Arthurian geography

Rouse, Robert; Rushton, Cory James

doi:10.1017/ccol9780521860598.014

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“…although the Breton provenance of these stories is repeatedly emphasized, seven of the lais take place in the celtic regions of Britain, while two are explicitly linked to the arthurian legends of those regions. it has been observed that the literary understanding of arthurian geography tends to divide along linguistic and cultural lines: French texts tend to keep the geography of the arthurian world vague, locating arthur's court at the undefined location of camelot, while many of the anonymous english sources focus on sites of real political importance, frequently locating the king's court at carlisle (Rouse and Rushton 2009). it is not my intent here to make generalizations of this sort for the whole of the Scandinavian corpus, but it is possible to discern a comparable pattern in the Strengleikar collection.…”

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Britain as Sjónhverfing: Decoding the Landscape in Strengleikar

Goeres¹

2015

Scandinavian Studies

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G eitarlauf is an Old norse translation of Marie de France's lai du Chievrefoil. Only 118 lines long in the original, and covering just under one manuscript page in the norse, the lai describes a single episode in the long and complicated story of tristan and isolde. Banished from the court of King Mark, tristan hears that the queen plans to ride to tintagel for Pentecost. He hides in the forest along the route and carves a message on a hazel branch. in the anglo-norman text, the exact nature of this message is unclear, 1 but the Old norse version quotes it in full:Sva ferr með ocr kvað hann sem viðuindil sa er binnz um haeslivið. Meðan þessir tveir viðir bua baðer saman. þa liva ok bera lauf sitt. en sa er þessa viðe skildi hvarn frá oðrum. þa déyr haslenn ok þui nest uiðvinndillenn ok berr hvarki lauf. nema þorna ok firir verðaz baeðe. Hin friða unnasta min. Sva ok eftir þeim haetti ero vit. ei ma ec lifa on þin. ok ei þu on min. (cook and tveitane 1979, 198) 2 "it goes with us," he said, "as with the honeysuckle that fastens itself around the hazel tree. as long as these two trees are together they live 1. Jean Rychner gives a summary of the various readings in his edition (1983,;

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Britain as Sjónhverfing: Decoding the Landscape in Strengleikar

Goeres¹

2015

Scandinavian Studies

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The Fortunes of Arthur

Maley¹,

Swann²

2014

A Companion to British Literature

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David Matthews, in his contribution to this volume, identifies a tension between veneration of significant figures from the past and scepticism surrounding their authorship, their arguments, and in some cases their existence. Elsewhere, Paul Stevens has shown the extent to which Milton was in a similar predicament, wanting to find in England's history a subject worthy of epic, but torn between the rigorous revisionism of the likes of Camden and Selden and 'the patriotic [tradition] mediated through Spenser, Shakespeare, and Drayton' (Stevens 2012: 157). Between Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, completed by 1470, and published by Caxton-with carefully qualified scepticism about Arthur's existence-in 1485, and Milton's History of Britain (1670), we can follow the fortunes of Arthur as a figure contested and celebrated in equal measure. Malory depicted the French wars under the guise of Arthur's sixth-century campaign against Rome, and Book III of Milton's History uses the same interval between Roman departure and Saxon arrival to warn contemporaries of the dangers of backsliding. One approach to early modern Arthurianism suggests that somewhere between Malory and Milton, Arthur became an inconvenient myth, retaining poetic and propagandistic potential but scoffed at by serious scholars. The Reformation and the rise of antiquarianism engendered suspicion of medieval sources, and Arthur and Brutus were undone by the rise of Anglo-Saxon studies (Brinkley 1932). Yet Arthur, like Brutus, maintained momentum even as myth morphed from history to poetry. But before delving into the variegated history of later 2 representations of Arthur, we must first consider how the legendary king was used in Malory's time. Why the Matter of Britain mattered It's been argued that Malory's Morte Darthur was, like Spenser's Faerie Queene, an historical allegory, addressing the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. Inconsistencies in Malory's Arthur have been attributed to his allegorical depiction of successive English monarchs: "interpreting it in terms of the Lancastrian dynasty, the three rulers dominating the life of Malory, it is a strikingly accurate picture. In general features the personality and career of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI correspond respectively to (1) the Arthur of the first three books, (2) the Arthur of book four extending through to the Grail section, and (3) the Arthur of the post-Grail period"

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Arthurian geography

Cited by 2 publications

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Britain as Sjónhverfing: Decoding the Landscape in Strengleikar

Britain as Sjónhverfing: Decoding the Landscape in Strengleikar

The Fortunes of Arthur

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