King Arthur in Medieval English Literature
You know you're important when you get your own brand of baking flour named after you.
Seriously, though, Arthurian literature has been popular for basically forever. No, really, how long has it been around, you ask? Well, you can find Arthurian literature that dates way back to 300 CE. For those of you who are keeping count, that's over 1,700 years of Arthur.
It's likely that the legend of A-Man got rolling with a real-life war leader of the Britons. (You know, those native British people who were around before things got all mixed up with the various invasions.) This Arthur was famed for fighting off either the Romans or the Saxons, or maybe even both.
We're not sure who exactly he fought because of course, legends grow tall in the telling. And so as his story got told and retold, Arthur became more than just a general. He grew to be a real mythic real hero.
He shows up in Welsh mythology going back to as early as the 7th century. Next stop, several British chronicles, like Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, where we get the first real narrative account of Arthur's life. Geoffrey tells this story as if it were tried-and-true history, but you should take that with a huge grain of salt.
Arthurian legend is most well known to us modern folks through the narratives of medieval romances. These started to become super popular after the historical chronicles of Arthur's life circulated in France—that's when writers there really started to romanticize the dude's life.
Before long, stories of Arthur, his Round Table, and his famed brotherhood of knights took off. And lucky us, we got to reap the benefits in works like Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Virtually all of the Arthur stuff that shows up in pop culture is derived from Malory's version of the story.
So even though Arthur hasn't yet shown up to rescue Britain once more, he is, in many ways, the "once and future king." Aw. Eat your hearts out, other knights.
Chew on This
Stories about King Arthur and his knights are commonly grouped into one of two traditions: the chronicle tradition and the romance tradition. Why don't you go ahead and compare Geoffrey of Monmouth's material about Arthur to Malory's version? What are some of the differences you see between these two traditions? How does Geoffrey make his telling sound more like "history"? What makes Malory's tale seem more fantastical? Do the two formats overlap in any ways?
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is part of the romance tradition of Arthurian tales; it gives us yet another view of King Arthur. Notice how Arthur's character is kind of a mixed bag? He's young and silly, but he's also brave and a good host. What might this motley portrait suggest about the many traditions of King Arthur?