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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Arthurian legend |
For more information on Arthurian legend, visit Britannica.com.
| Literary Dictionary: matter of Britain |
matter of Britain, the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which form the subject‐matter for a number of medieval romances—usually known as Arthurian romances. These are often distinguished from the romances dealing with the matter of France (i.e. legends of Charlemagne and his knights) or the matter of Rome (classical Roman legends or myths).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Arthurian legend |
Medieval Sources
The battle of Mt. Badon-in which, according to the Annales Cambriae (c.1150), Arthur carried the Cross of Jesus on his shoulders-but not Arthur's name, is mentioned (c.540) by Gildas. The earliest apparent mention of Arthur in any known literature is a brief reference to a mighty warrior in the Welsh poem Gododdin (c.600). Arthur next appears in Nennius (c.800) as a Celtic warrior who fought (c.600) 12 victorious battles against the Saxon invaders.
These and several subsequent references indicate that his legend had already developed into a considerable literature before Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Historia (c.1135), in which he elaborated on the feats of King Arthur whom he represented as the conqueror of Western Europe. After Geoffrey's Historia came Wace's Roman de Brut (c.1155), which infused the legend with the spirit of chivalric romance. The Brut (c.1200) of Layamon, modeled on Wace's work, gives one of the best pictures of Arthur as a national hero.
Chrétien de Troyes, a 12th-century French poet, wrote five romances dealing with the knights of Arthur's court. His Perceval contains the earliest extant literary version of the quest of the Holy Grail (see Grail, Holy). Two medieval German poets important in the development of Arthurian legend are Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg. The latter's Tristan was the first great literary treatment of the Tristram and Isolde story.
After 1225 no significant medieval Arthurian literature was produced on the Continent. In England, however, the legend continued to flourish. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c.1370), one of the best Middle English romances, embodies the ideal of chivalric knighthood. The last important medieval work dealing with the Arthurian legend is the Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, whose tales have become the source for most subsequent Arthurian material. Many writers have used Arthurian themes since Malory, notably Tennyson in his Idylls of the King. Swinburne, William Morris, and Edwin Arlington Robinson also wrote poetic works based on the legend. T. H. White's trilogy The Once and Future King (1958) is a charming and decidedly 20th-century retelling of the Arthurian story.
The Link to Celtic Mythology
Formerly, it was thought that the Arthurian legend was the work of several inventive poets and romancers of the Middle Ages. The generally accepted theory now is that Arthurian legend developed out of stories of Celtic mythology. The most archaic form in which these occur in British sources is the Welsh Mabinogion, but much of Irish mythology is palpably identical with Arthurian romance.
It is probable that traditional Irish hero stories fused in Britain with those of the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Celts of North Britain. The resultant legend with its hero, Arthur, was transmitted to their Breton cousins on the Continent probably by the year 1000. The Bretons, famous as wandering minstrels, followed Norman armies over Western Europe and used the legend's stories for their repertory. By 1100, therefore, Arthurian stories were well known even in Italy.
The Story
Although there are innumerable variations of the Arthurian legend, the basic story has remained the same. Arthur was the illegitimate son of Uther Pendragon, king of Britain, and Igraine, the wife of Gorlois of Cornwall. After the death of Uther, Arthur, who had been reared in secrecy, won acknowledgment as king of Britain by successfully withdrawing a sword from a stone. Merlin, the court magician, then revealed the new king's parentage. Arthur, reigning in his court at Camelot, proved to be a noble king and a mighty warrior. He was the possessor of the miraculous sword Excalibur, given to him by the mysterious Lady of the Lake.
Of Arthur's several enemies, the most treacherous were his sister Morgan le Fay and his nephew Mordred. Morgan le Fay was usually represented as an evil sorceress, scheming to win Arthur's throne for herself and her lover. Mordred (or Modred) was variously Arthur's nephew or his son by his sister Morgawse. He seized Arthur's throne during the king's absence. Later he was slain in battle by Arthur, but not before he had fatally wounded the king. Arthur was borne away to the isle of Avalon, where it was expected that he would be healed of his wounds and that he would someday return to his people.
Two of the most invincible knights in Arthur's realm were Sir Tristram and Sir Launcelot of the Lake. Both of them, however, were involved in illicit and tragic love unions-Tristram with Isolde, the queen of Tristram's uncle, King Mark; Launcelot with Guinevere, the queen of his sovereign, King Arthur. Other knights of importance include the naive Sir Pelleas, who fell helplessly in love with the heartless Ettarre (or Ettard) and Sir Gawain, Arthur's nephew, who appeared variously as the ideal of knightly courtesy and as the bitter enemy of Launcelot.
Also significant are Sir Balin and Sir Balan, two devoted brothers who unwittingly slew one another; Sir Galahad, Launcelot's son, who was the hero of the quest for the Holy Grail; Sir Kay, Arthur's villainous foster brother; Sir Percivale (or Parsifal); Sir Gareth; Sir Geraint; Sir Bedivere; and other knights of the Round Table. To modern readers, Arthurian legend has become the mirror of the ideal of medieval knighthood and chivalry.
Bibliography
See studies by R. H. Fletcher (2d ed. 1966), R. L. Loomis (1949; 1956; 1927, repr. 1969; 1963, repr. 1970), L. Alcock (1972), J. Morris (1973), and R. W. Barber (1973); J. L. Weston, tr., Arthurian Romances Unrepresented in Malory's Morte d'Arthur (8 vol., 1907; repr. 1971); N. J. Lacy et al., ed., The Arthurian Encyclopedia (1987).
| WordNet: Arthurian legend |
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
the legend of King Arthur and his court at Camelot
| Wikipedia: Matter of Britain |
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| Series on Celtic mythology |
| Gaelic mythology |
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Irish mythology |
| Brythonic mythology |
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British Iron Age religion |
| Religious vocations |
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Samhain, Calan Gaeaf |
The Matter of Britain is a name given collectively to the legends that concern the Celtic and legendary history of Great Britain, especially those focused on King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The 12th-century French poet Jean Bodel created the name in the following lines of his epic Chanson de Saisnes:
The name distinguishes and relates the Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "matter of Rome", and the tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constituted the "matter of France". While Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain, other lesser-known legendary history of Great Britain, including the stories of Brutus of Britain, King Cole, King Lear, and Gogmagog, is also included in the Matter of Britain: see Legendary kings of the Britons.
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It could be said that the legendary history of Britain was created in part to form a body of patriotic myth for the island. Several agendas thus can be seen in this body of literature.
The Historia Britonum, the earliest known source of the story of Brutus of Britain, may have been devised to create a distinguished genealogy for a number of Welsh princes in the 9th century. Traditionally attributed to Nennius, its actual compiler is unknown; it exists in several recensions. This tale went on to achieve greater currency because its inventor linked Brutus to the diaspora of heroes that followed the Trojan War, and thus provided raw material which later mythographers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Michael Drayton, and John Milton could draw upon, linking the settlement of Britain to the heroic age of Greek literature, for their several and diverse literary purposes. As such, this material could be used for patriotic mythmaking just as Virgil linked the mythical founding of Rome to the Trojan War in The Æneid. Geoffrey of Monmouth also introduced the fanciful claim that the Trinovantes, reported by Tacitus as dwelling in the area of London, had a name he interpreted as Troi-novant, "New Troy".
More speculative claims link Welsh mythology with several of the rulers and incidents compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniæ. It has been suggested, for instance, that Leir of Britain, who later became Shakespeare's King Lear, was originally the Welsh sea-god Llŷr (see also the Irish sea-god Lir). Various Celtic deities have been identified with characters from Arthurian literature as well: Morgan le Fay was often thought to have originally been the Welsh goddess Modron (cf. the Irish goddess Mórrígan). Many of these identifications come from the speculative comparative religion of the late 19th century, and have been questioned in more recent years.
William Shakespeare seems to have been deeply interested in the legendary history of Britain, and to have been familiar with some of its more obscure byways. Shakespeare's plays contain several tales relating to these legendary kings, such as King Lear and Cymbeline. It has been suggested that Shakespeare's Welsh schoolmaster Thomas Jenkins introduced him to this material, and perhaps directed him to read Geoffrey of Monmouth[citation needed]. These tales also figure in Raphael Holinshed's The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, which also appears in Shakespeare's sources for Macbeth. A Welsh schoolmaster appears as the character Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Other early authors also drew from the early Arthurian and pseudo-historical sources of the Matter of Britain. The Scots, for instance, formulated a mythical history in the Picts and the Dál Riata royal lines. While they do eventually become factual lines, unlike those of Geoffrey, their origins are vague and often incorporate both aspects of mythical British history and mythical Irish history. The story of Gabhran especially incorporates elements of both those histories.
The Arthurian literary cycle is the best known part of the Matter of Britain. It has succeeded largely because it tells two interlocking stories that have intrigued many later authors. One concerns Camelot, usually envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of Arthur and Sir Lancelot. The other concerns the quests of the various knights to achieve the Holy Grail; some succeed (Galahad, Percival), and others fail (Lancelot).
The medieval tale of Arthur and his knights is full of Christian themes; those themes involve the destruction of human plans for virtue by the moral failures of their characters, and the quest for an important Christian relic. Finally, the relationships between the characters invited treatment in the tradition of courtly love, such as Lancelot and Guinevere, or Tristan and Iseult. In more recent years, the trend has been to attempt to link the tales of King Arthur and his knights with Celtic mythology, usually in highly romanticized, early twentieth century reconstructed versions.
Additionally, it is possible to read the Arthurian literature in general, and that concerned with the Grail tradition in particular, as an allegory of human development and spiritual growth (a theme explored by mythologist Joseph Campbell amongst others).
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| Author | Century | Œuvres |
|---|---|---|
| Béroul | 12th | Tristan |
| Chrétien de Troyes | 12th | Erec and Enide, Cligès, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, Perceval, the Story of the Grail |
| Geoffrey Chaucer | 14th | The Canterbury Tales |
| Geoffrey of Monmouth | 12th | Historia Regum Britanniae |
| Hartmann von Aue | 12th | Erec .. Ywain |
| Layamon | 13th | Brut |
| Thomas Malory | 15th | Le Morte d'Arthur |
| Marie de France | 12th | The Lais of Marie de France: Lai de Yonec, Lai de Frêne, Lai de Lanval (...) |
| Nennius | 9th | Historia Brittonum |
| Robert de Boron | 12th | Estoire dou Graal |
| Taliesin | 6th | Book of Taliesin |
| Thomas of Britain | 12th | Tristan and Iseult |
| Robert Wace | 12th | Roman de Brut, Roman de Rou |
| Wolfram von Eschenbach | 12th | Parzival |
| Raoul de Houdenc | 12th | Méraugis de Portlesguez |
| Païen de Maisières | 13th | La Demoiselle à la Mule (also called La Mule sans Frein) |
| Rustichello da Pisa | 13th | Roman de Roi Artus, Gyron le courtois, Meliadus de Leonnoys (Meliadus) |
| Ulrich von Zatzikhoven | 13th | Lanzelet |
| Œuvres | Century |
|---|---|
| L'Âtre Périlleux (on Gawain) | 13th century |
| Blandin de Cornouaille | 14th century |
| Le Chevalier à l'Épée | |
| Le Chevalier au Papegau | |
| La Demoiselle à la Mule | 12th century |
| Gliglois (hero who enters the service of Gawain) | |
| Hunbaut | |
| Life of Caradoc | |
| The Lancelot-Grail Cycle | 13th century |
| The Mabinogion (medieval Welsh) | |
| The Post-Vulgate Cycle | 13th century |
| Les Merveilles de Rigomer (Lancelot, Gawain and 58 knights) | 13th century |
| Perlesvaus ou le Haut Livre du Graal | 13th century |
| Le Roman de Jaufré | |
| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | |
| Prose Tristan |
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