Arthur
ARTHUR, traditionally known as a sixth-century king of the Britons. Discussion of the origins of Arthur is of long standing. He is the hero or, later, the central figure of a large body of literature, much of it cyclic, in most western European languages but most especially in the medieval forms of French, German, English, and Welsh. He is consistently portrayed as a British ruler, and there is no doubt that his origins are to be sought in early Welsh sources and, to a lesser extent, in Breton and Cornish literature.
The evidence for Arthur's historical existence is meager and difficult to evaluate. Chapter 56 of the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, usually attributed to "Nennius," places him in the context of the first period of the attacks on Britain by the Germanic invaders, in the second half of the fifth century, and lists twelve of his famous victories. The chronicle now known as Annales Cambriae notes under the year 518 the Battle of Badon, as an Arthurian victory, probably the same as that which closes the Nennian list, and under 539 the Battle of Camlan, in which Arthur and Medrawd fell (Medrawd, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Modred, is the rebellious nephew of Arthur whose abduction of Guenevere led to the catastrophic final Battle of Camlan). The Nennian notes and the chronicle entries probably derive from the same northern British source of the eighth century and are the earliest testimony to a historical Arthur. The places referred to in the list of battles cannot be securely located, and not all are to be associated with Arthur; but the list probably represents the remnant of a pre-ninth-century Welsh poem that contained a catalog of some of Arthur's traditional victories. Together with a eulogistic reference to Arthur in another Welsh poem, Gododdin, from northern Britain, these early allusions suggest the development of a fifth-century British leader into a popular heroic figure celebrated in song. (The Gododdin reference cannot be dated more securely than to the sixth to eleventh century.) The British author Gildas, however, writing about 540, does not name Arthur, although he celebrates the Battle of Badon; nor do other major historical sources, such as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or Bede, refer to him, so that some doubt as to his historical existence must remain.
Stories of Arthur, like many other northern British heroic legends, were relocated in early medieval Wales and achieved great popularity even before the arrival of the Normans in the eleventh century opened the way for this material to become a major component in the chivalric literatures of western Europe. Welsh poems from before 1100, mirabilia recounted in the Historia Brittonum, and material in some saints' lives of the eleventh and twelfth centuries all testify to a variety of tales being told about Arthur and to the fact that the hero was beginning to attract to himself legends and heroes from other cycles. Nineteenth-century scholars attempted to interpret this material in terms of solar mythology and the mythological type of the culture hero; though this approach is discredited in view of the nature of the historical evidence, it may yet be necessary to see Arthur, if not as a mythological figure, at least as one of fictional, folkloric origins. In Nennius's mirabilia Arthur and his dog Cabal hunt the boar Porcum Troit, a story more fully developed in the eleventh-century Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen, and stories of Arthur in this latter source have already become associated with topographical features. Poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Book of Taliesin, manuscripts from the thirteenth century, portray Arthur as the leader of a band of renowned warriors, Cei and Bedwyr foremost among them, who fight with monsters, hags, and giants and who carry out a disastrous expedition against the otherworld to free a prisoner. The twelfth-century Life of Saint Gildas contains the story of the abduction of Arthur's wife by Melwas and her imprisonment in the Glass Island, euhemerized as Glastonbury. These are the elements, together with some personal names, which seem to represent the earliest stratum of the Arthurian legend and which reappear in contemporary terms throughout its later forms.
There is more than one tradition of Arthur's end besides that of his death at Camlan. One that is attested early is his removal to the Isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds and to await the call to return. At the end of the twelfth century the monks of Glastonbury claimed to have discovered the graves of Arthur and his wife at their abbey, but this seems never to have found popular acceptance. Arthur's role as the awaited hero remained a political force throughout the Middle Ages among the Celtic peoples of Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. The later stages of his legend as the chivalrous king who was head of the Round Table and instigator of the search for the Holy Grail belong to the realm of literary history.
Bibliography
Good surveys of individual Arthurian topics will be found in R. S. Loomis's Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1959), where K. H. Jackson writes on the Arthur of history and of the early Welsh sources. The best survey of the earliest material is Thomas Jones's, "The Early Evolution of the Legend of Arthur," Nottingham Medieval Studies 8 (1964): 3–21.
All aspects of medieval Welsh literature relating to Arthur are discussed in a collaborative volume edited by Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, Brynley F. Roberts, The Arthur of the Welsh (Cardiff, 1991). Other volumes in this series (Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages) are: W. J. Barron, editor, The Arthur of the English (2001), W. J. Jackson and others, editors, The Arthur of the Germans (2000). J. B. Coe and S. Young, The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend (Felinfach, 1995) is a useful and dependable compendium. O. J. Padel, Arthur in Medieval Welsh Literature (Cardiff, 2000) and again "The Nature of Arthur," Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 17 (1994): 1–31, bring many new and challenging insights to the material. A. O. H. Jarman describes the Welsh poetry in "The Delineation of Arthur in Early Welsh Verse" in An Arthurian Tapestry, edited by Ernest K. Varty (Glasgow, 1951), while Rachel Bromwich discusses the question of the development of the legend in two articles, "Concepts of Arthur," Studia Celtica 10/11 (1975–1976): 163–181, and "Celtic Elements in Arthurian Romance: A General Survey," in The Legend of Arthur in the Middle Ages, edited by P. B. Grout and others (Woodbridge, 1983). Rachel Bromwich's Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, 2d ed. (Cardiff, 1978) is a fund of information on Arthurian themes and characters. Jean Markale, King of the Celts: Arthurian Legend and Celtic Traadition (Rochester, 1994). Marged Haycock, "Preiddeu Annwn and the Figure of Taliesin," Studia Celtica 18/19 (1983–1984): 52–78. Melville Richards, "Arthurian Onomastics," Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1969): 250–269; Patrick K. Ford, "On the Significance of Some Arthurian Names in Welsh," Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 30 (1983): 268–273.
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