The Legend of King Arthur

• King Arthur
• Balin and Balan
• Elaine
• Galahad
• Gareth and Lynette
• Gawain
• Guinevere
• Lancelot
• Mark
• Meleagant
• Merlin
• Mordred
• Morgan Le Fay
• Perceval
• The Holy Grail
• Excalibur
• The Siege Perilous
• Camelot

KING ARTHUR

King Arthur is the figure at the heart of the Arthurian legends. He is said to be the son of Uther Pendragon and Ygraine of Cornwall. Arthur is a near mythic figure in Celtic stories such as Culhwch and Olwen. In early Latin chronicles he is presented as a military leader, the dux bellorum. In later romance he is presented as a king and emperor. One of the questions that has occupied those interested in King Arthur is whether or not he is a historical figure. The debate has raged since the Renaissance when Arthur's historicity was vigorously defended, partly because the Tudor monarchs traced their lineage to Arthur and used that connection as a justification for their reign. Modern scholarship has generally assumed that there was some actual person at the heart of the legends, though not of course a king with a band of knights in shining armor--though O.J. Padel in "The Nature of Arthur" argues that "historical attributes of just the kind that we find attached to Arthur can be associated with a figure who was not historical to start with." If there is a historical basis to the character, it is clear that he would have gained fame as a warrior battling the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Since there is no conclusive evidence for or against Arthur's historicity, the debate will continue. But what can not be denied is the influence of the figure of Arthur on literature, art, music, and society from the Middle Ages to the present. Though there have been numerous historical novels that try to put Arthur into a sixth-century setting, it is the legendary figure of the late Middle Ages who has most captured the imagination. It is such a figure, the designer of an order of the best knights in the world, that figures in the major versions of the legend from Malory to Tennyson to T. H. White. Central to the myth is the downfall of Arthur's kingdom. It is undermined in the chronicle tradition by the treachery of Mordred. In the romance tradition that treachery is made possible because of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere.

BALIN AND BALAN

The story of Balin is recounted in the Old French Suite du Merlin and in Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Balin and Balan are the tragic brothers who, despite their nobility, wind up killing each other. Balin in particular seems cursed by fate. For example, when he offers protection to a knight, he is unable to foresee--or even see--the danger that kills that knight, the treacherous Garlon who rides invisible. When he attempts to avenge the death, he does so in the castle of King Garlon and winds up defending himself and wounding the lord of the castle, King Pellam, with the sacred spear that pierced the side of Christ. Though the action was performed blindly and in self-defense, the blow is the Dolorous Stroke, which lays the land waste and produces a wound that can only be healed when the Grail is achieved. Balin's misfortune lasts to his final act, combat with his brother, whom he doesn't recognize. In the battle, both are fatally wounded. Ironically, this battle was fated from the first appearance of Balin in Malory's version of the story, when he proves himself to be "a passynge good man" by removing a sword that a lady has been forced to wear and thus, because he wins a second sword becoming known as The Knight with Two Swords. After achieving this test of virtue, he decides to keep the sword even after being warned that if he does so he will slay the man he loves most in the world and bring about his own destruction. Unwilling to believe this prophecy, he keeps the sword and seals the doom of his brother and himself.

Tennyson makes Balin an important figure in developing some of the major themes in The Idylls of the King. His Balin is known as "the Savage" (Malory called him "Balin Le Savage") and figures in the struggle of Arthur to destroy the bestial both in the realm and in his subjects and thus to raise themselves to a higher level, the level of the angels. Published in 1885 in the volume Tiresias and Other Poems, the "Balin and Balan" idyll was the last to be written. Swinburne also retold the story of Balin in his The Tale of Balen, which follows Malory much more closely than Tennyson's version does. The story of Balin is modernized by John Steinbeck in The Acts of King Arthur. In one of the most interesting parts of the first novel in her Guinevere trilogy, Persia Woolley presents Balin and Balan as two sides of the same personality.

ELAINE OF ASTOLAT / THE LADY OF SHALOTT

Elaine of Astolat is the maiden who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot and floats in a barge to Camelot with a letter for Lancelot clutched in her lifeless hand. She appears in Malory and in Tennyson's idyll of "Lancelot and Elaine". The figure of Elaine in the barge became one of the most popular Victorian images.

GALAHAD

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Galahad is the son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic. Galahad was conceived when Elaine tricked Lancelot into thinking he was meeting and sleeping with Guinevere. Galahad is best known as the knight who achieves the quest for the Holy Grail. As the chosen knight he is allowed to sit in the Siege Perilous, the seat at the Round Table that is reserved for the Grail Knight. The first appearance of Galahad in medieval romance is in the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle. His coming is predicted in the first romance in the cycle, the Estoire del saint Graal where he is said to be the ninth in the line of Nascien, who was baptized by Josephus, son of Joseph of Arimathea, and who was one of those who is said to have brought Christianity to Britain. Galahad remains the pre-eminent Grail Knight in Malory's Morte d'Arthur and in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. A shorter poem by Tennyson, "Sir Galahad," presented the popular image of the perfect knight whose "strength was as the strength of ten" because his "heart is pure." The popular painting "Sir Galahad"(1862) by George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) also presents Galahad as an idealized figure.

GARETH AND LYNETTE

Gareth is the youngest brother of Sir Gawain and the son of Lot and Morgause of Orkney. He plays a significant role in Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Malory's "Tale of Sir Gareth" was apparently created by Malory. It presents Gareth as an exemplar of chivalry who is knighted by and devoted to Sir Lancelot and who acts chivalrously towards Lynette despite her abuse of him. Lancelot blindly slays Gareth in his rescue of Guinevere from the stake. When Gawain hears of this, he turns against Lancelot and demands that Arthur pursue him to punish him, thus setting the stage for Mordred's takeover. In Tennyson's Idyll of Gareth and Lynette, although Gareth, like almost everyone in Camelot, is not what he seems, he proves himself better than he seems to the sharp-tongued Lynette and the misjudging Sir Kay when he defeats a series of knightly opponents and rescures Lyonors. Gareth also figures in modern works like T. H. White's The Once and Future King and E. M. R. Ditmas's Gareth of Orkney (1956).

GAWAIN

Gawain is generally said to be the nephew of Arthur. His parents are Lot of Orkney and Morgause (though his mother is said to be Anna in Geoffrey of Monmouth). Upon the death of Lot, he becomes the head of the Orkney clan, which includes in many sources his brothers Aggravain, Gaheris, and Gareth, and his half-brother Mordred. Gawain figures prominently in many romances. In France he is generally presented as one who has adventures paralleling in diptych fashion but not overshadowing the hero's, whether that hero be Lancelot or Perceval. In the English tradition, however, it is much more common for Gawain to be the principal hero and the exemplar of courtesy and chivalry, as he is in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the other Arthurian romances of the Alliterative Revival. In Malory's Morte d'Arthur, however, he has a role similar to that in the French romances, in that Lancelot is the principal hero.

GUINEVERE
Guinevere is said to be the daughter of Leodegrance of Cameliard in late medieval romance. She marries Arthur and then has a love affair with Lancelot which causes the downfall of Camelot. The Welsh Triads speak of "Arthur's Three Great Queens," all named Gwenhwyfar (Triad 56) and name Gwenhwyfar as "more faithless" than the three faithless wives of the Island of Britain (Triad 80). One of the earliest Arthurian stories is about the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagant (or Melyagaunce or Melwas). the story is told in The Life of St. Gildas (c. 1130) by Caradoc of Llancarfan and in the Welsh "Dialogue of Melwas and Gwenhwyfar." It is the subject of the earliest known Arthurian sculpture on the archivolt of the Porta della Pescheria on the Modena Cathedral. The story of the abduction is the central action in Chr�tien de Troye's Lancelot and appears in Malory. Tennyson presents Guinevere as a sinner who was "spoilt the purpose" of Arthur's life. Nevertheless, Tennyson does bring Guinevere and other female characters to the fore, as does one of his contemporaries, William Morris. In his poem "The Defence of Guenevere," Morris is the first to give the Queen her own voice, thus beginning a tradition that is continued in Sara Teasdale's poem "Guenevere," Dorothy Parker's "Guinevere at Her Fireside," and Wendy Mnookin's collection Guenever Speaks, as well as in many contemporary novels told from Guinevere's point of view, such as Parke Godwin's Beloved Exile and Persia Wooley's Guinevere trilogy.

LANCELOT

Lancelot is the greatest of Arthur's knights. Son of King Ban of Benwick, he is known as Lancelot of the Lake or Lancelot du Lac because he was raised by the Lady of the Lake. Among his many adventures are the rescue of the abducted Queen Guinevere from Meleagant, an unsuccessful quest for the Holy Grail and the rescue of the queen after she is condemned to be burned to death for adultery. Lancelot is loved by Elaine of Astolat, who dies because her love is unrequited. Elaine, the daugher of King Pelles, tricks Lancelot into sleeping with her and from that union Galahad is born. His love for Guinevere ultimately brings about the downfall of Arthur's realm.

MARK

Mark is King of Cornwall and as brother of Tristan's mother (named Elyzabeth in Malory; Blanscheflur in Gottfried; Blauncheflour in Sir Tristrem) uncle to Sir Tristan. Mark appears in early Celtic literature such as the Triad telling the story of Tristan as one of the three powerful swidherds of Britain. In this Triad, "Drystan son of Tallwch" watches over the swine of "March" (Mark) while the swineherd delivers a message from Drystan to Essylt. The Welsh work was the source for an episode in Masefield's play Tristan and Isolt, in which Arthur appears as a "Captain of the Host" and is subordinate to Mark. There is some evidence for an actual Welsh nobleman, March son of Meirchyawn, behind the figure of Mark. In the ninth-century Life of Paul Aurelian (St. Pol a monk of Landevennec and patron saint of Paul in Cornwall) by Wrmonoc, Mark is identified with Cunomorus (Welsh Kynvawr), who ruled Cornwall in the early sixth century, and who probably had his seat at Castle Dore, a hillfort near Fowey. Wrmonoc says of St. Paul: "fama ejus regis Marci pervolat ad aures quem alio nomine Quonomorium vocant" [his fame flew to the ears of King Marc, known also as Cunomorus]. Cunomorus and Tristan are associated on the famous Tristan Stone (also located in Fowey), a memorial stone commemorating Drustanus, son of Cunomorus. Mark figures in the medieval Tristan and Isolt tales as the rival to Tristan, originally as a basically noble man caught up in the tragic circumstances, but increasingly as a figure who exhibits traits inconsistent with chivalrous conduct. He, or a modern analogue of his character, also appears in modern reworkings of the legend, including those by Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Martha Kinross, Don Marquis, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, John Erskine, John Updike, and many others.

MELEAGANT

Meleagant (or Melyag(r)aunce or Melwas) is best known as the wicked knight who abducts Guinevere and is ultimately slain by Lancelot. The earliest form of the name, Melwas, has been interpreted as meaning "prince of death" or "princely youth." The classic account of the abduction story is in Chr�tien de Troyes's Lancelot or the Knight of the Cart, in which Lancelot, because of his great love for Guinevere, suffers the ignominy of riding in a cart, a form of transportation reserved for criminals so that he can continue his quest to free her. The story is, however, told by others both before and after Chr�tien. It can be found in The Life of St. Gildas (c. 1130) by Caradoc of Llancarfan, who says that Melwas, ruler in the summer region ("in aestiva regione"), is attacked by Arthur because he carried off Guinevere. In this version, peace is restored with the help of Gildas. A Welsh poem, formerly thought to be a dialogue between Arthur and Guinevere is now titled the "Dialogue of Melwas and Gwenhwyfar." In addition to Chr�tien's version, the story is found in French medieval literature in the Vulgate Lancelot, which is the source for Malory's "Knight of the Cart" episode. In the modern period, the story of Guinevere's abduction by "Melvas" is told by Thomas Peacock in The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829), in which the rescue is effected with the help of Taliessin. The slaying of "Mellyagraunce" by Lancelot is alluded to in Morris's "The Defence of Guenevere". Other versions of the story are found in the novels Galahad by John Erskine, The Once and Future King by T. H. White, and Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger; in the play Meliagrance and Guenevere; and in the film The First Knight.

MERLIN

MERLIN, Arthur's adviser, prophet and magician, is basically the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain combined the Welsh traditions about a bard and prophet named Myrddin with the story that the ninth-century chronicler Nennius tells about Ambrosius (that he had no human father and that he prophesied the defeat of the British by the Saxons). Geoffrey gave his character the name Merlin us rather than Merdinus (the normal Latinization of Myrddin) because the latter might have suggested to his Anglo-Norman audience the vulgar word "merde." In Geoffrey's book, Merlin assists Uther Pendragon and is responsible for transporting the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland, but he is not associated with Arthur. Geoffrey also wrote a book of "Prophecies of Merlin" before his History. The Prophecies were then incorporated into the History as its seventh book. These led to a tradition that is manifested in other medieval works, in eighteenth-century almanac writers who made predictions under such names as Merlinus Anglicus, and in the presentaion of Merlin in later literature. Merlin became very popular in the Middle Ages. He is central to a major text of the thirteenth-century French Vulgate cycle, and he figures in a number of other French and English romances. Sir Thomas Malory, in the Morte d'Arthur presents him as the adviser and guide to Arthur. In the modern period Merlin's popularity has remained constant. He figures in works from the Renaissance to the modern period. In The Idylls of the King, Tennyson makes him the architect of Camelot. Mark Twain, parodying Tennyson's Arthurian world, makes Merlin a villain, and in one of the illustrations to the first edition of Twain's work illustrator Dan Beard's Merlin has Tennyson's face. Numerous novels, poems and plays center around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture, Merlin is perhaps the most frequently portrayed Arthurian character.

MORDRED

Mordred is the illegitimate son of Arthur by his half-sister Morgause.

MORGAN LE FAY

Morgan le Fay is, in Malory's Morte d'Arthur Arthur's half sister, the daughter of Arthur's mother Igrain and her first husband, the Duke of Cornwall. She is also presented as an adversary of Arthur's: she gives Excalibur to her lover Accolon so he can use it against Arthur (a story retold in Madison J. Cawein's poem "Accolon of Gaul") and, when that plot fails, she steals the scabbard of Excalibur which protects Arthur and throws it into a lake. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight she is presented as the instigator of the Green Knight's visit to Arthur's court, partly motivated by her desire to frighten Guinevere. Her enmity towards Guinevere has its origin in the Vulgate Lancelot, where Morgan is having an affair with Guiomar, Guinevere's cousin, and Guinevere puts an end to it. Despite the motif of Morgan's enmity towards Arthur and Guinevere, she is also presented as one of the women who takes Arthur in a barge to Avalon to be healed. This view of Morgan as healer has its roots in the earliest accounts of her and perhaps to her origin in Celtic mythology. In the Vita Merlini (c. 1150) Morgan is said to be the first of nine sisters who rule The Fortunate Isle or the Isle of Apples and is presented as a healer as well as a shape-changer. It is to this island that Arthur is brought (though Morgan awaits him and heals him rather than actually fetching him herself). Morgan proclaims that she can heal Arthur if he stays with her for a long time. Morgan is also said to be the wife of King Uriens and the mother of Yvain or Ywain. Morgan rarely appears in post-medieval works--until the twentieth century when there is a renewed interest in her character. Sometimes she is conflated with Morgause and made to be the mother of Mordred, as is the case in John Boorman's movie Excalibur and a number of modern novels. Fay Sampson has made her the central figure in five novels. One of the most interesting modern portrayals of Morgan appears in Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex where, after a life devoted to evil, she decides to become a nun because of her belief that "corruption were sooner brought amongst humankind by the forces of virtue." Morgan actually does become a defender of good in modern stories like Roger Zelazny's "The Last Defender of Camelot" and Sanders Anne Laubenthal's Excalibur.

PERCEVAL

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Perceval is the Grail knight or one of the Grail knights in numerous medieval and modern stories of the Grail quest. Perceval first appears in Chr�tien de Troyes's unfinished Perceval or Conte del Graal (c.1190). The incomplete story prompted a series of "continuations," in the third of which (c. 1230), by an author named Manessier, Perceval achieves the Grail. (An analogue to Chr�tien's tale is found in the thirteenth-century Welsh romance Peredur.) Chr�tien's story was also the inspiration for one of the greatest romances of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (c. 1200-1210). As in Chr�tien's story, Wolfram's Parzival is initially naive and foolish, having been sheltered from the dangers of the chivalric world by his mother. In both versions Perceval/Parzival is the guest of the wounded Fisher King (called Anfortas by Wolfram but unnamed by Chr�tien) at whose castle he witnesses the Grail procession and fails to ask--because he has been advised of the impoliteness of asking too many questions--the significance of what he sees and, in Wolfram's romance, what causes Anfortas's pain. This failure is calamitous because asking the question would have cured the king. Other medieval versions of the story of Perceval can be found in the French texts known as the Didot-Perceval and Perlesvaus (also called The High Book of the Grail or Le Haut Livre du Graal). �

Perceval is the central character in the fourteenth-century Middle English romance Sir Perceval of Galles which is apparently based on Chr�tien's tale but which omits the Grail motif entirely. Perceval is one of three Grail knights in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the others being Galahad and Bors. Perceval functions as the narrator of the dramatic monologue which comprises most of Tennyson's idyll "The Holy Grail." In this idyll, much of what Perceval tells focuses on Galahad as the central Grail knight. Richard Wagner, drawing his inspiration primarily from Wolfram von Eschenbach though greatly simplifying Wolfram's plot, wrote the opera Parsifal in 1882. As in the medieval stories, Parsifal is presented initially as a fool, but is pure enough to heal the wounded Anfortas and to become himself the keeper of the Grail.

Among the twentieth century works to deal with Perceval/Parsifal are the poem "Parsifal" by Arthur Symons, several of Charles Williams's Arthurian poems, Robert Trevelyan's The Birth of Parsival (1905) and The New Parsifal: An Operatic Fable (1914), and the novels Percival and the Presence of God (1978) by Jim Hunter, Parsifal (1988) by Peter Vansittart, and Richard Monaco's tetralogy (containing Parsival [1977], The Grail War [1979], The Final Quest [1980], and Blood and Dreams [1985]). One of the most interesting Arthurian films is Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978), a fairly faithful rendition of Chr�tien's Conte del Graal. The story of Perceval is recast in a modern setting in the film The Fisher King (1990).

THE HOLY GRAIL

The Holy Grail is generally considered to be the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and the one used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch his blood as he hung on the cross. This significance, however, was introduced into the Arthurian legends by Robert de Boron in his verse romance Joseph d'Arimathie (sometimes also called Le Roman de l'Estoire dou Graal), which was probably written in the last decade of the twelfth century or the first couple of years of the thirteenth. In earlier sources and in some later ones, the grail is something very different. The term "grail" comes from the Latin gradale, which meant a dish brought to the table during various stages (Latin "gradus") or courses of a meal. In Chr�tien and other early writers, such a plate is intended by the term "grail." Chr�tien, for example, speaks of "un graal," a grail or platter and thus not a unique item. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival presents the grail as a stone which provides sustenance and prevents anyone who beholds it from dying within the week. In medieval romance, the grail was said to have been brought to Glastonbury in Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and his followers. In the time of Arthur, the quest for the Grail was the highest spiritual pursuit. For Chr�tien and his continuators, Perceval is the knight who must achieve the quest for the Grail. For other French authors, as for Malory, Galahad is the chief Grail knight, though others (Perceval and Bors in the Morte d'Arthur) do achieve the quest. Tennyson is perhaps the author who has the greatest influence on the conception of the Grail quest for the modern English-speaking world through his Idylls and his short poem "Sir Galahad". However, James Russell Lowell's "The Vision of Sir Launfal", one of the most popular of nineteenth-century American poems gave to generations a democratized notion of the Grail quest as something achievable by anyone who is truly charitable. The notion that the Grail story originated in fertility myths was popularized by Jessie Weston in her book From Ritual to Romance, which was used by T. S. Eliot in the writing of The Waste Land. Eliot's poem, in turn, influenced many of the important novelists of his and succeeding generations, including Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

EXCALIBUR AND THE SWORD IN THE STONE

The Sword in the Stone, sometimes a sword in an anvil, is drawn by Arthur as proof of his birthright and of his nobility. It is both a test and a miraculous sign of his royalty. The sword drawn from the stone is different from the one given to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake. The latter is always referred to as Excalibur; the former is called by that name only once, when Arthur draws the sword at a crucial moment in the first battle to test his sovereignty (Vinaver I, 19): "thenne he drewe his swerd Excalibur, but it was so breyght in his enemyes eyen that it gaf light lyke thirty torchys."

THE SIEGE PERILOUS

The Siege Perilous is the seat (from the French si�ge) at the Round Table in which none but the chosen Grail knight may sit without disastrous consequences. Malory tells us that it was made by Merlin (II, 907 in Vinaver's ed.). When Galahad arrives at Camelot, his name appears on the seat destined for him.

CAMELOT

Although Camelot is, for most modern readers, the legendary center of King Arthur's realm, in many medieval texts Arthur holds court at Carleon or some other city. Camelot is first mentioned in line 34 of Chr�tien de Troyes's Lancelot; and the name does not appear in all manuscripts of that poem. In the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle, Camelot becomes the principal city of Arthur's realm and remains so in many, though certainly not all, later texts. For the English-speaking world Camelot is Arthur's central city because of Malory, who identifies it with Winchester. The image many modern readers have of the Camelot coincides with Tennyson's description of it in Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" as "many-tower'd Camelot." Tennyson's image of Camelot is much more complex, however, in "Gareth and Lynette" in The Idylls of the King where it is descibed as a City built to music and where it is suggestive of Tennyson's theme of appearance and reality "For there is nothing in it as it seems / Saving the King." Since Camelot is a legendary place, it is perhaps futile to speak of its location. However, John Leland identified it with Cadbury Castle. Excavations carried out at the site in 1966-1970 confirmed that this large hill fort (with 1200 yards of perimeter surrounding an eighteen-acre enclosure and rising about 250 feet above the surrounding countryside) was refortified in the Arthurian era and was occupied by a powerful leader and his followers. More recently, largely through the influence of T. H. White, Camelot has come to be associated with the values Camelot is believed to have represented (White's "Might for Right"). The moral overtones still often remain but sometimes "Camelot" is used only to represent an ideal place.

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