Ildánach, Ildírech. A Festschrift for Proinsias Mac Cana, edited by John Carey, John T. Koch, & Pierre-Yves Lambert. Celtic Studies Publications, Inc., Andover and Aberystwyth, 1999 (Celtic Studies Publications, IV) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Arthur: the Birth of the Anglo-Norman Legends
Geoffrey of Monmouth's claim that he had a source book, brought out of Brittany by his friend Walter, the Archdeacon of Oxford, has been doubted by many. In this paper, I suggest a possible route of transmission, which may lend credibility to the claim.
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.
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2004
The problem of whether Arthur is a historical figure or not will never be definitively resolved unless a dateable and authenticated inscription from the sub-Roman period turns up. Hopes were raised by the 'Artognou ' find at Tintagel in 1998, but, as N. J. Higham shows in this sceptical survey of the debate on the historical Arthur, it has nothing to do with the case. Nor, in Higham's view, is there much else-indeed, anything else of any substance-that will help us. He analyses persuasively the political and cultural background of the earliest evidence, the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae, and shows why each author had reason to create an Arthurfigure. His most interesting discovery is the parallel between Joshua in the Old Testament and Arthur, which certainly offers a new framework for the account in the Historia Brittonum. He is keen on the idea of a folkloric Arthur figure, but mixing folklore and historical analysis is always difficult : none of the folklore evidence can be shown to pre-date the literary Arthur-the Historia is probably our earliest source for both-and most of it is very much later. The arguments for a folklore Arthur as the origin of a pseudo-historical Arthur rely on a high valuation of folklore as evidence. The weight of argument must still be in favour of a historical personage called Arthur, of whatever period, to whom both the history (invented or borrowed from other historical figures) and the popular fictions of folklore were attached. This apart, Higham's survey is an admirably measured and wide-ranging contribution to the ever-growing literature on the subject. Alas, it will not stem the tide of popular ' solutions' to the identity of Arthur, but it will put them firmly in their place.
Early Bronze Age Cemetery at Edmondstown, County Dublin. BY C. Mount, P. J. Hartnett, L. Buckley
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, Vol. 93C, No. 2 (1993), pp. 21-7