Lugodoc's Guide to Arthurian Myth

Following his obsessive re-chronicling of Irish and Welsh Celtic myth, Lugodoc felt compelled to tackle the big one: Arthurian Myth.

King Arthur is without doubt the great, definitive British hero. There are an enormous number of sources of Arthurian myth, many referring to earlier known texts, and more referring to earlier lost texts. Very few tie in neatly with the commonly held image of the story of Arthur, and most hold many surprises.

The Evolution of the Myth

It seems to Lugodoc that "Arthur" was originally a Celtic title, meaning something like "bear of battle", and that more than one of these British heroes fought against the invading Irish, Picts, Danes, Jutes, Angles and Saxons in the chaotic century after the withdrawal of Rome from Britain.

The mutation of the Arthurian story from dark age history into medieval romance seems to have occurred like this:

Late 5th century	Romano-British Dux Bellorum (Lord of Battles) Arthur defeats Saxons at Mt Badon
Early 6th century	Welsh Celtic chief Arthur defeats Modred at Cammlan
6th to 12th centuries	Christian monks write down history from the oral and earlier written records, confusing several Arthurs into one. The high-gravity hero myth attracts elements from Welsh-Celtic-pagan and Anglo-Christian history and myth, and begins to grow
1135	Geoffrey of Monmouth conglomerates heavily mythologised Arthurian "history" into about sixty pages of Historia Regum Brittaniae
12th to 15th centuries	The modest stream of Arthurian British myth is swollen to many hundreds of times its size by the confluence of rivers of romantic Euro-drivel
1470	British MP Sir Thomas Malory writes the definitive huge, throbbing best seller Le Morte Darthur in prison. 15 years later William Caxton puts it into print

There are four distinct textures in the entirety of being of the myth:

1. Ancient History - The actual historical events in the late 5^th/early 6^th centuries
2. Lost Historical Manuscripts - The early historical chronicles, usually the first writings down of the oral record, of which the original manuscripts are now all lost and only later copies remain (6^th to 10^th centuries)
3. Surviving Historical Manuscripts - The later historical chronicles of which the originals still survive (11^th to 12^th centuries)
4. Romances - Continuous imaginative mutation of the myth by numerous authors, using any source of inspiration available from Welsh Celtic folk-tales to Islamic texts brought back from the crusades (12^th century to present day)

The section on romances ends with Malory in the 15^th century, because that is generally taken as being the definitive and most fully inclusive epic, but the process of mutation carried on without pause through out the 16^th to 19^th centuries, accelerated during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, continued into the Hollywood period, and is still going on with films such as Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and Channel 4’s Merlin (1998). As for Richard Gere's First Knight (1995) and Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur (2004), let us never speak of them again.

The dates given for the lost historical manuscripts are usually the dates for the first creation of a text. However, in the case of a text believed to have been copied from an oral record, where that oral record has been dated with confidence, then the date of the origin of the oral record is given instead (ie "Gododdin" and "Culhwch and Olwen"). Now travel with Lugodoc back through Tiiiime......

Romances
AD	Manuscript	Author	Source	New Story Elements
1470	Le Morte Darthur (The Death of Arthur)	Sir Thomas Malory	Everything	The definitive and inclusive Arthurian epic
1400	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight	Anon (from Midlands)	British Celtic myth
1400	Peredur ap Efrawg	Anon	Earlier texts & Welsh Celtic myth	Peredur sees procession with severed head (not grail) Aquatic Cei
1400	The Alliterative Morte Arthur	Anon	Unknown
1350	The Stanzaic Morte Arthur	Anon	Unknown
1300	The Spoils of Annwn from The Book of Taliesin	Taliesin ?	Welsh Celtic myth	Arthur steals a magic sword & cauldron from Annwn across the water
1235	The Vulgate Cycle	Possibly Cistercian Monks	Unknown	Morgan = evil Modred = son/nephew result of incest with Morgan Galahad Excalibur
1200	3 poems	Robert de Boron	Continental	The sword in the stone Merlin reveals that the Holy Grail = the cup from the last supper brought to Avalon in Britain by Joseph of Aramathea
1180	5 poems	Chretien de Troys	Continental	Morgan = Arthur’s sister Fairy-spawn Launcelot’s adultery with Guinevere Knights of Round table = 50 Camelot Kay = steward Perceval sees procession with (unidentified) graal at castle of the Fisher King
1160	The Dream of Rhonabwy	Anon	Welsh Celtic myth	Weird dream sequence in which Arthur the warlord prepares for a battle
1155	Roman de Brut	Wace	Continental	Guinevere The Round Table Arthur dies circa AD 650

Further Reading

"King Arthur - The True Story" by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman (Arrow, ISBN 0-09-929681-0)
Highly recommended by Lugodoc, for anybody wishing to study the history and the myth.

"The History of the Kings of Britain" by Geoffrey of Monmouth (Penguin Classics, ISBN 0-14-044170-0)
Sixty pages defining the earliest coherent version of the Arthurian story, dating from 1135. It looks like myth but is presented as history. And the other 340 pages are pretty interesting too.

"The Life of King Arthur" by Wace and Lawman (Everyman, ISBN 0-460-87570-1)
Two versions of the Arthurian story, dating from 1155 (Wace) and 1200 (Lawman, AKA Layamon)

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