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Arthur, the Lady of the Lake with Excalibur - by Andrew Lang
(from The Book of Romance by Henry Justice Ford, 1903) |
For a long time, some Britons believed that King Arthur would return when they needed him. Okay, that sounds ridiculous to expect a fictional or legendary person to come to your aid, but the legend was once very strong in the culture.
What would bring King Arthur back? It was said that he would return when Britain needed him. A lack of chivalry? A weakening of democracy? Divisions in the United Kingdom? Or would it be from the darker parts of the Arthurian legends: deception, false loyalty? Maybe it would be the eventual healing of the kingdom.
Some of my recent reading and movie watching has brought King Arthur back into my thoughts at this year end.
I wrote elsewhere about how the once and future King appears in different centuries in our interpretations of his story. The recent death of Queen Elizabeth and King Charles III put the royals back in the public eye, even in America.
Charles I did not have a good end. He was beheaded for treason on January 30, 1649. He had ascended to the English throne in 1625 following the death of his father, King James I. He offended his Protestant subjects by marrying a Catholic French princess, responded to political opposition to his rule by dissolving Parliament several times and after deciding to rule without Parliament the struggle between king and Parliament led to the outbreak of the first English civil war. Not exactly a uniting monarch.
Charles II was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II had no legitimate children and his subjects were not happy with the prospect of his Roman Catholic brother James succeeding him. Charles died after a stroke in 1685 with the problem still unresolved and James became King James II and VII.
In T.H. White's retelling of the Arthur story, a boy is tutored by Merlyn to prepare him for what the wizard knows is coming. Merlyn can see the future and sees the great Knights of the Round Table, the love of a queen, chivalry, and also deceit and Arthur becoming King of the Britons. He will bring the kingdom of Camelot from the Dark Ages into Enlightenment.
While the knights of the Round Table were off on many a noble quest, the forbidden love between Queen Guenever and Lancelot, and the plotting of Arthur’s half-sister Morgana would threaten the kingdom. Morgana raises her son Mordred to hate his uncle Arthur.
It is a strange woman, the Lady of the Lake, who gives Arthur his magical sword, Excalibur. In Le Morte d'Arthur, Morgana steals Excalibur and gives it to her lover, Accolon, intending that they overthrow King Arthur and rule in his place.
Arthur is able to recover the sword, but she steals its scabbard, which has healing properties. That missing part will contribute to Arthur’s fatal wounding in his final battle.
I took a course in the Arthurian legends in college and we looked at what historical facts may have contributed to the legends. He would have been in southern Britain, around Wales and Cornwall, in the 5th century A.D. That was not so far in time from when the Romans left in A.D. 410.
Britannia was actually in a period of peace and prosperity under Roman occupation, but when they left warlords battled for control. Without a central government, the island was open to conquest by the seafaring Saxons. History and legend mix and in the Battle of Badon (A.D. 500), it was said that Arthur killed almost a thousand Saxons.
A Welsh poem, "Y Gododdin," is a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin. One stanza mentions King Arthur in passing, which would make it the earliest known reference to that character. The poem was probably composed around the year 638, which was barely a hundred years after Arthur’s supposed death. But the only surviving copy of the poem is a transcription made six centuries later, so it is unclear if Arthur was in the original or added later.
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King Aragorn
(as portrayed by Viggo Mortensen in the films) |
This article's title does not refer to The Return of the King, the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which follows The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, but comparing King Aragorn and his return to Arthur has some legitimate points.
After defeating Sauron's forces in Gondor by leading an army of Gondor and Rohan against the Black Gate of Mordor, he distracted Sauron's attention and enabled Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee to destroy the One Ring. Aragorn was acclaimed as King by the people of Gondor, and crowned King of both Gondor and Arnor.
The earliest tales of Arthur make him a less Romantic figure and more of a warrior and dux bellorum (war chief). Arthur as king comes later with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain from the year 1138. In this, Arthur is king and Guinevere, Merlin, Excalibur, and other familiar names appear. Not many people, even at that time, took Geoffrey’s History, as true and accurate "history." From Herodotus to Geoffrey, fact and legend crossed over each other if it improved the narrative.
French and English writers soon after added their own versions and tales. The quest for the Holy Grail, the Green Knight and older tales that were not partof Arthur's story - such as that of Tristan and Iseult - were incorporated into the Arthurian tales.
My Professor Kellogg went on summer expeditions in search of Arthurian evidence. British archaeologist Nowell Myres devoted 50 years to the search. Frustrated, he wrote near the end of his life that “no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian’s time.” Some modern scholars propose that though Arthur himself was not a historical person, his legend may have been inspired by at least one real person. I found possible candidates included Artúr mac Áedán, a prince of a 5th-century Gaelic kingdom in Scotland, and Lucius Artorius Castus, an Etruscan-born Roman cavalryman who occupied Britannia in the 2nd century. the similarity of names seems to be a big factor in those possibilities. The 5th-century Romano-British military commander Riothamus is another possible Arthur. He is mentioned in Roman histories as leading a war party in Brittany, the Celtic province in the north of France, supporting Roman troops in a campaign against the Goths around the year 470. The Gothic historian Jordanes called Riothamus “King of the Britons,” in 551.
In that course I took, we were reading mostly Malory's Le Morte D’Arthur in its 15th-century Middle English but also some of Monmouth’s History and Chrétien de Troyes, a French medieval poet, who wrote a series of Arthurian romances – such as Lancelot and Perceval. I read for an assignment a version of the German Wolfram Von Eschenbach's Parzival.
Sir Thomas Malory’s prose tales of King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table were written while he was in prison and he is credited with compiling and modifying from French and English sources to make a complete story of Arthur’s life.
I was fascinated by books and movies about the legend of King Arthur as a boy. It hasn't really left me.
One thing that Professor Kellogg told us was that Arthur’s story has been reinterpreted many times in the centuries since Malory. Each interpretation and reimagining of the legend reflects the time the new author lived in and Arthur is seen in a different way, reflecting the time of the reinterpretation. For example, the love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot has been portrayed in ways so that each of them is to blame. Arthur is at fault. Arthur is a fool. Arthur is loyal to his friend and wife.
I reread the book recently in a newer version by Gerald Davis which uses both the Caxton and the older Winchester manuscripts.
And I have watched many movies and TV programs and read other books. When I read about young Arthur, I can't help but see the Disney cartoon young Arthur of The Sword in the Stone that I saw when I was 10 years old and also the Arthur in the sourcebook by T.H. White, The Once and Future King, which I read when I was in high school. Excellent book.Fun movie.
I also think about how Professor Kellogg compared Arthur to Jesus Christ. the professor believed in a historical Jesus but felt that legends had been built around his core story in the years after his death. He also thought that the return of Arthur was not unlike the idea of the return of Jesus in "our greatest time of need."
Versions of the legend during the period of WWII saw Arthur as returning in some form to save England.
Some people compare the illicit affairs around Diana and the now King Charles II to a version of the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle.
In the film, Excalibur, (which I watched multiple times with my young sons) director John Boorman took a mythological and allegorical approach to the story. Arthur is the Wounded King who can only be healed (along with his kingdom) by the Holy Grail. It is the cycle of birth, life, decay, and restoration. That idea is echoed in another film I just rewatched. The 1991 film, The Fisher King, starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams puts in our time the Fisher-Wounded-Sinner King's realm becomes a wasteland.
It is not Arthur or Lancelot who finds the Grail, because both of them are flawed and unworthy. The healing Grail is found by Perceval.
John Boorman remarked that the Christian symbolism of the Grail is what “my story is about: the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.”
Will Arthur return? rather impossible if he never actually existed. Will some new Arthur rise up? That is yet to be determined.
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