Arthur

Arthur King Arthur and his circle are creations of medieval writers drawing on history, folklore, mythology, and imagination. Arthurian material has been continually reshaped and developed, reflecting aspects of contemporary life, morality, and aspirations. The ‘real’ Arthur is a hero referred to in the British poem the Gododdin (c.600), in the 9th‐cent. Nennius' Historia Brittonum, and in two entries in the 10th‐cent. Annales Cambriae. The original warlord, who defies identification, was developed by the 9th‐ and 10th‐cent. Welsh into a great Welsh victor. Welsh tradition in turn contributed to oral traditions in Cornwall, and in Brittany, where it came to be believed that he still lived. It was probably Breton bards who were responsible for the Round Table motif. But Arthur and his world were definitively formed in the 1130s by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his fictional History of the Kings of Britain. In this, Arthur is the ideal king, conqueror of much of Europe, attacking even Rome. Finally defeated and mortally wounded, he is borne to Avalon.

Arthur's court proved a magnet for heroes and their deeds, and in much Arthurian material Arthur's own profile is low. The legend of Tristan and Isolde, one of the most popular, was tacked on to Arthur's. Other tales, however, developed out of it. The Grail element, combining Celtic traditions of magical testing‐vessels and blessed food‐producing horns with Christian sentiment, first crystallized in French. Chrétien of Troyes in the 1170s and 1180s also introduced courtly love, made the Round Table a centre of chivalry, and identified Arthur's capital as Camelot. The first treatment in (Middle) English was Layamon's Brut (late 12th cent.), which introduced the element of faerie. The greatest English production was the late 14th‐cent. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The cult of chivalry was a European phenomenon. Arthurian romances portrayed its ideals, and its organization and trappings. Arthurian characters and deeds were emulated in tournaments, sometimes in Arthurian dress, and in ceremonial, as in Edward III's foundation of the Order of the Garter. Arthurian matters could be politically useful. Honour paid by Edward I to what were apparently bones of Arthur and Guinevere, at Glastonbury in 1278, was flattering to the Welsh, while emphasizing that hope for a Messianic delivery from him was pointless.

In the early modern period the popularity of Arthurian material declined. It survived in the English‐speaking world because of Sir Thomas Malory, whose work, completed about 1469, retailed the story as a tragedy. It was printed in 1485 by Caxton as the Morte Darthur. Henry VII exploited Welsh interest, for example naming his elder son Arthur, and making him prince of Wales in 1489, but Arthur's significance under the Tudors was chiefly in pageantry and literature. There was some drama and poetry, and Arthur was taken up by Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene. Shakespeare, however, gave him no attention.

Arthurian romance was next popular in the 19th cent., though Dryden wrote a play which was set to music by Purcell. Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth wrote some Arthurian material, but the boom began with Tennyson's poems, from 1832, based on Malory. Tennyson's characters often symbolize particular qualities, and his works are moralizing. Other Arthurian writers include Algernon Swinburne, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, and (satirically) the American Mark Twain. In the 20th cent. Arthurian settings and circles were an enduring theme for novelists and poets of very different kinds. British musical treatments include works by Boughton, Bax, Parry, and Elgar. There have been a number of films.

Many attempts have been made to identify Arthurian sites. Through the ages Camelot has been located at Cadbury (where an Iron Age hill‐fort was a centre of British power in the late 5th cent.), Caerleon, Colchester, Winchester, Tintagel, and, recently and controversially, near Stirling. The origin of Arthur's association with Cornwall is not clear. Castle Dore and Tintagel (with their late 5th‐ and early 6th‐cent. secular aristocratic dwellings) are ‘identified’ as settings for Tristan and Isolde. Glastonbury was associated in the mid‐12th cent. with an abduction of Guinevere, and became identified with Avalon. In 1190 or 1191 the monks ‘discovered’ the burial of Arthur and Guinevere, and in the mid‐13th cent. they added Joseph of Arimathea, with whom the Holy Grail was associated, to their history.