The Arthurian Tradition An Introduction
Dec 16, 2015
Arthur’s Popularity
• Growing popularity– Since Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum
Britanniae (1135)
– Popularity has grown
– Literature in• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Yiddish
Arthur’s Popularity
• Major early English works:– Geoffrey– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight– Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale– Malory– Spenser’s Faerie Queene
Arthur’s Popularity
• Major early continental works:– Lancelot du Lak (French)– Grail cycle (French)– Arthurian Romances, Chrieten de Troyes
(French)– Prose Vulgate cycle (French)– Parzival (German, Wolfram von Eschenbach)
Arthur’s Popularity
• Modern works– Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls
of the King– Tom Thumb– Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur’s Court
Arthur’s Popularity• 20th-Century Works
– E. B. White’s Once and Future King (1958)• compilation of stories written beginning in 1938
– E. B. White’s Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King (1977)
– Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon– Stephen R. Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle
• Taliesin• Merlin• Arthur
Classic Comics
• Prince Valiant– Debut in Feb. 13, 1937– Still runs– Hal Forster created it
• Also did illustrations for Tarzan
Arthur-Specific Comics• Arthur: King of Britain
• Black Knight
• Camelot 3000
• Knights of the Round Table
• Legends of Camelot
• Merlin
Film
• The Sword in the Stone (Disney, 1966)– Based on E. B. White’s story
• The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1951). Television series.
• Arthur the King (1986). Released on video as Merlin and the Sword.
• Arthur's Quest (2000). • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1989).
Film• The Excalibur Kid (1998). • Dragonheart (1996). • Knights of the Round Table (1953). • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). • Merlin (1998). • Merlin: The Return (2000). • "Once Upon a Future King," Hercules: The
Legendary Journeys (1999). • The Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979). Also
known as A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. (Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee.)