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LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR Richard Barber THE BOYDELL PRESS LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR LEGENDS OF KING ARTHUR selected and presented by Richard Barber THE BOYDELL PRESS Introduction, selection and adaptation © Richard Barber 2001 AllRightsReserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2001 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 0 85115 837 4 Arthur and Tristan originally appeared in Legends of King Arthur, published by The Folio Society in 2000, and are reprinted with their permission. The editor and publishers are grateful to the following translators and publishers for their permission to reprint extracts from copyright material: The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1966), copyright © Lewis Thorpe 1966; The High Book of the Grail, translatedbyNigelBryant(D.S.Brewer,Cambridge1978),copyright©NigelBryant 1978; The Death of King Arthur translated by James Cable (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth,1971),copyright©JamesCable1971;RomanvanWalewein(Arthurian Archives: DutchRomancesI)translatedbyDavidF.Johnson(D.S.Brewer,Cambridge, 2000)copyright©DavidF.Johnson;TristanbyGottfriedvonStrassburg,translatedby A.T.Hatto(PenguinClassics,Harmondsworth,1960),copyright©A.T.Hatto1960; The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, retold by Joseph Bédier, translated by Hilaire Belloc (George Allen & Company Ltd, London, 1913) copyright © the Estate of Hilaire Belloc. Thetexthasbeenslightlymodifiedfromtheeditionscitedaboveinordertoharmonise spellingofnamesandtoavoidabruptchangesofstyleandvocabulary. Suchchanges have been kept to the minimum required to ensure that the text reads easily. SirGawainandtheGreenKnightisreprintedbypermissionofOxfordUniversityPressfrom Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Keith Harrison (Oxford University Press, Oxford,1998)copyright©KeithHarrison1983,1998. Thetranslationwasoriginally commissioned by The Folio Society. The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA Printed in Finland CONTENTS Introduction 1 ARTHUR 5 ARTHUR THE EMPEROR 13 ARTHUR AND THE ROUND TABLE 53 GAWAIN 153 SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT 159 THE ROMANCE OF SIR GAWAIN 225 TRISTAN AND ISEULT 315 TRISTAN AND ISEULT 323 TRISTAN THE COURTIER 395 Acknowledgements 461 Further Reading 462 ILLUSTRATIONS ArthurfightsaRomangeneral,fromThebookofthetreasureofhistories,written and illuminated about 1415 ClichéBibliothèqueNationaledeFrance,Paris,MSArsenal5077,f.298 King Arthur and King Ban plan a tournament as Queen Guenevere and courtiers watch Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, MS fr. 95, f. 291 The Wedding of Arthur and Guenevere inChroniquesdeHainault © Brussels, Royal Library of Belgium, f. 39v The lady tempts Sir Gawain: from the unique manuscripts of Sir Gawain andtheGreenKnight By permission of the British Library, MS Cotton Nero X, f. 125v James Archer,LaMortd’Arthur, oil painting 1860 © Manchester City Art Galleries The Tristan stained glass for Harden Grange executed by Morris & Company, 1862 Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, West Yorkshire, UK/Bridgeman Art Library James Archer, Iseult Private Collection Introduction Introduction INTRODUCTION THE IMAGE OF ARTHUR has haunted the poets and writers of westernEuropefornearlyninecenturies,andthereisnosignofanendto the reign of the ‘once and future king’ in the world of literature. The fi Arthurianepicisaspopularasubjectnowasitwaswhenitwas rstfash- ioned, and the stories about Arthur and the heroes associated with him come in a bewildering number of guises. There has never been just one authentic version of his deeds, and new Arthurs are still being created fi apace.Allthisspringsfroma guresoobscurethatwecannotevenbesure that he existed, a shadow of a shadow in the fragments of history and poetrythatsurvivefromsixth-centuryWales.Hisdeedshaveoften,ifnot always, been those of other men; even the twelve great battles which the Welsh chronicler Nennius tells us about in the eighth century may be those involving other leaders, and his last victory over the Saxons at MountBadon,centreofsomuchspeculationandinvention,isnotattrib- uted to him in the one contemporary record of it. What inspired the Welsh poets, however, was not the hero himself, whoever he may have been,butanidea,anideawhichwasarallying-calltoapeopleinretreat, drivenbytheSaxonsintothewesternextremitiesofthelandthathadonce been theirs: ‘Their land they shall lose, except wild Wales.’ Arthur, who had once held the Saxons at bay, would return to conquer them. And, in a manner of speaking, he has done so. Later medieval stories about him make him emperor of much of Europe; and his story was called ‘the matter of Britain’. The other great ‘matters’ which medieval poets celebrated were those of Troy and France, tales now long forgottenorbestknowninother,olderversions.Arthurcametoplaya leading part in the literature of France and Germany, and later of England,conqueringmindsandimaginationsifnotbodiesandlands.It fi is he, obscure and perhaps ctional, who is the archetypal medieval fi heroic gure,nottherealandimperialCharlemagne,aroundwhomthe matter of France revolved. 2 Introduction fi ff Muchofthecreditforthecreationofthis guremustgotoGeo reyof Monmouth, probably of Welsh blood, but trained in the courts of the NormankingsandtheschoolsofParis.Seekingtorecordwhatscrapshe fi could nd of the Welsh past, he shaped a history of the British people whichmatchedtheexploitsofRomeandFrance,inwhichArthuralmost conquers Rome, echoing the careers of the emperors of the later Roman fi periodwhobeganasBritishgenerals.Itwas ction,butfarfromimplau- sible,anditcaughttheimaginationofhiscontemporaries;afewgrumbled thattherewasnotraceofArthurinreliablebooks,butforthemostpart ff Geo rey’s work was taken up with enthusiasm, and incorporated into fi historical chronicles, where it lled an awkward blank in the past. From chronicles in Latin, poets retold the story in French verse; and with the adventofanewandsophisticatedcourtliteratureinFrenchandGerman, the Arthurian legends began to take shape. ThemostremarkablethingaboutthestoriesgroupedaroundArthuris fi the extraordinary rapidity with which they were created. The rst romances appear in the middle of the twelfth century, about 1160; by 1225therewasahugeandcomplexmassofinterwoventales,a‘cycle’of stories about the heroes of the Round Table – which itself had only appeared in the 1150s. Even more dramatic was the growth of stories abouttheGrail,inventedintheearly1190s;withintwentyyearstherewas ff not just one fully developed romance, but at least three widely di ering versionsofitsstory.Itseemedthatthelegendsgatheredupintheirwake whatever was new and exciting: the idea of courtly love, the new enthu- siasm for chivalry, the sport of tournaments, even the spiritual teachings oftheCistercianorderandthedebateabouttherealpresenceofChrist’s body in the Mass. Perhapspreciselybecausetherewasnorealhistoricalcoretothestories, fi theywerefreetodevelopaccordingtoeachwriter’sownagenda.We nda hugerangeofstyles.Thereisanentrancingsimplicitytosomeoftheearly Tristan poems; yet Gottfried von Strassburg tells the same story in an exceptionally sophisticated, highly philosophical style. Chrétien de Troyes explores the psychology of his characters in long monologues, whilelaterwritersprefertoplungeintolengthydescriptionsofthephys- ical violence of the tournament. Wolfram von Eschenbach envelops the Grail story in alchemical lore and eastern mysteries, ranging magpie-like throughavaststoreofknowledge.AndthecreatorofGalahaddrawson Cistercian theology to create a didactic story on the spiritual values of knighthood. Yetbythemid-thirteenthcentury,somethingakintoanacceptedcore ofstorieshademerged.Atthebeginningofthatcentury,anobscurewriter calledRobertdeBoronhadtakenthestoryoftheGrailandhadgivenita Introduction 3 prehistory, a kind of Hollywood ‘prequel’, which in a stroke of aston- ishing boldness created a chronicle of the guardians of the Grail from Joseph of Arimathea, who had overseen the burial of Christ, to King Arthur’sdays.ThestoryofArthur,inthisversion,wasintimatelybound up with the story of man’s redemption through Christ, and this over- arching concept is present in the so-called ‘Vulgate Cycle’, which spans fi theperiodfromtheCruci xiontoArthur’sdeath,bringinginthetaleof Arthur himself, the adventures of Lancelot and the quest for the Grail, before recounting the tragedy of the last days of Arthur’s reign. Later writersreshapedandextendedthismaterialaccordingtotheirowntastes; Lancelot’sstorypredominatesinoneversion,andtheGrailstoryisdrawn intothisentirelyseculartaleoftheloveofArthur’sgreatestknightforhis queen, Guinevere. Another huge romance was centred on Tristan, and fi when it eventually winds its way to a conclusion, we nd the death of Tristan and Iseult intertwined with the achievement of the Grail, with Arthur almost absent. Although the stories continued to be read and adapted in the four- fi teenth and fteenth centuries, and were as popular as ever, the main creativeperiodoftheromanceswasover.Therearestrangenewtalessuch as that of Perceforest, a type of secular parallel to the prehistory of the Grail which takes the Round Table back to heathen times, before the birth of Christ; there are oddities, such as Arthur’s adventures as knight-errantaccompaniedbyatalkingparrotinthetalecalledTheKnight with the Parrot; and there are isolated masterpieces like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, taking a single hero and a single story out of the throng. As forthevastearlierromances,theirsheerlengthhadbecomeanobstacleto fi enjoyment,andwe ndaseriesofattemptstoproduceamoremanageable versionofthewholestory,inItaly,inGermany,atthecourtoftheducde Berry in France, and, most notably, in England, where Sir Thomas Malory, drawing on a wide range of French and English sources besides the Vulgate Cycle, forged the most powerful of all the accounts of the Round Table. MaloryhasachievedsuchastatusinEnglishliteraturethatitiseasyto forgettherichandvariedpastwhichliesbehindhiscoherentwork.When VictorianwritersrediscoveredtheworldofArthur,itwaslargelythrough Malory’spages,andthesuccessiveprintingsofhisworkintheearlynine- teenthcenturymatchtheprogressoftheArthurianrevival.Onlygradually did the wider canvas of medieval romance become known again, as scholars worked on previously disregarded manuscripts, and translations ff were o ered to the wider world. Indeed, the great Vulgate Cycle version fi hadtowaitforacompleteeditionuntilthe1890s,andthe rstfulltrans- fi lation nally emerged in the 1990s.

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The image of Arthur has haunted the poets and writers of western Europe for nearly nine centuries, and there is no sign of an end to the reign of the 'once and future king' in the world of literature. The Arthurian epic is as popular a subject now as it was when it was first fashioned, and the stori
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