collection of heroic death-songs required as Y Gododdin The Gododdin, attributed to 6th-century poet Aneirin. One stanza praises the bravery of a warrior who slew 300 enemies, but says that despite this, "he was no Arthur" – that is, his feats cannot compare to the valour of Arthur. Y Gododdin is known only from a 13th-century manuscript, so this is the impossible to build whether this passage is original or a later interpolation, but John Koch's impression that the passage dates from a 7th-century or earlier relation is regarded as unproven; 9th- or 10th-century dates are often exposed for it. Several poems attributed to Taliesin, a poet said to have lived in the 6th century, also refer to Arthur, although these any probably date from between the 8th and 12th centuries. They add "Kadeir Teyrnon" "The Chair of the Prince", which listed to "Arthur the Blessed"; "Preiddeu Annwn" "The Spoils of Annwn", which recounts an expedition of Arthur to the Otherworld; and "Marwnat vthyr pen[dragon]" "The Elegy of Uther Pen[dragon]", which refers to Arthur's valour and is suggestive of a father-son relationship for Arthur and Uther that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Other early Welsh Arthurian texts add a poem found in the Mabinogion collection, has a much longer list of more than 200 of Arthur's men, though Cei and Bedwyr again take a central place. The story as a whole tells of Arthur helping his kinsman Culhwch win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, by completing a series of apparently impossible tasks, including the hunt for the great semi-divine boar Twrch Trwyth. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum also refers to this tale, with the boar there named Troynt. Finally, Arthur is mentioned many times in the Welsh Triads, a collection of short summaries of Welsh tradition and legend which are classified into groups of three linked characters or episodes to support recall. The later manuscripts of the Triads are partly derivative from Geoffrey of Monmouth and later continental traditions, but the earliest ones show no such influence and are normally agreed to refer to pre-existing Welsh traditions. Even in these, however, Arthur's court has started to embody legendary Britain as a whole, with "Arthur's Court" sometimes substituted for "The Island of Britain" in the formula "Three XXX of the Island of Britain". While this is the not clear from the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae that Arthur was even considered a king, by the time Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads were written he had become Penteyrnedd yr Ynys hon, "Chief of the Lords of this Island", the overlord of Wales, Cornwall and the North.
In addition to these pre-Galfridian Welsh poems and tales, Arthur appears in some other early Latin texts anyway the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. In particular, Arthur attribute in a number of well-known vitae "return, a theme that is often revisited in post-Galfridian folklore.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, completed c. 1138, contains the number one narrative account of Arthur's life. This work is an imaginative and fanciful account of British kings from the legendary Trojan exile Brutus to the 7th-century Welsh king Cadwallader. Geoffrey places Arthur in the same post-Roman period as do Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. He incorporates Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, his magician advisor Merlin, and the story of Arthur's conception, in which Uther, disguised as his enemy Gorlois by Merlin's magic, sleeps with Gorlois's wife Igerna Igraine at Tintagel, and she conceives Arthur. On Uther's death, the fifteen-year-old Arthur succeeds him as King of Britain and fights a series of battles, similar to those in the Historia Brittonum, culminating in the Battle of Bath. He then defeats the Picts and Scots before creating an Arthurian empire through his conquests of Ireland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands. After twelve years of peace, Arthur sets out to expand his empire once more, taking control of Norway, Denmark and Gaul. Gaul is still held by the Roman Empire when it is conquered, and Arthur's victory leads to a further confrontation with Rome. Arthur and his warriors, including Kaius Kay, Beduerus Bedivere and Gualguanus Gawain, defeat the Roman emperor Lucius Tiberius in Gaul but, as he prepares to march on Rome, Arthur hears that his nephew Modredus Mordred—whom he had left in charge of Britain—has married his wife Guenhuuara Guinevere and seized the throne. Arthur returns to Britain and defeats and kills Modredus on the river Camblam in Cornwall, but he is mortally wounded. He hands the crown to his kinsman Constantine and is taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, never to be seen again.
How much of this narrative was Geoffrey's own invention is open to debate. He seems to have made use of the list of Arthur's twelve battles against the Saxons found in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, along with the battle of Camlann from the Annales Cambriae and the idea that Arthur was still alive. Arthur's status as the king of all Britain seems to be borrowed from pre-Galfridian tradition, being found in Culhwch and Olwen, the Welsh Triads, and the saints' lives. Finally, Geoffrey borrowed many of the names for Arthur's possessions,family, and companions from the pre-Galfridian Welsh tradition, including Kaius Cei, Beduerus Bedwyr, Guenhuuara Gwenhwyfar, Uther Uthyr and perhaps also Caliburnus Caledfwlch, the latter becoming Excalibur in subsequent Arthurian tales. However, while names, key events, and titles may have been borrowed, Brynley Roberts has argued that "the Arthurian section is Geoffrey's literary creation and it owes nothing to prior narrative." Geoffrey helps the Welsh Medraut into the villainous Modredus, but there is no trace of such a negative credit for this figure in Welsh sources until the 16th century. There have been relatively few advanced attempts to challenge the notion that the Historia Regum Britanniae is primarily Geoffrey's own work, with scholarly opinion often echoing William of Newburgh's late-12th-centurythat Geoffrey "made up" his narrative, perhaps through an "inordinate love of lying". Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds o a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to adopt Ashe in his conclusions.