Arthurian romance

“ The attraction of the Arthurian story lies less in the battles of Arthur or the loves of Guinevere than in the legend that has given it its lasting popularity—the Christian romance of the Quest of the Holy Grail. So great and various has been the inspiration of this legend to noble works both of art and literature that it seems almost a kind of sacrilege to trace it back, like all the rest of Arthur’s story, to a paganism which could not have even understood, much less created, its mystical beauty. ”

“ 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 ”

“ He therefore assigned to them [19] a position altogether inferior to their real importance, and actually apologised for the writers, in that, coming after the Arthurian historians, they were compelled to imitation. As a matter of fact, it is probable that all the most striking and original chansons de geste, certainly all those of the best period, were in existence before a single one of the great Arthurian romances was written ”

“ It was the very mystery of Life which lay beneath the picturesque wrappings; small wonder that the Quest of the Grail became the synonym for the highest achievement that could be set before men, and that when the romantic evolution of the Arthurian tradition reached its term, this supreme adventure was swept within the magic circle. The knowledge of the Grail was the utmost man could achieve, Arthur's knights were the very flower of manhood, it was fitting that to them the supreme test be offered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One consideration is by itself sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century, were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have been written in any other tongue. ”

“ The necessity of a love-interest for the Arthurian story being felt, and, according to the manner of the time, it being felt with equal strength that the lover must not be the husband, it was needful to look about for some one else. ”

“ One cannot read the old chansons de geste in which fighting, and not love, is the absorbing topic, without feeling that the audience before whom they were chanted was predominantly male. One cannot but feel the contrary to have been the fact with the romances in verse and prose which constitute that immense mass of literature vaguely termed Arthurian. These two huge groups, the chansons de geste and the Arthurian romances, overlap chronologically and geographically. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Here, at any rate, we have presented to us, in Tennyson’s words, “Soul at war with Sense”; and it is clear enough that the gradual manipulation of the Grail stories marks a deliberate effort by ecclesiastical writers to neutralise the influence of the dangerous ideals of chivalry upon Arthurian romance. Celibacy had to be shown to be compatible with true knighthood; there was no reason why a knight-errant should make love, and, all too often, illicit love, the sole motive of his quest for adventure. ”

“ The true lover constantly, without intermission, is engrossed with the image of the co-lover.
These rules were exemplified in the imaginative literature of courtly love. Such love and the feats inspired by it made the chief matter of the Arthurian romances, which became the literary property of western Europe; and the supreme examples of their darling theme are the careers and fortunes of the two most famous pairs of lovers in all this gallant cycle, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere. In the former story love is resistless passion ”

“ An elaborate and romantic system of mystical religious sentiment, finding vent in imaginative and allegorical narrative, a remarkable refinement of manners, and a combination of delight in battle with devotion to ladies, distinguish them. This is, in short, the romantic spirit, or, as it is sometimes called, the spirit of chivalry; and it cannot be too positively asserted that the Arthurian romances communicate it to literature for the first time, and that nothing like it is found in the classics. In the work of Map and his contemporaries it is clearly perceivable. ”

“ 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 story itself and still more the ideas it enshrines, are surely composite; we doubt whether any single line of tradition will account for all.
In America the problems arising out of the Arthurian romance are being attacked from different sides by a number of folk-lorists. The careful studies appearing in Modern Philology from time to time especially are worthy of notice by all folk students in these countries. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ But supposing, for the sake of argument, that we accept the possible priority of the romantic over the popular form, what, with regard to the criticism of the Arthurian literary cycle, is the logical result? This: [32] if the folk-tale be dependent upon a romance, that romance must of necessity be the Lancelot, as no other hero offers the same combination of incident. But a version of the Lancelot story, from which all these incidents could have been borrowed, must have been older than any form of the story we now possess. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before, however, he and Melwas engage in battle, the monks of the abbey, accompanied by Gildas, intervene; peace is made, and the queen is restored to her lawful husband.
Of the many chroniclers who, either in prose or in verse, repeat and embellish Geoffrey’s Arthurian narrative, by far the most interesting, and the most important in their influence upon the literary development of Arthurian story, are Wace and Layamon. Both are poets, and their metrical Bruts mark, as it were, the transitional stage between the Arthur of history and traditional legend and the Arthur of pure romance. ”

“ But we know that the subject of his famous Lancelot romance, called the Conte de la charrette, was suggested to him (about 1170) by the Countess Marie de Champagne, daughter of Louis VII. Surely then he wrote to please the taste of that royal dame, whose queenly mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was also a patroness of this courtly poetry.
These are instances proving the feminine influence upon the composition of these romances. And the growth of this great Arthurian Cycle represents, par excellence, the entry of womanhood into the literature of chivalry. Men love, as well as women ”

“ All who have any real knowledge of the Arthurian cycle are well aware that the Breton lais, representing as they do the popular tradition and folk-lore of the people among whom they were current, are of value as affording indications of the original form and meaning of much of the completed legend, but of how much or how little value has not yet been exactly determined. An earlier generation of scholars regarded them as of great, perhaps too great, importance. They were inclined indiscriminately to regard the Arthurian romances as being but a series of connected lais. ”

“ 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 Arthur of romance is, in fact, the artistic creation of writers of a later age, or, indeed, of later ages, than the conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, and not of contemporary historians, bardic or otherwise. ”

“ The artist’s instinct, rather than the scholar’s respect for the oldest form of the story, led him to practically restore Perceval to his rightful place as hero of the quest. His fortunes we can follow with an interest that passing shadow, Galahad, wholly fails to evoke. Nor, as may easily be seen, is the fundamental conception of the twelfth century romance to the Laureate’s taste. Arthur is his ideal of manhood, and Arthur’s energies are practical and human in aim and in execution. ”

“ We first meet the mediaeval fairy in works of the Arthur cycle; as ladies of the lake and fountain, as dwellers in the far-off island paradise of Avalon, as mistresses of or captives in mysterious castles, the enchantments of which may be raised by the dauntless knight whose guerdon is their love and never-ending bliss, these fantastic beings play a most important part in the world of dream and magic haze peopled by Arthur and his knights and their lady loves. If an instance be needed how vital is the connection between Arthur and Faery, it is furnished by the romance of Huon of Bordeaux. ”

“ Ethelfirth's great victory at Bangor-Iscoed. Some of the struggles of this period may have been absorbed by the romance writers into their stock of Arthurian legends. The Rev. John Whitaker and Tarquin's castle at Manchester. Sir "Launcelot du Lake." Martin Mere. Gradual growth of legendary heroic fiction. Mr. Tylor's view. The Arthurian legends enshrine some of the oldest Aryan myths, and are the source of some of our noblest poetry. Sir George Ellis on the foundation of mythic legends. Mr. Fiske on artistic legendary development. Mr. ”

“ These facts, however, are not insisted upon by Malory, though such claims for Arthur were made by the credulous and less scrupulous writers. Romance has entirely remodelled his character, and has filled in all the gaps in his life-story in that triumphant manner in which Celtic genius manifests its power. The legendary Arthur is made to realise the sublime prophecies of Merlin, and as those prophecies waxed more bold and arrogant in the course of ages the proportions of the hero were magnified to suit them. ”

“ But then Arthur, whose children she would have thrilled to bear, would be no more, a mere memory—think of that!—and Barton, the dull, the commonplace, would have achieved his finest dream—and why?
Because love was a failure for her—that was why—and in her life there could be no more true love. She would never love any one again as she had Arthur. ”