King Arthur's Forest

Upcoming subject:  Culhwch and Olwen Before reading Culhwch and Olwen, I thought you may want a brief overview of the Mabinogion, the book where the story is found. The Mabinogion, is an assembled book of eleven Welsh tales found in two manuscripts: The Red Book of Hergest and the White Book Of Rhydderch. Both of the manuscripts can be roughly dated to the 14th century.  However, dating the stories inside has been difficult since the stories seem to be older than the manuscripts themselves, and many from different times.  Only five of the eleven tales feature Arthur and appear to come from two traditions.  The first set are three ‘romances’: Peredur, son of Efrog, Geraint, son of Erbin, and The Lady and the Well. These three mimic the story lines of three tales by Chretien de Troyes (written 1170-1180) and feature a distinct French influence so they may be either later additions or both are based on a common source now lost.  The remaining two are olde...

The History of the Britons and the Welsh Annals As we begin to reach into the 9th and 10th centuries, we really begin to  close in on many of the works that had influenced  Geoffrey of Monmouth and his groundbreaking work Historia Regum Brittaniae.  (If you are coming in late, I advise that you read my 1st entry on this work HERE )  Of course, there is doubtful chance anyone will ever find his "very ancient book in the British tongue", if it ever existed at all, but we can at least cover the books he probably read.  We'll cover two works today I would like to start with a discussion on The History of the Britons (Historia Britionum)  written by a christian monk who identifies himself in the text as Nennius.  Written around the early 800's, Nennius repeats some of what we have seen in Bede with the villainous king Vortigern summoning the Saxon forces led by Hengest and Horsa in order to defeat the Scots and Picts.  In this part of the chronic...

Because subscribers are not updated when a new "page" is added to the blog, I have to create a blog entry to notify you.  A "page" is a resident link on the main blog Home.  This can be anything- such as a book list or a page of links...anything I want it to be.  In this case it is "how to best use this blog" whose purpose should be self explanatory.  I hope everyone finds it useful as I have given tips for every type of reader.  Here is a link if you would like to have a peek.   How To Best Use This Blog Thanks, Joe

I wanted to start giving updates to any major changes I have made to any of the previous articles or lessons that were previously posted.  This blog is a work in progress and it goes along with some of my own learning.  With that in mind I may want to self correct or improve my writing on some of my previous entries.  Naturally, I don't want to bore you with every little edit but I may, from time to time, combine things or even completely redo things. In this particular case I wanted to include an entry on Bede with my posting on Gildas.  Bede is an almost identical case as Gildas.  However, despite being an extremely important individual to medievalists, he does not have much to offer on Arthurian history.  But, like Gildas, his inclination not to mention Arthur could speak volumes about Arthur's historicity and importance or some might say his complete lack of those things..  So far there is no answer to that question.  So I want to notify m...