Quote:
Originally posted by Melusine:
Epona, thanks for those posts! My fingers were just itching when I read the first post, but you took all need for an answer out of my hands with your accurate and expert post!
I get to read quite a lot of the research on the subject as well in my study of English Literature. BTW Sir Gawaine and The Green Knight is highly recommendable, there are also modern english translations available. (however if anyone is brave enough to read the original text they earn my respect and can always contact me for help with understanding it!)
|
I have ploughed my way through the Green Knight - with A LOT of help from a basic glossary of terms.
In answer to all the posts about the Dark Ages, the reason it is called the Dark Ages is because we do not know much about it. As I stated in an early post, there MAY have been a warlord called Arthur (you can translate warlord as King if you like - it does mean a slightly different thing though) and this figure appears to be linked with the areas we now know as Wales and Cornwall. As far as Britain, well Britain did not exist in the Dark Ages. The area we now call Britain (which of course comes from the Roman name for the province, Britannia) was largely broken up into areas of local control by about the 6th Century.
So if Arthur was a king/warlord, he was certainly not King of Britain, but was more like a tribal leader.
What Thomas Malory did, was place ancient legends about this warlord, mixed with some French legends, into a much later time period - the 'age of chivalry' with knights in shining armour and damsels in distress, when there WAS a king of England, to create the legend we now know of King Arthur. It is Malory who made the figure of Arthur into King of England. This account was written in 1470.
The reason Malory was so interested in notions of Chivalry, was because he was in prison for committing rape. What he claimed had happened was that he was having an affair with a married woman, which if either of them had admitted to would have resulted in her death. He admitted to rape in order to spare her, which he considered a courtly, chivalrous thing to do.
He was therefore in some way was writing about his own life when he was writing about Lady Guinevere, her marriage to his fictional King Arthur, and her affair with Sir Lancelot, one of the Knights of the Round table (he saw himself as Lancelot).
I really would recommend everyone read this book, it is an excellent story, and what all the films and later novels are based on. That version of King Arthur as king of England has no historical or factual basis though, and is set several centuries after the period of tribal warlord/kings.
I hope that many of you find this as interesting a legend as I do - I am just trying to provide a bit of historical framework to all the possible interpretations.
------------------
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.