King Arthur's Forest

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...