Histories Of King Arthur example essay topic

the feast of Penta cost all manner of men assayed to pull at the sword that wold assay, but none might prevail but Arthur, and he pulled it afore all the lords and commons that were there, wherefore all the commons cried at once, 'We will have Arthur unto our king; we will put him no more in delay, for we all see that it is God's will that he shall be our king, and who that hold eth against it, we will slay him'. And therewith they all kneeled at once, both rich and poor, and cried Arthur mercy because they had delayed him so long. And Arthur forgave them, and took the sword between both his hands, and offered it upon the altar where the Archbishop was, and so was he made knight of the best man there. The above passage is from LeM morte d'Arthur: the history of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table, by Sir Thomas Malory, a book that was written and published between 1469-1470, during the reign of King Edward IV. Prior to this document, the exact origins of Arthurian legend are difficult to trace reliably before the twelfth century, when Geoffrey of Monmouth produced the History of the Kings of Britain, in which he devotes the last third of the book to King Arthur, with the first two thirds leading up to this climax. Although Monmouth's history contains passages which can be deemed 'mystical' in nature, especially in regards to Arthur, the preceding pages leading up to King Arthur's appearance, read as straight history as opposed to mythical tale.

I not only hard to follow but also hard to. I ht ink it's all in eyes. Some see the same facts or so-called-facts and read the same documents of the same time periods and come up with completely different ideas. King Arthur would have lived in the end of the fifth century to the beginning of the sixth century, with his birth most likely occurring around 470 A.D. and his death, as related in the folklore, in the year 539, at the Battle ofCamlan.

This means that six hundred years transpired between Arthur's life span and any surviving written account, history or folklore, of a king named Arthur. Although the majority of the British population in the fifth and sixth centuries was illiterate, there was a classically educated, 'Romanized' minority that could read and write, as well as a literate monastic society. In the year 545, a monk named Gilda wrote an account of the decline of Roman authority in Britain and the events which followed. Most contemporary scholars and historians dismiss this source as unreliable and in many places entirely wrong, in any event, there is no mention of King Arthur in Gilda's writings.

This absence of early written sources pertaining to King Arthur suggests three hypotheses: 1) There is a document or written account that historians have not found or do not have access to; 2) The history of King Arthur was an oral tale, passed down verbally through a number of generations before it was recorded in written form; or, 3) King Arthur is solely a creation of Medieval, romantic literature. Cadbury was inhabited as a military strong hold, in the Dark Ages, in Britain. Whether it was occupied by King Arthur is not proven, what is proven is that the site Camelot was used for what it was supposed to be used for at the right period in British history. 'The truth is however, that attempts to identify 'Camelot " are pointless. The name and the very concept of 'Camelot' are inventions of the French Medieval poets There is a tendency in our society, to romanticize the past, to mystify it to suit our own imaginations and to fit our own conceptions of what we thought it must have been like.

I asked my mom what she thought, and being an english major, she us ally has to say, and she said "It's all in the eyes of the beholder". David Lowenthal, an archaeologist, theorizes that this in part, due to the uncertainty of our own future that we cling so desperately to the past. Whatever the cause, it is something that we are guilty of and King Arthur is one of our victims. The archaeological evidence supports an historical 'King Arthur " figure, his parents could have been Uther Pendragon and I gerne for that matter and he could have been conceived at Tintagel, the archaeological findings do not contradict it.

But, the King Arthur of Camelot and other popular literary works did not exist; how could he exist, he has been glorified to a point where the concept of King Arthur is not a human; he is a myth, a hero on the same scale of deity that will resurrect save and save all of England one day. Based on archaeological evidence, mainly, the sites associated with Arthurian legend are plausible. Each site has the 'right' types of finds located in soil layers and pottery types to the 5th to 6th century AD. Does this prove that King Arthur existed and defended Camelot, and was conceived at Tintagel?

No. Does it prove that he didn't exist and was not at these places? No, it doesn't. What the archaeological remains do are create a record, a time line based on tangible physical evidence for a mythic, literary figure. What is important to remember, is that the archaeology of Arthurian sites is one thing and Arthurian literature is another. The same is true for early " histories' of King Arthur; they may be based on fact but there was such a time lapse between the actual events and recorded history, that these sources are questionable at best.

These written sources, both fact and fiction, may dissect at times and compliment the archaeological record, but the characters of Morgainele Fay, Lancelot, Merlin, Guinevere, or even Arthur are not going to be buried in the years accumulation of soil, waiting to be discovered, to tell us their tales; but the archaeology of these sites, taken as a key to the factual past of Anglo-Saxon history, can be just as fascinating.