King Arthur's Forest

The Knight of the Cart As we move to the final two of Chretien's works,  The Knight of the Cart  and  Perceval , you will discover two interesting things.  First, these last two works were unfinished by Chretien.  Second, both of these works would become his two most important creations with far reaching influence of both distance and time!   In regards to this work in particular, I could safely say that most people have heard of Lancelot and some of those have even heard of Guinevere and their affair.  Could the same be said of Sir Kay and Sir Bedevere the two warriors that have been tied with Arthur since some of the earliest stories?  Nope.  Probably not.  And yet, this is the very first mention of Lancelot while Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere continue as characters from well before Lancelot to current times.  Why is this? Well, this is probably the sauciest of Chretien's works.  Each of his works up to this point invol...

Update Hello all.  After re-reading some of my earlier writing on Chretien de Troyes' works I feel that I am not handling the material well.  As the works get longer, it no longer makes sense to write everything that happens in the works episode by episode.  Chretien's works are 80 pages on average which causes me to do two pages of pure summary before I even discuss the work.  Some of the upcoming works such as the Perceval continuations and the Vulgate Lancelot make these works, and even modern epics, pale in comparison.  Reading multiple pages of non-stop summary makes for pretty dry reading.  It was so terrible that I decided to re-write my article on The Knight of the Cart before even posting it.  In retrospect I should have had more insightful discussions rather than summary.  I need to reach back to my college days and reconsider how to approach the material.  I also am not having much fun doing it this way. Moving forward I am ...

Yvain, or The Knight with the Lion We now shift from Cliges, what you now should know as my least favorite of Chretien's Arthurian tales, to Yvain, my favorite.  My reasons are admittedly weak and without any real critical merit, but they are my opinions all the same.  I will, however defend my opinions below and you can judge for yourself.  First, though, we should do a quick review of the material. The tale begins in Arthur's court where a knight named Calogrenant is telling a tale of his own defeat that he has kept secret many years.  He tells of a giant that directed him to a spring. When he arrived at this spring he sprinkled some water on a stone using the dipper provided.  As he does this a huge storm crops up and a knight rides out and shamefully defeats him in combat.  Of course when Arthur's court hears of this they all wish to ride out to find this wondrous spring.  Yvain, Calegrenant's own cousin, wants to avenge him and instead sneak...

Chretien de Troyes Part 3:  Cligès Hello all and welcome back.  I hope you all have had time to read ahead a little as I am sure you have noticed, the works can be quite lengthy. Let's briefly review the story before diving in.  Before the story even gets to Cliges, we learn the story of how Cliges' parents, Alexander and Soredamors, met.  Alexander, the son of Emperor Alexander of Greece, spent some time in Britain testing his knighthood in the famed court of King Arthur.  During his time there he meets Soredamors, the niece of King Arthur and sister to Sir Gawain.  They both fall in deep love for one another but are both too shy to speak of it.  Guenevere notices this and urges them together and are soon married. Cliges is born soon after. They return to Greece to discover Emperor Alexander has died, and Prince Alexander's brother Alis has usurped the throne.  Alexander, in order to make peace with his brother decides to concede that A...

Chretien de Troyes - Part 2: Erec and Enide In what is claimed to be the very first Arthurian romance ever made, Arthur starts off the story by being an ass.  Yes, you read correctly.  You will see that as much as the French adore the Arthurian tradition it is the knights themselves that will soon get all of the attention.  Arthur as well as his court continue to to be as proud and regal and famous as they have always been, if not more so, but Arthur himself, as a character, becomes an instigator.  Sometimes he is no more than a living stage prop.  He begins adventures; he makes them possible.  He becomes a goal to be reached or a solution to a problem like a rich doting grandfather.  This is not always the case of course, he still gets on a horse from time to time to go adventuring and he has not become a tyrant like he was portrayed in the Saints Lives.  Nothing like that.   He always redeems himself and by the end of the story we...

Chretien and His Works As mentioned in an earlier post, I intend on treating each of Chretien's works in its own article rather than trying to lump them in a single enormous one.  This opening article will be a short overview of Chretien and his works before we get into his individual romances. Very little is known of Chretien himself except for the little information he provides in his stories.  There are no available records from that time that mention him.  What is "known" are actually suppositions or deductions.  He is believed to possibly have been born sometime around 1140 and to have died before 1200.  He names himself "of Troyes" which is the center of the Champagne province and we know that he was associated with the court there because of his dedication to Marie de Champagne found in The Knight of the Cart.  This is backed up by the fact that Troyes was a known center of literary activity with several writers associated with it.  Aside...

Rhonabwy's Dream Rhonabwy's Dream is an interesting but very confusing Welsh short story.  It is found in a single manuscript in the Red Book of Hergest and has been dated to the late 12th to early 13th century.  The story tells of a retainer for Madog, the Prince of Powys, by the name of Rhonabwy.  (note: Madog, Prince of Powys was a real historical person).  In the tale, Madoc sends Rhonaby as part of several contingents to try to find Madog's troublesome brother who is creating havoc in the land.  Rhonabwy, while on his travels, has to stay the night in a filthy home with his companions.  Upon falling asleep on a yellow ox hide, the only clean place in the house, Rhonabwy has a dream.  In this dream Rhonabwy is transported back to the time of King Arthur where he is introduced to a cast of characters.  The principal story however seems to focus around a game of  gwyddbwyll (a chess like game) played between King Arthur and Owain (Yvain)...

Upcoming Works Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your excerpt of Wace's Roman de Brut. Chretien de Troyes   If you purchased the Everyman "The Life of King Arthur,"  I recommend you hang on to it.  The second section by Lawman covers the same story but done much later in English with even more embellishments and we will be getting to it soon enough.  In the meantime we will be taking a break from the Brut tradition and exploring the beginnings of the French romance tradition as well as a small Welsh work described below. As I frequently like to do, we will be covering a small work before tackling a much larger work.  In this case we will be covering a short but very unusual Welsh work called the Dream of Rhonabwy from around  1159 - 1200. It's only about 12 pages long, so it should not be too much to handle. If you purchased the Oxford World Classics version of The Mabinogion, then you should have it already. I will list a link to t...

Wace and the Roman de Brut To understand the progression that Wace ( Wace rhymes with "Boss" ) has made with this book you really need to go back to Geoffrey of Monmouth and his "Historia" (HRB) which we covered early on.  But just as a refresher, Geoffrey took the standard latin historical chronicles of Gildas and Bede as well as other sources and built up a new history of Britain that dates all the way back to the Trojan war and the trojan Brutus from where he claims Britain got its name.  This is mostly fantasy, as is a good portion of his history, but it was devoured by the scholarly elite there and on mainland Europe and single handedly place Britain on the world stage with the rest of the continent.  It was published in Latin which was the language of the scholar and received serious treatment by other literates.  The book received such fame and recognition that it would receive treatments by other authors even during Geoffrey's own lifetime.  One of th...

Here is a small flow chart that I have been working on to display how some of the major works have depended on each other for influence as well as others that have developed independently.  You will (later on) see that after Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien de Troyes, the works really begin to explode with a high concentration of works in a short period.  Enjoy!

Pa Gur Pa Gur , is an unnamed poem from the "Black Book of Carmarthen" which is a collection of random medieval Welsh works of various functions and dates.  The given name, Pa Gur , derives from the 1st line of the poem which reads: "Pa Gur yv y porthaur"  which means "What man is the gatekeeper?"  The poem can be dated from around 1100 to 1160 and the Black Book of Carmarthen itself was compiled around 1250.  The poem is 90 lines long and is incomplete, terminating part way through line 90.  For this reason, I am not considering this work as part of my basic Arthurian studies list, but rather as a bit of "extra credit." The poem opens with Arthur asking who the gatekeeper is, and a man replies Glewlwyd Great-Grasp, who returns with "What man asks it?" "Arthur and Cai the fair."  "What [band] goes with you?"  "The best men in the world."  Arthur then goes into a short "name-list" of his fol...

The Triads of the Island of Britain For this brief discussion on Triads, I will be referencing The 4th ed. of Trioedd Ynys Prydein (The Triads of the Island of Britain) edited by Rachel Bromwich.  This is a very scholarly edition and each Triad is intensively researched word for word by her.  This has become a standard reference in the field of Arthurian studies (and others) with copious translation notes and personal name references. Before I discuss the Triads themselves, I should talk about what the Triads are...and are not.  The Triads are bardic strategy for memorizing a large amount of data, a mnemonic device in other words.  In this case bards would memorize stories, history, characters, items, etc. by ordering them in groups of three.  They may be three sons of a particular person, or three items stolen in different tales, or three incidents with a common theme.  Their original purpose was to be memorized and used as a means to remember detai...

Next up:  What Man? Hello, everyone!   We will be doing a few works coming up.  There are 2 smaller Welsh works that don't really fit into the scheme of "major influences" but I think merit discussion. One is Pa Gur? (What Man?) , a short, incomplete Welsh poem where Arthur recites the qualities of his warriors, much like in Culhwch and Olwen.  The other is a loose conglomeration of Welsh triads commonly referred to collectively as the Triads of the Islands Britain .  The Triads are a bardic sequence of 3 events, persons, or things that are similar, so arranged for easy memorization.  An example that I am making up right now as I stare at a poster on the wall would be:  The three great Draculas of the 20th century: Bela Lugosi as Dracula; Christopher Lee as Dracula; and Gary Oldman as Dracula.  This is just an example for fun,  the Welsh ones are much weirder.  Most of the Triads are from different times and were original...

The Life of Merlin (Vita Merlini) Welcome back!  I hope everyone enjoyed The Life of Merlin, I know I did.  I found it quite interesting as this early introduction to Merlin seems to have little to do with the wizard that is well known today. If you are just coming in now I advise going back to read one of my 1st postings regarding Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)   Here!    It directly relates to this article and may provide extra insight, even if you read the material later.  Let me recap a little on Merlin in his earliest appearances. Prophetiae Merlini (The Prophecies of Merlin) The Prophetiae Merlini is the 1st actual appearance of the character we know as Merlin.  He was an invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth in order to deliver a set of " political   prophesies."  This work was created shortly before Geoffrey's influential work, The HRB, sometime between the year...

Upcoming Book:   The Life of Merlin  by Geoffrey of Monmouth As we circle back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, I will discuss in my upcoming article the works just before and after The History of the Kings of Britain (HRB).  Those would be the Prophesies of Merlin which were also later included in the "History" (so you wont have to purchase that one!) and the Life of Merlin.  I will only touch on "The Prophesies" because it is not particularly relevant but of more interest is the "Life" because it adds a little definition and story to the character of Merlin though he still is not quite the Merlin you are familiar with.  The Life of Merlin is not included in the HRB but you can purchase it using the link below.  It is a relatively short work and not particularly expensive.    

Deeds of the English Kings  ( De Regum Gestis Anglorum ) I want to spend a moment on William of Malmesbury's Deeds of the English Kings before we circle back to Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophesies of Merlin , his HRB (which we covered in the 1st lesson), and his Life of Merlin .  This is part of the chronicle tradition, much like the other historian monks like Bede, Gildas, and even Nennius and only has a couple of brief mentions of Arthur.  It is relevant in a few minor ways (in regards to Arthur) but I also just want to wrap up the important works prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth.  I do not feel that you need to purchase any text or pre-read any of it as the pertinent sections can easily be read in a few minutes while you read this.  It can be found here:  Deeds of the English Kings .  (page 11-12, and page 315).   William was a monk at Malmesbury Abbey, in Wiltshire England around the mid 12th century.  As an admirer of the Vener...

I just wanted to show off a preview of an Arthurian Timeline I am working on.  Eventually, I plan to embed it in a page on my blog but in the meantime here is a sample.  It is not comprehensive by any means and is still in its "beta" form but I thought you might enjoy seeing a sample.  (plus I wanted to see how well it embeds). Hope you enjoy, Joe Timeline

The Saints' Lives The Saints Lives are an interesting diversion from the standard chronicles and hero-stories we have read so far.  As I mentioned in the prelude, these tales sometimes depict an Arthur at odds with the Arthur you may have become familiar with so far.  In some of the examples ahead you will see a devious, lustful, jealous Arthur willing to lie and cheat to get what he wants.  Its also important to remember that these examples are small sections of larger stories - stories not about Arthur but the titled Celtic saint.  The authors of these stories sometimes want to paint the hero of the Britons as requiring Christianity, or the blessings of the saint, to save him.  If the hero of Britain happens to look petty and weak, all the better for the Saint.   C. 1019* The Life of St. Goeznovius This manuscript contains a short summation of British history mentioning Vortigern and the Saxon invasion as well as Arthur's temporary victor...