Arthurian literature

“ The Arthurian cycle, both in literary value and in intrinsic interest, forms undoubtedly the most important group in Mediæval literature. Is it not a reproach to scholars that to-day, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there should be such an utter lack of knowledge of the proper order and relation of the members of that group? The most brilliant Arthurian scholars can offer us no more than an accurate acquaintance with certain texts, and, perhaps, an [xi] hypothesis as to their relative order. ”

“ He figures largely in the Welsh Triads and in the Mabinogion under the name of Gwalchmei, and in the story of Arthur’s wars as told by Geoffrey he is the king’s most powerful lieutenant. Originally a mythical hero, he was probably the centre of a cycle of traditional stories as old as, if not older than, anything fabled or sung of Arthur. [109] No other knight of the Arthurian court is the hero of so many episodic romances and poems, while there is no more prominent figure in Arthurian literature generally. ”

“ Thus there grew up a great epic cycle of Arthurian romance, with a fixed shape and a unity and vitality which have prolonged it to our own day and rendered it capable of a deeper and more spiritual treatment and a more artistic {24} handling by such modern English poets as Tennyson in his Idyls of the King, by Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, and many others. There were innumerable Arthur romances in prose and verse, in Anglo-Norman and continental French dialects, in English, in German, and in other tongues. ”

“ The picture of manners in them is much more artificial. But the Arthurian romances disclose partially and at intervals a state of society decidedly more advanced than that of the Chansons. The bourgeois, the country gentleman who is not of full baronial rank, and other novel personages appear.
Note to Third Edition.—Since the second edition was published M. Gaston Paris has sketched in Romania and summarised in his Manuel, but has not developed in book form, a view of the Arthurian romances different from his father's and from that given in the text. ”

“ Their versification is pleasing to the ear, and their language, considering its age, is of surprising strength, expressiveness, and even wealth. Though they lack the variety, the pathos, the romantic chivalry, and the mystical attractions of the Arthurian romances, there is little doubt that they paint, far more accurately than their successors, an actually existing state of society, that which prevailed in the palmy time of the feudal system, when war and religion were deemed the sole subjects worthy to occupy seriously men of station and birth. ”

“ It is sufficient for our purpose, in the first place, to point out that the question of the actual existence and acts of Arthur has very little to do with the question of the origin of the Arthurian cycle. ”

“ The Arthurian problem is one which appeals not only to the literary critic but also to the historian. Have we not in the past been tempted to regard it too exclusively as the property of the one, and to hold that a British chieftain of whose name and exploits such scanty record survives can scarcely be a worthy subject of serious historic research? But if the study of history fails to elucidate much concerning the personality and feats of Arthur, it may yet discover much with regard to the growth and development of his legend. ”

“ The review given in this chapter of the earliest Arthurian records,—all of which are in Latin,—as distinguished from Celtic song or fable, points clearly to the gradual growth, around the personality of a real British warrior of the sixth century, of a legend which by the twelfth century had assumed a form that arrested, though it might baffle, the leading historians of the day. Now, it so happened that the twelfth century was the seed-time of mediæval romance in Europe, and how effectively the legend of Arthur was thenceforth exploited for [36] romantic purposes will be seen later on. ”

“ The history of Arthur is not an epic as it stands, but neither was the Cyclic song, of which the greatest of all epics, the "Iliad," handles a part. The poem of Ariosto is scarcely an epic, nor is that of Bojardo; but it is not this because each is too promiscuous and crowded in its brilliant phantasmagoria to conform to the severe laws of that lofty and inexorable class of poem? Though the Arthurian romance be no epic, it does not follow that no epic can be made from out of it. It is grounded in certain leading characters, men and women, conceived upon models of extraordinary grandeur ”

“ The Arthur of the legends, of the Welsh and Breton ballads, of the later Chansons de Geste, of Malory and Tennyson, has quite stepped out of the historic page and become a hero without time or place in any real world, a king of the imagination, the loftiest figure in that great outgrowth of chivalric romance which formed the favorite fictitious literature of Europe during three or four of the mediæval centuries. ”

“ The great hero of the struggle between the Britons and the Saxons was King Arthur, but it was not until many many years after the time in which he lived that all the splendid stories of his knights, of his Round Table, and of his great conquests began to take the form in which we know them. Indeed, in the earliest Welsh tales the name of Arthur is hardly known at all. When he is mentioned it is merely as a warrior among other warriors equally great, and not as the mighty emperor that we know. The Arthur that we love is the Arthur of literature, not the Arthur of history. ”

“ For some people the study of Arthurian nomenclature is as engrossing a pursuit as the interpretation of ‘The Idylls of the King’ is for others, while there are those who derive as much pleasure from investigating the symbolic meanings of the story of the Grail as lovers of music do from listening to the mighty harmonies of Parzival or Tristan und Isolde. All this only makes us wonder the more why so obscure and elusive a figure as the historical British Arthur should have become the centre of a romantic cycle which presents so many varied and persistent features of interest. ”

“ Arthur has no knight, as is well known, whose fame equals his, but before the flowers bloom again, I shall see, when we come to blows, whether his fame and his deeds are in accord: I only wish it could be settled now!" "Son," says his father, "thou art acting exactly like a fool. Any one, who knew it not before, may learn of thy madness from thy own lips. A good heart truly humbles itself, but the fool and the boastful never lose their folly. ”

“ Geoffrey can claim, beyond any question, to be the literary father of King Arthur himself as a romantic hero. But the Arthurian legend, as it emerged from mediæval romance and as we know it in its modern presentment by the poets, contains so much more than the story of Arthur that the French romantic scribes who brought Tristan and Lancelot and Perceval into Arthur’s court must be regarded as the first artistic fashioners of a purely poetic “matter of Britain.” ”

“ How much we really owe, then, to historic fact and how much to bardic song the accounting of Camelot and Avalon, Tintagel and Almesbury, as the famous and redoubtable spots of Arthurian accomplishments and occupation, would be difficult to decide. Literary genius from the first centres in the minstrel, who is both composer and singer, who stimulates to action and records events, who is himself “doer” and “seer.” ”

“ The Arthurian cycle of legends, emerging from Welsh and Breton mythology; seized upon by French romancers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who made of Arthur the pattern king, of Lancelot the pattern knight, and of the Table Round the ideal institute of chivalry; gathering about itself accretions like the Grail Quest and the Tristram story ”

“ A later school practically ignores them, and sees in the Arthurian romances the conscious production of literary invention, dealing with materials gathered from all sources, and remodelled by the genius of a Northern French poet. ”

“ For Arthur he has scant respect, 'nor,' says he, 'as we advance, do we find him possessed of a single quality, except strength and courage, to excite respect or interest.' Surely the remark of one who must have been dead to all sense of imagination and romance—although purporting to be an authority upon them! The teaching of the whole Arthurian cycle of romances was 'that noble men may see and lerne the noble actes of chyualrye, the Ientyl and vertuous dedes that somme Knyghtes vsed in tho dayes, by whyche they came to honour ”

“ To thoroughly understand, and to be able intelligently and helpfully to criticise the Arthurian Legend, it is essential that we do not allow ourselves to be led astray by what we may call the ‘accidents’ of the problem—the moulding into literary shape under French influence—but rather fix our attention upon the ‘essentials’—the radically Celtic and folk-lore character of the material of which it is composed. ”

“ If he be indeed its author, he is entitled to as high a pedestal in the Arthurian House of Fame as either Geoffrey or Chrétien. The difficulty of accepting his authorship of the work is not so much that he was a very active public man, as that the one book of which he is the indubitable author, the De Nugis Curialium,—a sort of commonplace book in which contemporary history finds a place side by side with fairy tales, and much other odd lore,—does not afford the slightest trace of interest in Arthurian story. ”

“ Needless, then, to insist upon the value to the student of a work which affords a bird’s-eye view, admirable in its clearness and precision, over the most important and most intricate section of mediæval romance. One instance must suffice to illustrate how investigations, which at first blush seem to belong wholly to literary history, may involve the wider problems of comparative mythology and folk-lore. A fragmentary German Arthurian poem of the 12th century, “Manuel et Amande,” the translation of a now lost French work, tells of Arthur’s death, caused, it would seem, by a cat. ”

“ Careful and systematic work, with, from time to time, the revision and comparison of results, only to be attained by publication, will, I believe, before very long, enable us to place the criticism of the Arthurian cycle upon a really satisfactory basis. At present it is vain to hope that any one of us can produce, in this particular line of literary investigation, a magnum opus that shall be beyond the necessity of revision, and sealed with the stamp of permanent and enduring value. ”

“ The Arthurian Legend, if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which, though it is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste and need. ”

“ Again, nearly all the persons mentioned in The Black Book dialogue between Arthur and Glewlwyd figure also in Kulhwch and Olwen. So, where the oldest Welsh Arthurian poetry comes into contact with the oldest Welsh prose, the Arthur that we find dimly outlined in both is a purely mythical hero. ”

“ The time has not yet come when a final study of any part of the Arthurian legend, based upon a comparison of all the texts, is possible or indeed desirable. The different threads that form the shifting pattern of the fabric are so interwoven that no one can as yet be disentangled beyond a certain point without injury to the whole. ”

“ Here in these few introductory words I should like, if possible, to [vi] make clear my own position with regard to the question of Arthurian criticism as a whole. I shall probably be deemed presumptuous when I say that, so far, I very much doubt whether we have any one clearly ascertained and established fact that will serve as a definite and solid basis for the construction of a working hypothesis as to the origin and development of this immense body of romance. We all of us have taken, and are taking, far too much for granted. ”

“ A point which we are much tempted to overlook in the criticism of Arthurian romance is the length of time intervening between the period at which the events recorded are supposed to have happened, and the earliest known literary record of those events. ”

“ ARTHUR OF LITTLE BRITAIN. THE HYSTORY OF ARTHUR OF LYTELL BRYTAYNE, translated out of Frensshe in to Englishe, by the noble Johan Bourghcher, Knyght, Lord Berners. 1493.
Not the Arthurian legend, but irresponsible adventures like the Amadis. Said to have had a great influence on Spenser's Faerie Queene. ”

“ Later on in the same century, as Alanus de Insulis records, [41] belief in Arthur’s “return” was so firmly held in the country districts of Brittany that a denial of it might have cost a man his life. Moreover, two chroniclers of repute who wrote before Geoffrey bear clear testimony to the widespread currency of Arthurian traditions in their day, and to the curiosity aroused in serious historians concerning the deeds of the British king. ”

“ First there was the old Latin chronicle of Nennius, the earliest trace of Arthurian fact or fancy, with a single paragraph given to Arthur and his twelve great battles. This chronicle itself may have been based on yet earlier Welsh stories, which had been passed on, perhaps for centuries, by oral tradition from father to son, and gradually woven together into some legendary history of Oldest England in the local language of Brittany, across the English Channel. ”