king arthur-man, myth, both...

[Goddess Hathor]

ok i know everyone knows the legends of king arthur, merlin and the round table and such, but truthfully i dont really know too much about it and researching it is only making me more confused, i was wondering if anyone could maybe give me a few straight and simple facts to ease my curiosity. im sixteen years old and me and my friends were talking about King Arthur but none of us seemesd to really know anything about him or his legend....Thanks in advance

[Zibblsnrt]

Merlin, the round table, the knights, and so on are almost certainly whole-cloth handwaves with no actual connection to history; their myths came well after the era they talk about. Most of the modern popular knowledge about him - particularly the movies, which are kind of horrid - are either clinging to the mythology or trying to make up new stuff. ("The Last Legion"'s claim that Arthur was Romulus Augustulus' son is particularly absurd.)

There was probably someone who was either a Romanized Briton or a descendant of Romans trying to keep the old society together sometime in the 500s, who did so with some level of success, halting Anglo-Saxon expansion for maybe a generation. He probably went by the name Artorius, though there's a number of other suggestions. His seat of power was probably a small area in northwestern England. Beyond that, really, most of what's left is conjecture. There's simply too many different stories hung on the framework of what happened there.

[Philosophia]

Some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur

http://www.kingarthursknights.com/arthur/historical.asp

http://www.timelessmyths.com/arthurian/arthur.html

http://csis.pace.edu/grendel/projs2a/art001.html

http://www.themiddleages.net/people/king_arthur.html

http://www.britannia.com/history/arthur/historians.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/arthur_01.shtml

http://members.aol.com/wjuhc/kingart.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/146511.stm

http://www.essortment.com/kingarthurlege_rhvc.htm

[David19]

I'm interested in King Arthur too and his mythos, although I don't know too much about him or the various characters in it, so I'll be reading Philosophia's links with interest.

I heard that Merlin may have been something of a Saxon sorcerer or something, and that King Arthur was pretty much a tribal king, in Cornwall (I've no idea if that's true?). I think there may have been a King Arthur-like figure, and even a Merlin-figure, that were romantized over time and their legends added too.

That said, that doesn't take anything away from their mythos, as it's still quite a cool and very interesting mythos. (IMO, I thin myths can be more interesting than history).

[Miss Dana]

I have a huge interest in King Arthur as well, but here's a little fact I can tell you for sure. His legend is during the dark ages of England. All the major things going on in the world at that time were more centered around the Roman Empire and the modern day Middle East. I think he's considered something like the Paul Bunyon of Midieval times. But since England was cut off from most of the outside world during this time, there could be some truth to his tale.

[TygerTyger]

The myth of King Arthur is woven from several strands of British culture, Briton, Celtic, Saxon and Norman in particular. After the withdrawal of the last Roman legion the British Isles entered a period of extended warfare with invasion by Germanic and Scandinavian peoples such as the Saxons and the Vikings. Violence became a way of life and a period of relative peace was not attained until 1066 with the final defeat of the Vikings at Stamford Bridge and the success of William of Normandy’s invasion at Hastings.

Sir Thomas Mallory’s Morte D’ Arthur saw the various Arthurian tales brought together into one work and, to some extent, made into a single themed story. It is a work that romanticised a popular group of stories into form that proved very popular. T. S. White said of his own novel, The Once and Future King, that it was a tale not so much of things were but how it should have been; that also holds true for Mallory’s work. The image of Arthur as a knight in armour persists even if the stories pre-date that culture.

If you look for historical evidence of Arthur’s existence you will find precious little, but so what? The story has proved irresistible to countless generations and even in this high-tech world of the 21st Century it still holds sway over our imaginations. It doesn’t matter when either King Arthur or the men whose own stories went into creating his character existed, what matters is that we still find the story interesting and keep re-telling it to our children.

P.S. Of all the film versions of the Arthurian myth there is only one that has stood the test of time; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you enjoy that you will always enjoy the legend of King Arthur!

[forestrangergrrl]

P.S. Of all the film versions of the Arthurian myth there is only one that has stood the test of time; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you enjoy that you will always enjoy the legend of King Arthur!


i love that movie! :T

[phoebe]

from wat i have heard king athur and the round table is not just a myth, i dont really know why but i think i can tell u some stuff..... i dont know alot just wat i think so dont take this to be gosble ok.... king auther was around in wat we call the dark ages before england had a king..... there was a fight between the christens and the pagans or so i told but i really think that it was a fight between authers people and the alosaksons....... authers famliy was a pagan family and had an island....... its told that the island could not been seen but i dont think that thats tru i think it was just i a place people couldnt find it .... i place of spiritul openness like a hole in the world or thin place as some people like to call it ...... thats where people from the famliy or in the village which bak in those days was full of just one famliy and a king was just the storngist man in his famliy....... before king auther it could have been his third, second, or first cosern or grandfather or any one in the famliy..........he married gonaver and sh was a christen who inseded on there being a understanding of bith belive stems or so im told plz dont take this to be gostble im not to shore i just have a small hunch

[haw_thrn]

As i understand it Arthur is often thought to be based on a welsh war lord or a compilation of several welsh characters. and merlin is sometimes associated with talisien... I think that some of these conections may be based upon stories in the mabinogion (which i have yet to read) I have also heard that his character may be based on a man who was able to unite the local war lords against the invading anglo tribes . ( no small feat onsidering how often the locals warred amongst themselves.)

[TygerTyger]

The Mabinogian, which I read when I used to live in Harlech, North Wales, does indeed contain some Arthurian stories and forms a part of the Celtic thread to the tale. T.S. White recognised the Celtic element in his book, The Once and Future King, with the Orkney Faction that included Sir Gwaine, SirAgravaine, Sir Mordred and their mother Morganna (la Fey).

However, oral storytelling was prevalent with Celts and Saxons alike and popular stories from one culture would pass over into another and be added to, much like the Homeric tales. The Celtic tradition also placed a greater stress on entertainment than on accuracy, hence warriors who are one moment the size of normal men and the next giants who can ford the Irish Sea on foot.

Even researching genuine historical events from the Dark Ages, such as the Battle of Stamford Bridge is difficult, so trying to discover the origins of King Arthur is very much a lost cause as there is so much that can not be proven, a bit like Phoebe post!

As the Celts would have it, the facts are not as important as the story and the story remains even without the supporting facts.

[IceLupa]

IMO King Arthur as most people know of him wasn't like that. Historically that version of King Arthur didn't really exist however though, the myth of King Arthur is a spiritual legend. He's up in the ranks with Robin Hood, Sigfried, Hercules and Oddyseus. I think the legend of King Arthur may go back before Christian times, and long before that. In a way he is like the essense of our higher selves. I think Jung mentioned King Arthur, as part of our dream world. I might look into it.

[IceLupa]

http://www.mythome.org/ArthurSL.htm

The Grail and Psychology.

C.G. Jung was fascinated by the Grail and alchemy. Although he
did not write on the Grail himself, his wife and one of his close friends
did. Jung approaches the Grail legend as a story with many symbols from
the unconcious mind used to express the religious attitude of the people
at the time. He treats the main characters such as Merlin and Arthur as
archetypes of the collective unconcious and the Grail Hallows (that is :
spear, sword, cup and stone) as very potent symbols of religion from
the collective unconcious. Jung believed that something fundamental was
missing from Christianity as a world religion and that the Christianised
versions of the Grail stories filled this gap. To him the Grail in the
form of the Cup of Christ was a psychological progression in the
completion of the development of Christianity. He also shows that alchemy
and the Grail legends which developed around the same time had many
symbols, colours , and spiritual teachings in common.

Further to this, many events in the Grail cycles have been closely
analysed in terms of Jungian psychology. Jung showed that the writers
understood or at least unconciously expressed many fundamental elements
of his psychology in the events they placed in the stories.

[David19]

http://www.mythome.org/ArthurSL.htm

Thanks for the link, it's quite interesting :).

[Miss Dana]

P.S. Of all the film versions of the Arthurian myth there is only one that has stood the test of time; Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you enjoy that you will always enjoy the legend of King Arthur!


And if you don't enjoy it, then we can't be friends.