English 245 with Dr. Gary Gutchess
Tompkins-Cortland Community College

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Lessons

1. Classical Britain

2. Beowulf 1

3. Beowulf 2

4. Middle Ages

5. Romance

6. Sir Gawain

7. Malory

8. Chaucer's Miller

9. Wife of Bath

10. Religious Protest

11. Biblical Drama

12. Play of Mankind

13. Early Modern Period

14. Thomas More

15. Philip Sidney

16. Print Culture

17. Walter Raleigh

18. Twelfth Night 1

19. Twelfth Night  2

20. Civil War

21. An Age of Irreverence

22. Aphra Behn

23. Reading Papers

24. Gulliver

25. Rape of the Lock

26. School for Scandal

27. New God

28. Revolution

Final Exam

               ***   5. ROMANCE   ***

Medieval Romance and Courtly Love
Vol. 1A, pages 12-20, 163-200 from Longman 3rd ed.
"Social and Religious Order," "Continental and Insular Cultures," "Women, Courtliness and Courtly Love," and "Romance" 1A 12-20. "Arthurian Myth" and "Marie de France" 1A 163-200.
 

Looking for Arthur!

NOTES AND COMMENTARY
Adapted and enlarged by Dr. G from David Damrosch, et al.,
 Teaching British Literature (New York: Longman, 2003)

You have heard of Arthur? Gawain? Morgan le Fay? Of all our great inherited story clusters in British history, the Arthurian tradition is by far the most used and abused in pop culture today. The selections in book 1A of the Longman anthology illustrate the emergence of Arthurian literature and development of Arthurian legend across at least three centuries.

• The historicity of Arthur is debated by literary scholars and archaeologists. In an apparently early Celtic source, the Welsh Mabinogion , a tribal chief named Arthur initiates young warriors into his spiritual fellowship, and he battles totemic beasts. (Like the name "Beowulf" in Saxon, the name "Arthur" in Welsh means bear.) This source and other apparently early Celtic sources, like works ascribed to the seventh century bard Taliesin, are impossible to date with assurance. Perhaps none of them were written until after the Norman Conquest and after Geoffrey of Monmouth (below).

• Latin chronicles that mention the years after departure of the Roman legions from Britain refer to a British victory over the Saxons at the Battle of Mount Badon, and the name Arthur is associated with this battle in the annals of Wales. However, the name may have been inserted in Norman times. Bede and other early sources mention Badon but not Arthur.

• Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman writing for a Norman French aristocratic audience, gives the earliest surviving detailed accounts of Arthur. Geoffrey's History of the Kings of England (1136) portrays Arthur as both a new Aeneas and a conqueror of Rome, but it dresses this imperial Roman figure in Celtic clothing, including Arthur's Cornish mother Igraine, his father Uther Pendragon, adviser Merlin, the sword Excalibur, his birth at Tintagel, his death at Camlann and final rest in Avalon.

• The Normans play up Arthur as anti-Saxon (part of a Norman propaganda effort to portray themselves as liberators of the British from the Saxons). Later imperialist Plantagenet kings (Henry II, Edward I, and Edward III) invoke Arthur to buttress their own royal claims to Celtic territories.

• Transforming epic to romance, French writers after Geoffrey add the chivalric Round Table, courtly love, the Lancelot/Guinevere affair, and Holy Grail mystery. The Arthurian legend bulks larger is France than in England with an enormous volume of verse narratives and prose cycles in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. French writer

Marie de France (claiming to use Breton sources but herself probably connected to the court of Henry II) uses a "once upon a time" Arthurian backdrop to critique royal power, and to assert a place for dominant women and erotic fantasy.

• In the turbulent 14th century, the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight looks back at Arthurian romance nostalgically as the model of the chivalric ideal and good manners of bygone times.  More on this great poem in Lesson 6.

• Also in 14th century Chaucer’s Wife of Bath uses the Arthurian court to deliver a protest against sexual violence and misogynist bias supporting that same chivalric ideal. More on Chaucer's highly creative uses of romance in Lessons 8-9.

• And the largest elaboration of Arthurian matter in Britain in the 15th century,  Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, composed in prison during an extended civil war, darkly echoes that strife in the tragic final days of Arthur’s Britain. More on Malory, the first printed book on Arthur, in Lesson 7.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of England
Geoffrey’s asserted translation of ancient Celtic Arthurian material was met by dismissive skepticism (even outrage) in his own time. Why should a serious Oxford scholar like Geoffrey write such imaginary fiction and claim that it is historical fact? Much as Bede and other monastics used stories of saints and miracles to cultivate the church, Norman and Angevin rulers in Britain after 1066 used political pseudo-history to support their  pretensions to legitimacy and rights to turf. To this end they retained scholars and bards in their courts to do the research and spinning. Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to have been retained to write History of the Kings of England by Robert Duke of Gloucester, to whom the book is dedicated. Gloucester was uncle and apparently tutor of the future Henry II (the powerful king of "Lion in Winter" fame), so Geoffrey's reputation was to grow with the family fortunes.

Geoffrey boldly places England in the center of ancient history, linked to  Troy and Rome.  His Arthur is born from both British kings and a Roman imperial family derived from Constantine the Great. He is a founder of the Normans as he expands his empire to the continent, and settles his retainers in Anjou (Sir Kay) and Normandy (Sir Bedivere). Thus the Norman Conquest becomes simply a reunification of Arthur's old kingdom. The model for all of this is the Roman epic poet Virgil whose Trojan hero Aeneas’ conquers Latium, but Latium is the place from which the founders of Troy had originated in the very distant past. Is it a bit like proposing that English, Irish, French and Spanish had settled the New World long before the so-called "Native American" Indians arrived, so the European conquest of the New World was simply a return of rightful ancient homelands?

And what about the Anglo-Saxons that the Normans pushed aside, the "people of England." If he makes the Anglo-Saxons God’s instruments in punishing the sins of the Britons, Geoffrey also makes them scapegoats, unwanted intruders. The Normans free the British from Saxon occupation and, by implication, lift God's curse.

Geoffrey says his story is based on a "very ancient book written in "the British language," but he appears to mean a language derived from Trojan or "crooked Greek" (the language of Brutus), part way on the path to becoming medieval Welsh. (Recall that Caesar's druids wrote in Greek, though their everyday language was a form of Celtic.)  If the ancient British book existed, it probably would have been Geoffrey’s own inspiration to shape its content to fit the concerns of twelfth-century England. Geoffrey's repeated emphasis on the disaster of political infidelity and division must have struck deep chords in an England mired in rebellion and anarchy following the death of Henry I in the 1130s.

The Celtic Druids had long since vanished by Geoffrey's time, but the prophet and magician Merlin recalls them with legendary powers. Merlin knows the future and guides it into being, sometimes by shape-shifting and manipulative illusion. He has independence, like the high poets of early Wales and Ireland, allowing him to mock or criticize his king with impunity. The "Giant's Ring" Stonehenge, which Merlin magically transports from Ireland as a memorial to dead heroes in the British struggle against the Saxons, is a place in which the sick can be cured. This may mean that the dead heroes can be raised to life in it, as in Greek and Celtic rites of necromancy or consultation with spirits of the dead (compare Homer, Virgil and Dante).

Gerald of Wales
It is Henry II whose court prophet tells the monks of Glastonbury where they will find Arthur's body, if they dig deep enough. Just as having the saint's dead bones gave power to the possessor, Arthur's relics come to the aid of Henry II. The monks make out very well, too, as their abbey becomes a tourist destination.

Edward I
Edward uses Geoffrey of Monmouth’s narrative of the Trojan origins of England to show that the whole of the British Isles was set up originally as one kingdom. Edward’s letter does tell the story of the division of the island among Brutus’ three sons, but adds the crucial detail of Locrine retaining "royal dignity" as first born. He thus deploys the Trojan myth to underwrite primogeniture and an ancient claim to the overlordship of Scotland.

The Scots’ reply, reported second-hand to Edward by his agents at the Papal court, is the counter-spin. They critique the myth and rely on the non-narrative force of charter and bureaucratic record. Just in case their audience feels some attraction for foundation myth, the Scots offer their own, a story of female foundation and clan-like partition of land among several heirs. Scota comes to Scotland via Ireland—is hers also implicitly a more Celtic foundation than that of the Trojan Britons?

Marie de France, Prologue to the Lais
Marie’s lais were dedicated to her king, perhaps the same Henry II who backed the dig at Glastonbury, or perhaps a king among the Bretons. By Marie's time, the separation of the British Celts on the two sides of the English channel had been completed. Those on the island were Britons, and those on the mainland were Bretons. Nothing is known of Marie's life, apart from the information she provides in her prologue.

The lais are distinct from the political propaganda in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Arthurian materials. Marie has personal purposes in writing, to keep vice at a distance and free herself from sorrow (l. 23-27). In drawing characters, she seems chiefly interested in their states of personal happiness or depression.  Unlike Caedmon who received his songs the prophetic way from God, Marie takes her inspiration from singers of ballads.  Hers is a popular voice, directly accessible to us.

Lanval
As in so many later fairy tales, Marie situates events of her marvelous stories in realistic settings, but here the spot light exposes Arthur's court. Lanval isn't paid properly; Arthur ignores him, apparently because he's a foreigner. Then, when Lanval suddenly comes into riches, Gawain and the lords begin to hang out with him to partake of his generosity, and faithless Guinevere is attracted, too. This court is a loveless, expensive, dangerous place to be, in contrast to the enchanting  countryside.

Such protection as there is at court derives from laws which protect the knights from the arbitrary judgments of the king and queen. Arthur and Guinevere must rule public opinion in order to keep the loyalty of their knights. Legal procedure in this story is consistent with legal practices in the reign of Henry II, a period that produced Glanvill's famous Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England (ed. C. D. G. Hall, [1965]), the earliest known comprehensive statement of British Common Law. There is a formal accusation; Arthur consults with a baronial court; Lanval is free pending trial in exchange for pledges; witnesses are demanded in court, and the peers will decide sentencing. (Note that Arthur wants Lanval killed, but the peers will order only banishment, if they find Lanval guilty, and they are reluctant to find guilt.)

The fairy mistress, when she does arrive, is at once an irrefutable witness and a sort of mounted champion in one alternative to court procedure, the trial by battle. With its magical resolution, the lai leaves open a possibility that the fairy world is an interior state. The lady and her attendants appear as if in a dream. She promises to be with him "when you want," and apparently anywhere—perhaps in his imagination?--as long as he does not disclose her existence to others.

Historicizing versions of the Arthurian story tended to emphasize strong kingship, powerful knights, territorial battle and the maintenance of aristocratic order. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, women and romance play a very small role, and even marvels and prophecy tend to be linked with national destiny. By contrast, the great Gawain and Yvain are not central to Marie's  tale. Lanval is passive, as heroes go. He has no specific ambition or quest to fulfill. His goal is simply the pursuit of happiness.

Left: ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, the largest cathedral in Britain before it was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1539. Is this where Glaston was buried--or Arthur?

Arthur would seem to be a Norman invention designed to help swindle Celts of their ancient homelands. The Tudors return to the Arthurian myth while brutally subduing Ireland in the 16th century (see Edmund Spenser's The Faeries Queene.) Imperialist Victorians follow suit in the 19th century. Why Celtic peoples feel such affinity for Arthur after all of this early Norman and later English propaganda is one of many unresolved mysteries of British literature  

Geoffrey's Arthur is in part Constantine the Great, the bastard Roman emperor crowned at York who (no doubt with the help of British soldiers) fought Germanic tribes on the continent and captured Rome.

Left: King Edward I and his queen Eleanor on Lincoln Cathedral.

Left: Marie de France goes at it with both hands in a medieval manuscript illumination.

Normans

EU, The Normans, A European People

Domesday Book (William the Conqueror's survey of England cir 1085) from the UK National Archive.  William the Conqueror's Statutes from Yale Law School

Arthur

The Camelot Project from University of Rochester

Glastonbury Abbey has a web site. See Gerald of Wales, Discovery of the Tomb of King Arthur from the Fordham Medieval Sourcebook, also Two accounts of the exhumation of Arthur's body from Britannia.com. And for current travel plans see the University of Idaho site, Arthurian Sites in England.

Thomas Green's Arthurian Resources.

Britannia History: King Arthur

Celtic Literature Collective: Welsh Texts

And of course King Arthur the movie

Marie de France

Marie de France Lais
http://www.english.ufl.edu/exemplaria/intro.html

International Marie de France Society
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~cmarecha/

 

Students are not examined on these "other resources and amusements." However, if you know of an excellent website that would wonderfully  complement this lesson, please send it to Dr. G. If he adopts it in his list, extra course credit will be awarded.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR THIS LESSON

The lesson includes both a quiz and a journal writing assignment to be submitted on the interactive course site at  SUNY Learning Network.  See General instructions on Journaling for this course. For a sample journal, see Dr. G's 2007 Brit Lit 1 Journal.

Journal

Write for an hour (or more if you have time). Summarize the readings or parts of them that interest you. If there is time after summarizing, try one of the following questions:

Why is the Arthurian legend so powerful?

Contrast the Arthurian material in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Marie de France. 

How are the relations between the sexes portrayed in the readings in this lesson?

Consider World War II, when Britain fought Germany and Italy. Was this war in any sense a repeat of early British history, when the British fought Saxons and Romans? (Geoffrey's Arthur, in portions of the text omitted by our editors, fought German tribes and captured Rome.) Or is the ancient and medieval past really irrelevant to subsequent history?
 

 Copyright 2008 by Gary Homer Gutchess.