Commentary on 'From Alexander of Macedonia to Arthur of Britain (original) (raw)
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Arthur and Kingship as Represented by the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth
The present study investigates the representation of King Arthur in the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1343-1400). In doing so, it concentrates on specific historical contextearly Anglo-Saxon Englandand a specific form of authority-Anglo-Saxon kingship. The intention of the study is to show how Geoffrey of Monmouth used historical chronicles, not only for cataloguing the stories of various rulers of the island, but also for creating and shaping a single leader who can unify the kingdom. The study claims that the ideal kingship constructed around the figure of King Arthur in the Historia involved a reorientation of some of the more conventional norms of kingship; the heroic qualities of martial prowess, generosity and morality are quite essential in every conception of an ideal king. Geoffrey's conception of this ideal king was largely influenced by his personal aspirations, some of which have been outlined in the introduction of this article. The remaining parts of this study offer a historical as well as a literary analysis of the text, addressing the main qualities of kingship that were articulated in the text.
Narrating the Matter of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Norman Colonization of Wales
The Chaucer Review, 2000
This article polemically rethinks Geoffrey’s relationship to the ongoing Anglo-Norman settlement in twelfth-century Wales by looking at the Historia Regum Britanniae’s larger narrative structures. I argue that, while Geoffrey certainly remains ambivalent in his representation of the ancient Britons as individuals (particularly King Arthur), the wider historiographic contexts of the work reveal the extent to which it advances Anglo-Norman territorial interests in Wales, relegating the Welsh to barbarism and an irretrievable pastness.
Ain't gonna study war no more": Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae and Vita Merlini
The Chaucer Review, 2014
This article compares the treatment of war and nationalism in two of Geoffrey of Monmouth's texts, the Historia regum Britanniae (ca. 1136) and Vita Merlini (ca. 1148-50), arguing that the Vita Merlini critiques the earlier text's problematics of colonial sovereignty. By contrast, the Vita explores a politics of the local, the natural, and the geographically and emotionally connective. It renounces the war-producing dynastic rivalries of the Historia and instead imagines healing through a local community of friendly exchange and knowledge production. The Vita's critique illuminates the unanswerable ambiguities of the Historia and witnesses further to the human and political futilities of its version of British nationalism. This article has been helped and shaped at various stages by the thoughtful comments of Emily Steiner, Candace Barrington, Elizabeth DeLoughrey and the Rude Geniuses and WIP Writing Groups, and Lisa Kiser and the Medieval-Renaissance Colloquium at The Ohio State University, to whom all thanks. 2. Latin text and English translations quoted from the Historia are from Geoffrey of Monmouth,
2013
This discussion considers the Arthurian elements presented in De Excidio, Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae and analyses to what extent these may be indicative of the religious and political motives of their authors, rather than simplistically accepted as early primary sources recording reliable ‘evidence’ for an historical Arthur. The discussion is conducted using a framework for examining the texts, their wider historical and literary contexts, the authors’ motivations and the texts’ usefulness as historical ‘evidence’. It concisely distills all the relevant arguments and compares and contrasts various viewpoints. Finally it carefully unpicks the primary sources and demonstrates a number of problems concerning dating, later interpolations, inconsistencies, lack of clarity due to brevity (e.g. Arthur or Ambrosius?) and sensibly concludes that neither Historia Brittonum nor the Annales Cambriae can be viewed as reliable historical evidence, and that that the case for an historical Arthur is ‘unproven’.
Arthur: The Origins of the Anglo-Norman Legends
In his 'Historia Regum Britanniae', Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that he had a source book, in the British tongue, which his friend Walter, the Archdeacon of Oxford, had brought "out of Britain". In this paper, Charles Parkinson explores a possible chain of communication by which this book may have arrived in Oxford.