LEGEND AND HISTORY ABOUT KING ARTHUR: A MYTH AND ITS METAMORPHOSES

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1 TRADUCTOLOGIE ȘI PLURALISM CIVILIZAȚIONAL/LINGVISTIC LEGEND AND HISTORY ABOUT KING ARTHUR: A MYTH AND ITS METAMORPHOSES CZU: 81 0 Corina DOBROTĂ Dunărea de Jos University, Galati, Romania The central figure of King Arthur, the legendary Celtic king who gave rise to the wellknown cycle of Arthurian legends and has consequently claimed the status of national symbol is still quite influential in the modern world. Seen as the emblematic figure embodying bravery and honour, and last but not least chivalrous romance, Arthur is still found in modern writings authoured by contemporary fantasists, mainly in the Englishspeaking literary field, but not only. The most interesting mixture of pagan motifs and spiritual, mainly Christian values has provided a rich source of inspiration for modern writers, thus enabling them to infuse a fresh perspective and a new life to the Arthurian myths. The present paper focuses on the historical roots of Arthur s legend and its tremendous cultural legacy, trying to point out the reasons for its long-enduring literary success and influence. Starting as a rather sketchy figure briefly mentioned in the accounts of reputed historians such as Nennius (Historia Britanum) and William of Malmesbury (Gesta Regum Anglorum), Arthur was raised to the status of legendary hero by Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historia Regum Britanniae), thus embarking on his prolific career as the unifying thread in the legends of the Round Table, whose most widely known versions belong to Thomas Malory ( La Morte Darthur) and Alfred Tennyson (Idylls of the King). The powerful response and everlasting appeal that this mythical hero raises in the audience, be they his contemporaries or the modern public, may lead us to conclude that he is conceived as an aspect of an eternity-spanning archetype. The mythical and historical elements of the original story have been enriched along the way by magical and esoterical aspects that have turned it into a fertile ground for modern reflection as the British and Western cultural myth par excellence. Keywords: myth, archetype, value, influence, legend, history, symbol. Motto: So oft as I with state of present time The image of the antique world compare, When as many age was in his freshest prime, And the first blossom of fair virtue bore. (Spenser, The Faerie Queene) From time out of mind, history and literature, two vital branches of our existence as human beings, the fundamentals of our culture and civilisation have been interweaving their fields, the former often offering the latter many sources of inspiration that led to outstanding masterpieces and everlasting literary fame. Many historical figures, by way of literary creation, penetrated mankind s conscience, steadily emerging as memorable entities, familiar to everyone. Some of them became national heroes, such as Roland in France, Ygor in Russia, Siegfried in Germany and Scandinavia, or El Cid in Spain. 161

2 INTERTEXT 3-4, 2016 As for England, this quality of national symbol is embodied by King Arthur, the legendary Celtic leader who ruled the land during the sanguinary Anglo-Saxon Invasion. The Anglo-Saxon period (c ), also known as the Age of Settlements, stands for one of the crucial periods in British history, for it was the time of the English nation s crystallisation: the primary Celtic population, after a short Roman occupation that practically left no trace, according to Heversfield, was invaded by the Germanic tribes of the Angles, Jutes and Saxons, first hired mercenaries, then cruel rebels attacking their hosts. The Celtic resistance seems to have been almost wholly ineffectual, although the Celts managed to win some military victories; according to Gildas, the years of inconclusive warfare that followed culminated in a major British victory, perhaps in c. 516, at an unidentified place called Mons Badonicus, under the rule of a certain Ambrosius Aurelianus, a hero of the Roman epoch, seemingly a foreshadow of the battlefield valour of King Arthur. In other words, the narrative of the historic events does not amount to much, leaving a lot to the imagination and further interpretation, and unfortunately Arthur has only the most shadowy claims to historical reality. The two or three possible fragments of genuine tradition were written down centuries later, and the legends which have gathered around his name are romantic inventions from the twelfth century onwards. However, there seem to have been memories of a British warleader called Arthur, initially mentioned in an anonymous chronicle dating from about AD 679, who was associated to the battle of Mons Badonicus and subsequent campaigns. The same battle is evoked in the Latin Historia Britannum ascribed to Nennius (c. 800), who refers to Arthur s slaying 960 enemies all single-handedly. Another similar reference is to be found in William of Malmesbury s Gesta Regum Anglorum that describes the warlike Arthur as one certainly not to be dreamed of in false myths, but proclaimed in truthful histories indeed, who for a long time held up his tottering fatherland and kindled the broken spirits of his countrymen to war (Deac 16) ; to this bravery it adds another peculiar feature, i.e. the faith in God: At last, at the siege of Mount Badon, trusting in the image of our Lord s Mother which he had sewn on his armour, rising alone against nine hundred of the enemy he dashed them to the ground with incredible slaughter (ibidem). Even if these are the opinions of reputable historians, authors of scientific works, Arthur s figure is wrapped in a romantic mist: his tomb is a secret, he was born out of two sources, etc. Briefly, his real personality appears almost dematerialised, ready to enter the impersonalisation of fiction. The conclusion to which the epoch s scholars arrived is eloquent in this respect: [ ] there may have been a historical Arthur about whom next to nothing is known; and there has also been an Arthur that never existed about whom everything is known [ ] (Barbu 54). Thus, the first work to make Arthur acquire the heroic dimensions of legend belongs to a Norman monk, Geoffroy of Monmouth ( ), the father of English literary prose. His Historia Regum Britanniae is considered as the work of an imagination in disguise, as he imagined some new episodes to the old legends he saved from oblivion. He is the founder of the Arthurian legend as we know it; it was he who introduced the suggestion of tragic love, the relation between the magician Merlin and the king, as well as Arthur s conflict with the 162

3 TRADUCTOLOGIE ȘI PLURALISM CIVILIZAȚIONAL/LINGVISTIC Roman emperor. According to his description, Arthur was both wise in his rule of the people, and fearless in his behaviour on the battlefield. In a Britain devastated by barbarians, subsequent to the retreat of the Roman legions, Arthur becomes sort of a restitutor orbis, a resumer of the previous Roman order, repelling foreign intruders with divine help. In Monmouth s version, the Saxons had entered Britain as auxiliary troops, but soon escaped any control and started ravaging the new territories; after a gloomy period of violence and depredation, the Britons finally manage to restore order, under the glorious rule of king Arthur. Thus, he is depicted as the chivalric ideal both in war and in time of peace, his popularity reaching epic proportions, having a deep impact on the British conscience up to the modern times. From this moment on, a lot of new details join the monk s epic trunk; in the 12th century the theme of the Round Table appears due to the Norman Robert Wace s pen, in his work Geste des Bretons or Brut d Angleterre. It was regarded as the symbol of chivalry and perfect equality among 150 warlike knights, the main element in a complex ritual centred upon the dominating figure of the brave, wise king, impersonation of absolute monarchy, the first among equals. In the same century the English priest Layamon added to the legend the description of the origin of the Round Table and of the mysterious Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, both of them being made up through the Archdruid Merlin s magic. Marie de France, a mysterious personality of presumed British origin, presented the ancient legends of king Arthur s epoch in her French poems. Nevertheless, the celebrated Chrétien de Troyes ( ) made the main contribution to the Arthurian cycle by introducing other important characters, viz. Lancelot (created by Walter Map in Lancelot de Lake), and Percival (whose English name was Peredur), and by suggesting Lancelot s love affair with Guinevere. It is interesting to notice that we owe him the changes in Arthur s literary persona: if in the original tales the king was a merciless warrior, never hesitating to lead his soldiers in battle against the enemies and personally slaying witches and giants, in his vision he becomes more introspective, wiser but less vigorous and less prone to taking action (when he finds out about Guinevere s betrayal, his only reaction is to become pale and silent). All these versions and subsequent episodes of Arthur s legend passed through a process of crystallisation and assimilation, eventually acquiring all the features of mediaeval romance, viz. the schematic characters following the idealised patterns of chivalry, heroic adventures, typical struggle between good and evil, religious faith, all spiced with fantastic settings and conventional love affairs. Another major characteristic, the Quest theme, ought to be mentioned apart, as there appears, in addition to the maturation process of a young hero, the mystic motive of the search for the Holy Grail (the cup Christ drank from at the Last Supper) that is, in fact, a symbolic search for perfection, for an ideal of divine inspiration which cannot even be seen, partly corresponding to the Christian desire to be redeemed. The usual account of the common narrative thread of the romances that form The Matter (cf. the French Matière) of Britain presents Arthur as a brave king of supernatural ancestry (the son of the all-powerful king Uther Pendragon and Ygaerne/Ygrain, raised according to Merlin s directives) who had won his throne by way of a valour test, aut of which he gained his magic sword Excalibur. He 163

4 INTERTEXT 3-4, 2016 defeats all his enemies and extends his rule over the whole of the British Isles, and even Iceland. His wife Guinevere falls in love with Lancelot, one of Arthur s knights. Leaving his kingdom to besiege Rome, the king is betrayed by his nephew Mordred, his temporary representative while he is away. After successfully defeating the Romans, Arthur learns of Mordred s treachery and hurries back home. In the ensuing bloody battle, many of the knights of the Round Table perish, and even the king is gravely wounded, being taken to the Isle of Avalon to be cured. Full of remorse and shame, Guinevere takes the veil. These stories which had lost their individual Celtic affiliation by the end of the 12th century enjoyed a resounding success and a lot of English poets, such as Chaucer, Spenser, Leyden and even Tennyson in the 19th century took them into account. It is worth mentioning that after 1310 the hero king started its literary journey through a series of five novels in medieval French, known as the Lancelot- Grail Cycle, the first attempt at a coherent account of the Arthurian legends. Although these novels minimise the importance of the protagonist, and focus instead on other characters, such as the wizard Merlin, Galahad and Mordred (Arthur s enemy who is now vested with the new role of his illegitimate son by his step-sister Morgause), they have the merit of assigning a prominent role to the Castle of Camelot, which had been only barely mentioned by Chrétien de Troyes. Camelot, the king s domain, becomes a mythical place in itself, an ideal realm where peace and justice reign supreme and civilisation flourishes under the supervision of a brave wise king, away from all evil. This cycle is shortly followed by a new series of stories, written between 1230 and 1240, centred on the search for the Holy Grail and minimise the importance of the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. However, the 15th century marks the moment when one of the most beloved books in the entire medieval English literature appeared, viz. The Morte darthur, a remarkable prose narrative by Sir Thomas Malory, comparable to Chaucer s Canterbury Tales. It was written in 1485, reuniting for the first time all stories concerning the figure of the king in one common narrative, and served as a source of inspiration for all subsequent works. An immediate reason for its vitality is its magic of style, referring to the elegiac rhythm of the phrase, the nostalgic sound of a suggestive language, recalling the fascinating old times, and its so-called steady disponibility of spirit to turn to the memories of fairy tales (Grigorescu VII). Malory s text is an anthology of many songs, ballads and tales, narrating the adventures of a king who belonged to legend sooner than history, and his not more real knights. Despite the huge parentheses relating the distinct adventures of Sir Balin, Sir Palomides, Sir Bors, it is still possible to distinguish a dominant tale, that of Arthur, logically followed by the tale of the Grail. The reader discovers the glorious deeds of a legendary monarch, his wife s unfaithfulness, Lancelot s betrayal, and his incapability of finding the Grail destined to be seen only by the chaste Galahad. Mordred s rebellion and Arthur s subsequent death, together with the dissolution of the Round Table conclude a story built around a central character, Arthur, whose adventures explain all the others attitude and choices, acting as a powerful unifying symbol. 164

5 TRADUCTOLOGIE ȘI PLURALISM CIVILIZAȚIONAL/LINGVISTIC Undoubtedly, the conclusion has a pious resonance: before dying, Guinevere takes the veil and Lancelot becomes a hermit, following the moral Christian rules and concepts on remission. Besides, the mystery that surrounds Arthur s death and the people s belief in his resurrection are very much alike what we know about Christ s death and resurrection. Thus, Arthur has come to embody both pagan and Christian values, standing for all that is righteous in this world, a symbol of redemption and valour, triumphing over death itself. As the perfect embodiment of the ideal of chivalry, king Arthur was rediscovered and fully embraced by the Romanticism of the 19 th century. The most important authors dealing with the subject matter of the Arthurian cycle were William Wordsworth, who published The Egyptian Maid (an allegory on the legend of the Holy Grail) in 1835, and especially Lord Alfred Tennyson, who rewrote the entire cycle under the form of a collection of epic poems reunited under the title Idylls of the King (1859). His version was reshaped in a more refined poetical garb so as to sit well with the contemporary Victorian audience, centred around the idea of a perfect kingdom on Earth which is eventually ruined due to lack of virtue and betrayal, despite the blameless king s innocence. This is actually one of the recurring moral themes in Tennyson s work moral decay and the fungus-like spread of sin which finally destroys the visionary construction of the king and also brings about his demise, and probably the most appealing to his audience. At any rate, Arthur is a rather theoretical personality, mainly determined and driven by the rule of fealty due to the kingly throne. His behaviour is conducted by an `abstract feeling of monarchical justice, surprisingly combined with generosity, even pity for his unfaithful wife. A compulsory remark is that his ideal is not exclusively warlike, but an embodiment of masculine perfection, in accordance with the chivalric code. The endless adventures of his knights are subordinated to this symbolic search for perfection, so that their ending in catastrophe corresponds to the close of an epoch and a moment of civilization. Arthur is the kernel of a lost world, a golden age, destroyed by lust and deceit. According to the Encyclopaedia of Earth s Myths, [...] King Arthur was the physical manifestation of the Christ impulse, the collective image of something transcendent, between the Christ (Logos or Word) and the warrior class. Arthur represented the beginnings of the upright path (the collegial ideals of Camalate) [ ]. Arthur, with Merlin, was the sponsor and patron of the Grail Quest, the quest for Christ Consciousness (Leviton 78). Issued from an astonishing but fascinating miscellany of truth and fairy tale, king Arthur has definitely earned his passport to immortality. The powerful response and everlasting appeal that this mythical hero raises in the audience, be they his contemporaries or the modern public, may lead us to conclude that he is conceived of as an aspect of an eternity-spanning archetype. The mythical and historical elements of the original story have been enriched along the way by magical and esoterical aspects that have turned it into a fertile ground for modern reflection as the British and Western cultural myth par excellence. 165

6 INTERTEXT 3-4, 2016 Bibliographical References Barbu, Nicolae et al. Istoria literaturii universal. București: EPLU, 1971, p Deac, Livia, Nicolescu Adrian. British Life and Civilization. București: EDP, 1983, p. 15, 16. Gavriliu, Eugenia. A History of English Literature and Civilization from the Anglo-Saxon Period to the Rise of Neoclassicism. Galați: Editura Universității, 1978, p. 14, 48-54, Grigorescu, Dan. Prefață. Thomas Malory, Moartea regelui Arthur, București: BPT, 1979, p.v-xlii. Leviton, Ronald. Encyclopedia of Earth Myths. An Insider s A-Z Guide to Mythic People, Places, Objects, and Events Central to the Earth s Geography. Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2005, p Magiru, Anca. The Morte Darthur: A Myth and Its Metamorphoses. București: Cartea Universitară, Morgan, Kenneth O. (ed). The Oxford History of Britain. New York: Oxford, 1991, p