1.
Overview
2.
Main Historical Sources up to the 12th Century
3.
Literary Sources, 12th-15th Centuries
4.
The Vulgate Cycle
5.
Main Characters in Arthurian Legend
1.1. Arthurian legend begins in the milieu of the Celtic Britons' struggle against the Anglo-Saxon takeover of England. By the 12th century, Arthur had become a messianic figure who went away to a place called Avalon at his death, and legend held that he would return from Avalon to rule a Celtic Britain again. Beginning in the 12th century, we begin to see doubts expressed as to the historicity of Arthur, even as Geoffrey of Monmouth presented Arthur for the first time in Latin (the scholarly language of the Middle Ages) as an historical figure. On the other hand, the Plantagenet King Henry II was apparently very anxious to prove that Arthur not only existed, but that he was buried in Glastonbury, which according to local tradition was the site of Avalon. Thus he ordered the body exhumed sometime in the 1180's, and Giraldus Cambrensis reported on the appearance of the tomb and of its contents in his Liber de principis instructione (1192).[1] Giraldus claimed to have seen the cross found in the tomb, which had this inscription: "Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur with Guenevere his second wife in the Isle of Avalon." (The picture does not include the words "with Guenevere his second wife.") Also in the grave were the bones of a man and a woman, and a lock of blonde hair which fell to dust when a monk touched it. The bones of the man were so large that the shin-bone, when placed against the leg of the tallest man in Glastonbury, was 3 inches above the knee, and the eyesocket of the skull was a palmsbreadth.
1.2. Arthurian legend develops orally from then until about the 12th century, with occasional documentary evidence in between. It develops in Celtic-speaking areas at first (Wales, Cornwall, presumably Brittany) but by about the year 1000 it seems already to have spread to the Continent. Separated from its Celtic homeland, Arthurian legend develops new agendas.
1.3. Arthurian legend is made into pseudo-history and given authoritative status when it is rendered into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth. After Geoffrey, it becomes common for writers in England and the Continent to treat Arthur not as a fictional character but as an historical figure. Caroline Eckhardt and Christopher Dean[2], to name only two, have written about the uses to which Arthur was put. For example, it became customary for English kings to trace their genealogy back to King Arthur as a way of guaranteeing legitimacy. English kings used Arthurian symbolism--in 1284 Edward I, for example, set up a Round Table at Nevin in Carnavonshire (Wales) where he also displayed what was claimed to be the crown of King Arthur himself. Edward III even went so far as to establish his own Round Table and he built a special round tower for it at Windsor Castle, which was completed in 1358. He also established a new order of knights, the Order of the Garter, in 1348, shortly after the victory at Crecy in the 100 Years War, in imitation of the Arthurian circle. Henry IV and his supporters used Arthurian symbolism to support his claim to the throne in 1399--he had himself declared the Boar, representing Arthur, who would unfiy England, that had been cited in the so-called Prophecies of Merlin, which Geoffrey of Monmouth fabricated in the 12th century.[3] At the end of the 15th century, Henry VII named his first son Arthur so that when Arthur became king the Avalon prophecy would be fulfilled. (Unfortunately Arthur died in childhood and it was Henry VIII who became king instead.) There was at this time a round oak table at Winchester Castle which was believed to be King Arthur's Round Table. Henry VII had this table restored and painted fresh in 1517, and to this day it hangs in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle.[4]
1.4. On the Continent, the legend of King Arthur is used to underwrite the ideals of chivalry, courtesy, and courtly love--the three chief secular value systems of the later Middle Ages. This process is begun in French by the writer Wace, from the Island of Jersey, writing in 1155, and it is firmly established by Chrétien de Troyes in his romances written at the end of the 12th century. Chrétien begins the practice of writing stories about the knights of the Round Table, which enables writers to create virtually endless series of adventures which all purport to be part of the "true" story of the Round Table. The story of Tristan, for example, originally a separate story, is grafted onto the Round Table, and new knights are invented to swell the number of Round Table knights. From France, this idea of Arthurian legend spreads to the rest of the Continent, including Italy, and back to England, such that in England there are in effect two King Arthurs. One is the ancient king of the historical myth. This Arthur is a warrior and conqueror who advances as far as Rome but ultimately has to return to England to put down the rebellion of his nephew Mordred. The other Arthur is a background figure for the adventures of the Knights of the Round Table. In France, these two ideas of Arthur are united in the so-called Vulgate Cycle of romances, which becomes one of the major sources for Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, written in English towards the end of the 15th c.
Nevertheless, there is a canonical center to the legend of Arthur which tends not to change and which includes:
1. The adultery of Lancelot and Guenevere.
2. The betrayal of Mordred and the last battle, in which Arthur and Mordred kill each other, and Arthur is taken to Avalon by Morgan le Fay.
3. Arthur's victory over the Saxons (often following his victory over the Romans).
1.5. It follows from the above that there is no "true" or "correct" or "original" version of the legend of King Arthur. Any writer who claims to be telling such a story is following the ancient literary practice of dressing up fictions in the guise of history. The legend developed in various times and places and was regarded as a common literary property that could be adapted to local needs. This is perhaps one reason why people continue to write new stories of King Arthur to this day.
2. Main Historical Sources up the 12th Century
1st c. BCE: Julius Caesar conquers Britain for the Roman Republic.
410 CE: Romans formally withdraw from Britain, leaving the native Celtic inhabitants, called Britons, to fend for themselves against the Picts and Scots from the north and the Saxons from the east.
449: Celtic chieftain Vortigern invites the Saxons, a tribe from northern Germany led by Hengest and Horsa, to help him in his wars with the Picts and Scots. At first mercenaries, the Saxons turned on the Britons, and within about 75 years had driven them to Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany (in France).
468: As reported by the later historians Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, Book 2, ch. 18, and Jordanes, Gothic History, ch. 45:
"Riothamus" (not a name, but a designation meaning ‘supreme king’) leads Britons vs. Saxons into Gaul (France).
Comment: He is invited to Gaul by the eastern Roman emperor Leo I, who was anxious about Saxon invasions in a part of France that maintained its loyalty to the eastern Empire. Like Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History he is somehow betrayed. The story is told in Some scholars maintain that this is the historical basis for the story of Arthur’s European campaign and betrayal by Mordred told in Geoffrey of Monmouth.
ca. 540: Gildas, De excidio Britanniae (‘On the Fall of Britain’), ch. 25, 26:
[The Saxons slaughter the Celts.] And then some time passed, and the cruel invaders retreated to their home bases.... The survivors collected their strengths under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus, a most temperate man, who by chance was the only person of Roman parentage to have come through the catastrophe in which his parents, who had once worn the royal purple toga, had been killed, and whose present-day descendants have far degenerated from their former virtue. He and his men challenged their previous conquerors to battle, and by the grace of God, victory was theirs. From that time, now the native citizens and now the enemy have triumphed... up to the year of the siege of Mount Badon, when the last but certainly not the least slaughter of these lowly scoundrels occurred, which, I know, makes 44 years and one month, and which was also the time of my birth. [trans. E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (London, 1927), pp. 236-37.] First reference to the milieu from which the legend of Arthur seems to have derived.
Comment: "Gildas seems to offer many details, but his language is overdramatized and ambiguous, especially with reference to ‘forty-four years’. Is that the span of time from the arrival of the Saxons, or from the leadership of Ambrosius? Also, we do not know the date of Gildas’s birth; his death is listed as 572 in the highly suspect Annals of Cambria. And who was Ambrosius Aurelianus? He is also mentioned by... Nennius, and William of Malmesbury links him with Arthur, whom Gildas ignores. Yet despite his omissions and ambiguities, Gildas clearly establishes the milieu from which the legend springs: a downtrodden people finds salvation in a great military leader who is connected with the civilization of Rome and the Holy Church. As for the intriguing Mount Badon, it has been identified as Bath, Badbury, and Baddington, although many authorites today connect it with Liddington Castle near Swindon." [The Romance of Arthur, ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Z. Gross (New York, 1984), p. 6]
ca. 600: Aneirin, Gododdin
(Welsh elegiac poem), lines 1237-43; first known/surviving reference
to a hero named "Arthur":
He pierced over three hundred of the finest.
He struck at both the center and the flank.
He was worthy in the front of a most generous army.
He gave out gifts from his drove of steeds all winter.
He fed black ravens [i.e., killed many enemies] on the
Wall of the fortress, though he was not Arthur.
He gave support in battle.
In the vanguard, an alder shield-wall was Gwawrddur.
[Welsh ed. Canu Aneirin,
ed. Ifor Williams (University of Wales, 1938); this trans. by John Bollard
in The Romance of Arthur I, ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Zamuelis
Gross (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 14.]
Comment: The Gododdin were a tribe in southern Scotland who suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Saxons at Catraeth, which is probably modern Catterick in Yorkshire. The only Celtic survivor seems to have been Aneirin--called Neirin in ch. 62 of Nennius--who composed a long series of elegiac stanzas about his fallen companions. The only surviving manuscript is from the 13th century, and the text in it shows signs of oral transmission before writing down, the addition of later material, and other corruptions of the original. The above stanza, in praise of Gwawrddur, seems to be ancient and original to Aneirin. If so, it is the earliest surviving reference to Arthur in any language. Arthur’s name is again linked with Gwawrddur’s in the 13th c. (but based on older materials) Book of Taliesin by the 6th c. Welsh poet Taliesin [ed. J. G. Evans (Llanbedrog, 1910)], in which there is a verse praising their horses. "As the Anglo-Saxons gained sway over what is now England, many of the displaced British traditions were relocated in Wales" [Romance of Arthur, p. 15]. These traditions are recorded in manuscripts of the 13th c. and later, manuscripts which are presumed to convey more ancient stories because of evidence in the language. Nevertheless, without external evidence of date, it is difficult to say when these stories originated--they may be closer to the 13th c. Indeed, David Dumville demolished the Welsh case by showing how inadequate the evidence is for proving anything about an historical King Arthur: see "Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend," History, 62 (1977), 173-92. An example of this sort of material is the "Elegy for Owain son of Urien" found in the Book of Taliesin, assigned to the 6th c. poet Taliesin, who may never have existed.
ca. 800: "Nennius," Historia Brittonum (‘History of the Britons’), ch. 56:
"At that time the Saxons increased their numbers and grew in Britain. On Hengest’s death, his son Octha came down from the north of Britain to the kingdom of the Kentishmen, and from him are sprung the kings of Kent. Then Arthur fought against them in those days, together with the kings of the British; but he was their leader in battle. The first battle was at the mouth of a river called Glein. The second, third, fourth, and fifth were on another river, called the Douglas [‘dark water’] which is in the country of Lindsey. The sixth battle was on the river called Bassas. The seventh battle was in Celyddon Forest, that is, the Battle of Celyddon Coed. The eighth battle was in Guinnion fort, and in it Arthur carried the image of the holy Mary, the everlasting Virgin, on his shield, and the heathen were put to flight that day, and there was a great slaughter upon them, through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Virgin Mary, his mother. The ninth battle was fought in the city of the Legion. The tenth battle was fought on the bank of the river called Tryrwyd. The eleventh battle was on the hill called Agned. The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it 960 men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur's, and no one laid them low save he alone; and he was victorious in all his campaigns." [Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. John Morris, History from the Sources, Arthurian Period Sources, 8 (London, 1980).] First known / surviving example of motif of Arthur's 12 battles.
Comment: Nennius, if he was indeed the author, was a monk at Bangor in North Wales. HB is a major source for Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it is the first Latin source to mention the name Arthur. The main version of HB is an early 12th c. manuscript (London, BL Harley 3859) which also contains the Annales Cambriae and Welsh genealogies. Many scholars consider this to be based on ancient Welsh sources, but among the shadowy geographical details, only the Caledonian Forest in Scotland and the City of the Legion (Welsh Caerleon) can be identified. The number 12 is suspicious as an even dozen.
ca. 1100: In Modena and Padua are records of men named Artusius and Galvanus, the Italian-Latin forms of "Arthur" and "Gawain," which suggests that Italy was already taken with the Arthurian legend in the 11th and 12th centuries.
1120-40: Modena archivolt.
Comment: In the cathedral at Modena (begun in 1099) is a carving plainly depicting Winlogee (Guenevere) imprisoned in a tower by Mardoc (Mordred?) and by the dwarf Burmaltus, who is charged by Isdernus (Yder) and Artus de Bretania (Arthur), while a knight labeled Carrado (Caradoc) is being charged by knights labeled Galvaginus (Gawain), Galvariun, and Che (Kay). All evidence points to the sculpture being executed 1120-1140, and the Loomises suggest that since the sculptors from the cathedral came from Bari, they may have learned Arthurian tales from Breton crusaders who stayed in Bari in the winter of 1096-97. The story is clearly a version of the abducted-queen story told by Chretién de Troyes in Lancelot and the Caradoc/Dolorous Tower story from the Vulgate Cycle's Prose Lancelot 100 years later, but with different players, since Lancelot is the hero of the former and Guenevere is not imprisoned in the latter [See Loomis and Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art, pp. 33-35.]
1113: Writing in 1146, Hermann of Tournai, De miraculis sanctae Mariae Lauduniensis [‘On the miracles of St. Mary of Laon’] relates that in the year 1113 some canons (priests attached to a cathedral) from Laon visiting Cornwall on a fund-raising expedition saw the "seat and oven of Arthur," which is evidence of a "cult" or perhaps a tourist industry for Arthur in Cornwall. [Patrologia Latina 166:983.]
1120: Lambert of St. Omer’s Liber floridus (literally, ‘flowery book’--i.e., an anthology gathering various sources into a bouquet, so to speak) describes the lush palace of King Arthur, as if it actually existed. [PL 163:1012.]
1130-35: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophetiae Merlini (‘Prophecies of Merlin’):
"Alas for the Red Dragon, for its end is near. Its cavernous dens shall
be occupied by the White Dragon, which stands for the Saxons whom you have
invited over. The Red Dragon represents the people of Britain, who will
be overrun by the White one: for Britain's mountains and valleys shall
be levelled, and the streams and its valleys shall run with blood.
"The cult of religion shall be destroyed completely and the ruin of the
churches shall be clear for all to see.
"The race that is oppressed shall prevail in the end, for it will resist
the savagery of the invaders.
"The Boar of Cornwall shall bring relief from these invaders, for it will
trample their necks beneath their feet.
"The Islands of the Ocean shall be given into the power of the Boar and
it shall lord it over the forests of Gaul.
"The House of Romulus shall dread the Boar's savagery and the end of the
Boar will be shrouded in mystery.
"The Boar shall be extolled in the mouths of its peoples, and its deeds
will be as meat and drink to those who tell tales."
[History of the Kings of
Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London / New York, 1966), pp. 171-2.]
Comment: Geoffrey said he translated the prophecies from Welsh; however, without extant sources this claim is hard to prove. The prophecies are obscure, but were invoked throughout the Middle Ages to warn about the evils of the times, finding their way into the Fool’s prophecy in the heath scene of Shakespeare’s King Lear, 3.2.79-95. The Prophetiae refer to Arthur as the "Boar of Cornwall" who will relieve the Britons from their Saxon invaders and foreshadow his career as it is told in the Historia regum Britanniae (below, next item).
1138: Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Historia
regum Britanniae (‘History of the Kings of Britain’):
Incorporates the earlier Prophetiae
Merlin and tells the first complete "history" of King Arthur, though
it is entirely fictional; first narrative about Merlin; first mention of
Arthur being taken to the isle of Avalon.
Comment: Geoffrey is
an author of firsts. He is the first to connect the story of Arthur to
the story of Troy, making Brutus’s voyage to England a parallel with Aeneas’s
voyage to Rome. He is the first to tell--probably because he invented it--the
story of Arthur’s wars against Rome and his betrayal by Mordred; the first
to use Caerleon in SW Wales as an Arthurian court (he used it also as the
site of the convent to which Guenevere retired); the first to mention Arthur’s
burial in the Isle of Avalon--the Insula Avallonis which may be
either a place in Burgundy or modern Glastonbury.
Geoffrey transforms Nennius’s story about the marvelous boy Ambrosius into
the story of Merlin. (According to this story, the Celtic king Vortigern
tries to build a tower, but each day the work is swallowed by the earth.
His magicians tell him that the mystery can be solved only by sacrificing
a boy without a father, and eventually such a lad, named Ambriosius, is
found.) As Geoffrey Ashe notes, "where [Geoffrey] can be checked, as in
his version of the preceeding Roman period, his fictionalization is so
palpable as to deprive him of any credit as a historian. Nothing he says
can be trusted itself as a statement of fact" [Arthurian Encyclopedia,
p. 21]. John J. Parry writes, "There is no indication that Geoffrey was
an irreligious man, or that he was a bad ecclesiastic; but certainly his
main interest was not in the cure of souls, and as an historian he had
no devotion to historical truth." ["Geoffrey of Monmouth," in Arthurian
Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Loomis, p. 74.]
Geoffrey's motive was apparently to flatter the Norman rulers of England,
whom he thought of as avengers on the former Anglo-Saxon rulers. He dedicated
his book to Walleran, Count of Meulan (1104-66) and Duke Robert of Goucester
(d. 1147), illegitimate son of the English King Henry I.
In 1149 Alfred of Beverly observed that all gentlemen must be able to make
allusions to Arthur, and in the Itinerarium Cambriae (1191)
Gerald of Wales wrote of a soothsayer who would prophesy while holding
a copy of Geoffrey’s book to his chest. Geoffrey’s book influenced Shakespeare,
whose King Lear tells a story based on ch. 2, sections 11-14, and
Spenser paraphrased whole portions of HRB in verse in the Faerie
Queene; hence Geoffrey's Historia is one of the major texts
of the Middle Ages.
ca. 1150: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini (‘Life of Merlin’).
Comment: Between the
Prophetiae
and the Vita Geoffrey seems to have learned more of the
Welsh legend of Myrddin, since here he refers to names and places
attested independently in Welsh sources. In the Vita he tells of
Arthur's visit to the insula Avallonis (‘isle of Avalon’) ruled
by "Morgen" and her nine sisters, which seems to be the first reference
to Morgan le Fay as well as the origin of the famous tale of Arthur’s final
voyage in death (e.g., in Malory).
In his Historia
rerum Anglicarum (1196-98), William of Newburgh cast doubt on Geoffrey
of Monmouth's historicity. He said that Bede (8th century), for example,
who was a scrupulous historian and who lived much closer to the time of
Arthur, never mentioned Arthur. If Arthur had really lived, Bede would
have talked about him. Also, he said that Geoffrey had signed his name "Galfridus Arturus" in order to somehow lend credibility to his fictions.
3. Literary Sources, 12th-15th Centuries
ca. 1100: Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen in the so-called Mabinogion, found in a manuscript called the Red Book of Hergest (ca. 1400) and in an incomplete version in the White Book of Rhydderch (ca. 1325):
The youth Culhwch has a curse placed upon him by his stepmother that he shall have no woman until he has Olwen, daughter of the giant Ysbaddaden. As the result of the curse, Culhwch is filled with love and longing for the maiden. On his father's advice, he makes for the court of Arthur, his cousin, to seek his help. Arthur sends seven of his men to accompany Culhwch on his quest, and in time they locate the maiden and enter into the presence of the giant. The giant imposes a series of about 40 seemingly impossible tasks that Culhwch must accomplish before he can wed the daughter. With the help of Arthur and his men, the tasks are indeed accomplished, the giant is killed, and Culhwch marries Olwen. First known / surviving narrative legend of Arthur.
Comment: This represents a common type of folktale called The Giant's Daughter, embellished by a number of other folklore motifs such as the jealous stepmother, love for the unseen maid, the impossible tasks, etc. Most of the story, however, concerns two catalogues and the deeds of Arthur and his men. One catalogue is of all 200 of Arthur's retinue, some of which are whimsical inventions of the author, others of which are Irish legendary figures, and still others of which, such as Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere), are enduring members of the the Arthurian circle. The other catalogue is the list of 40-odd tasks. Arthur is portrayed as a great king with a wide reputation who has made war all over Europe. He is fabulously wealthy and generous to his men. He is also capable of a good deal of magic, and the 40 tasks all need magic of some kind to be accomplished. This is perhaps the earliest extant vernacular prose text from Wales.
1155: Wace, a French poet from the island of Jersey, translates Geoffrey of Monmouth into French (under the title Roman de Brut, after Brutus, the eponymous founder of Britain) for the English King Henry II. First mention of the Round Table.
ca. 1190: The Englishman Layamon translates Wace’s Brut into English.
ca. 1160-1190: Chrétien de Troyes, court poet of Marie de Champagne and Philip of Flanders, writes the first Arthurian romances about the Knights of the Round Table; first story about adultery of Lancelot and Guenevere; first mention of Camelot; first Grail story. Perhaps for Henry II of England, he wrote the romance Guillaume d’Angleterre. Chrétien’s sources are presumed to be Celtic bards living in Northern France; with Chrétien, oral transmission of Arthurian literature seems to come to an end.
ca. 1190: Béroul, Tristan; from a similar (or perhaps even the same) source used earlier by Thomas of England (ca. 1175), which Gottfried von Strassburg in ca. 1210 made into Tristan und Isolde; later expanded into a cycle called the Prose Tristan; basis of Wagner’s opera.
ca. 1200: Robert de Boron, Merlin. First mention of the sword in the stone.
1210: Wolfram von Eschenbach, a poor German knight, translates and completes Chrétien’s Story of the Grail as Parzival, adapted in the 19th c. by Wagner as the opera Parsifal. Other German writers spread the legend of Arthur via translations of other romances by Chrétien.
ca. 1375: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight written by an anonymous poet in NW England.
ca. 1470: Sir Thomas Malory adapts the Vulgate Cycle (see below) into English, seriously shortening and re-arranging it in parts and combining it with episodes from the Prose Tristan; title: Le Morte Darthur ('The Death of Arthur').
Comment: The only complete copy of the first printed edition (1485)--one of the first books printed in English--happens to be in New York at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Although a knight, Malory was a robber of estates and monasteries, a convicted rapist, and a would-be assassin of the Duke of Buckingham. However, given the general lawlessness and political unrest in England during the Wars of the Roses, it is possible that the charges for which he was imprisoned were falsified or explainable as self-defense. From 1451 until about 1460 he was in an out of jail, sometimes breaking out; he died in 1471 and is buried in Greyfriars, London.
ca. 1215-1235: An anonymous compiler or team of editors collects most Arthurian stories into the so-called the Vulgate Cycle (from the Latin word vulgus ‘common’), a.k.a. Lancelot-Grail Cycle, which follows the history of the Arthurian world from the origin of the Grail through the stories of Merlin, Lancelot, Galahad (first occurrence), and the death of Arthur. First important use of prose instead of verse for Western European literature--in fact, since prose had been used previously only for history, the compilers probably wanted to give the impression (or believed) that the stories of King Arthur were history. Sections:
History of the Holy Grail
History of Merlin
Lancelot
Quest of the Holy Grail
Death of Arthur
The Quest and the Death are attributed in the texts to one Walter Map, giving out the story that Map wrote for Henry II of England. This is certainly false, since Map had been dead for some time when the Lancelot-Grail Cycle was written. The religious cast of the entire cycle suggests that it was compiled at least partially by Cistercian (reformed Benedictine) monks whose political purpose was to rededicate knighthood to religious ideals.
Plot:
I. Rise of Arthur and role
of Merlin in his birth and early career.
a. Uther
falls in love with Igerne, the wife of Duke Gorlois of Cornwall, and in
order to possess her he has his magician Merlin make him appear like Gorlois.
Having sent Gorlois off to battle to die, Uther visits Igerne at the castle
of Tintagel, where he impregnates her with Arthur. When Gorlois is killed
in battle, Uther marries Igerne, and Arthur is subsequently born. (This
story may be indebted to that of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 of
the Old Testament.)
b. Merlin,
Arthur, and the sword in the stone.
II. Arthur’s marriage to Guenevere; arrival of Lancelot, orphaned son of Ban of Benwick who has been raised by the Lady of the Lake. Various adventures of the Round Table knights, including Lancelot and Galehaut, Gawain and Hector, Tristan (English: Tristrem); Morgan le Fay’s plots against the Round Table. [In Malory’s retelling of the cycle, Arthur fathers Mordred by unwittingly having sex with Morgan.]
III. Quest for the Holy Grail by Lancelot, Perceval, Bors, and Galahad, plus many other knights who fall by the wayside. Lancelot gets a brief glimpse of the Grail, but loses it when he steps up to it; Galahad, Perceval, and Bors take the Grail back to Jerusalem, whence it is taken up to heaven upon Galahad’s death. Lancelot swears off Guenevere as penance for his sins.
IV. Lancelot resumes his affair with the Queen; adventure of Elaine, the Maid of Astolat; Agravain reveals the affair to the King; war between Arthur and Lancelot; Mordred seizes power in Arthur’s absence; battle with Mordred and death of Arthur, who is taken to the Isle of Avalon by Morgan le Fay; Lancelot becomes a priest; Guenevere retires to a convent; Lancelot and Guenevere die.
5. Main Characters in Arthurian Legend
Arthur: King of a land known as Logres (the Celtic name) or England (the English name). He holds his court at Camelot (a fictional place somewhere in Wales which was perhaps inspired by an Iron Age hill fort near South Cadbury in Somerset, England, known as Cadbury Rings) and various other places in Great Britain such as Carlisle. His wife is named Guenevere (also spelled Guinevere), and he presides over an elect body of knights known as the Round Table knights which, in the Vulgate Cycle, are a modern counterpart of the apostles of Christ. Arthur’s personality and qualities are not the same in all Arthurian literature. Generally, in "chronicles" focusing on him, Arthur is an heroic warrior and conqueror; whereas in romances focusing on the Round Table knights, Arthur is wise and generous, or indecisive and self-indulgent, or even rash and unfair--a weak king whose heedlessness endangers the kingdom of Logres. In the Vulgate Cycle and in Malory (see below) he is all of these, an enigma who has remained a cultural symbol down to the 20th century.
In the usual version of Arthurian history given in Geoffrey of Monmouth and in the Vulgate Cycle, Arthur is the son of Uther Pendragon, a Celtic king engaged in repelling the invasion of the Saxons in the mid fifth century.
There are two versions of Arthur’s death. In the "chronicles" he dies at the Battle of Camlaan fighting against the Saxons; in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Vulgate Cycle, and in Malory, he dies at Camlaan or at Salisbury fighting his rebellious nephew Mordred, and at death he is taken to the island of Avalon by his half-sister Morgan le Fay (Fr. Morgue / Morgain la fée) from which he is to return someday to rule England once again as a messianic king.
Guenevere / Guinevere: Wife of Arthur and mistress of Lancelot of the Lake. Although in some early Welsh sources (where her name is Gwenhwyfar) she apparently bore Arthur sons, in the romances, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Vulgate Cycle, and Malory she is childless. She is alternately the daughter of a noble Roman or the daughter of Leodegrance--who gave Arthur the Round Table as part of her dowry. Her relationship with Lancelot appears first in Chrétien de Troyes’ Knight of the Cart, and may have been suggested to Chrétien by his patron, Marie de Champagne. In the Vulgate Cycle, this relationship is at first an ennobling courtly love, but after the famous kiss exchanged in the section called the Prose Lancelot (see also Dante’s Inferno, canto 5). the affair becomes increasingly the source of the ruin of the Round Table. In the Vulgate Cycle and Malory, she retreats to a convent after being freed from Mordred, and dies a virtual saint.
Gawain: Son of King Lot of Lothian and Orkney and of Morgause (or Anna), Arthur’s sister or half-sister. In the earliest sources, he is a valiant warrior, and the uncle-nephew relationship, sacred in those times, makes him a privileged advisor to the king. In Chrétien’s romances, however, Gawain has a dual image. Though he is reputed to be the paragon of chivalry, he is used as a foil for morally superior knights such as Yvain or Perceval., and he becomes the butt of burlesque humor. In the Quest of the Holy Grail section of the Vulgate Cycle, he is a hardened, unrepentant sinner, and in the Death of King Arthur it is Gawain who leads the attack against Lancelot in a battle which pits Lancelot against the king. Outside of France he is portrayed more sympathetically, especially in the Netherlands and England. The exception in England is Malory, who stays close to the Vulgate Cycle.
Lancelot (of the Lake): Lancelot appears mysteriously in Arthurian legend for the first time in Chrétien’s Knight of the Cart, where his biography is taken for granted, thus leading scholars to suppose that sources for the legend of Lancelot have been lost. He is the lover of Queen Guenevere, and in the Vulgate cycle he becomes a central character. Loyal to the king in every way but sexually, he becomes the moral weak spot in the Arthurian court that brings it to ruin.
Kay: Arthur’s seneschal (cup-bearer or steward). Kay is the unofficial conscience of the court, freely criticizing all who fail to live up to the ideals of chivalry. In Chrétien’s romances the mid-point of the plot is a joust between the hero and Kay, which Kay loses. In Geoffrey of Monmouth and in the alliterative Morte Arthure (English, ca. 1400), it is Kay’s death in battle against the Romans that inspired Arthur to victory in his European campaign.
Morgan le Fay: Daughter of Igerne and Gorlois, half-sister of Arthur; fairy goddess of Arthurian legend; foe and friend of Arthur; mistress of Merlin; conductor of Arthur to the Isle of Avalon.
Merlin: The son of the devil, but rejects evil because before he was born his mother was blessed by the priest Blaise. At age three he dictates to his mother the account of how the Holy Grail was transferred from Jerusalem to Glastonbury, England, and tells of his own supernatural conception. The time is the 5th century. Merlin comes to the attention of Vertiger (Vortigern), whose astronomers advise him to seek a fatherless child as a sacrificial victim so that a fortress might be built on an unstable tract of land. Merlin explains that the land is unstable because two dragons fight below the surface. When he is proved right, he becomes court magus to the Celtic British kings. He assists Uther in acquiring Igerne as his wife (see above), and he sets up the sword in the stone for Arthur. Later, he teaches Morgan le Fay his magic and has a disastrous affair with Viviane, who betrays him and bewitches him forever.
1. Ed. G. F. Warner, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer et al., Rolls Series 21, 8 vols. (London, 1861-91), 8:127-28.
2. Eckhardt, "Prophecy and Nostalgia: Arthurian Symbolism at the Close of the Middle Ages," The Arthurian Tradition: Essays in Convergence, ed. Mary Flowers Braswell and John Bugge (Tuscaloosa, AL / London, 1988), 109-26; Dean, Arthur of England: English Attitudes to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Toronto, 1987).
3. See Chronica regum Angliae per Thomam Otterbourne, ed. Thomas Hearne in Duo rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (Oxford, 1732), 1:210, cited in Eckhardt.
4. William W. Kibler, "The Round Table," Avalon to Camelot 2.1 (1986),
5-7, here citing 6-7.
