The Legend of King Arthur

In the waning years of the fifth century AD, with invaders threatening to overrun the island of Britain, a young hero emerged. He halted the invaders and bought a period of peace for the Britons, the last they would ever know as the dominant people of Britain. The man, the battle, even the period itself are shrouded in legend; indeed, even his name is in dispute. But over time, one name would attach to him more than any other: Arthur Pendragon. Whoever that early hero was, he became something more than a hero, a king, or even a legend: he became the concentrated symbol of the hopes of a people. Originally the hero of Britain, Arthur became a hero to the English (the Anglo-Saxon invaders who conquered the Britains), and then the Normans (who conquered the Anglo-Saxons), and then of the modern English, who have inherited all of these cultural histories.

Arthur's legend has been a historical juggernaut, driving culture by the power of the imagination. It gives us the genre of the romance, which would ultimately spawn the novel as a genre; it gives us the notion of chivalry, which dominates conceptions of romantic love to this day; it provided the archetype of a Medieval court that still controls fantasy literature even now.

Everyone knows something of the story of King Arthur, but few know the texts. And given how many times he has been treated in literature (more than 200 times in the Medieval period and more than 1000 times in the modern period) and film (over 300), what is the original story? How did it develop?

In this 20 week course we will trace the development of the story of Arthur from his first appearance in early historians to the great Lancelot-Grail Cycle of the early 13th century. These texts show the transformation of Arthur into the legendary figure, and feature the invention of Camelot, the Round Table, Lancelot, the quest for the Holy Grail, and the dissolution of Camelot. Every other story about Arthur is responding to these stories, whether explicitly or implicitly.

It is a shame that we do not teach much of this tradition any more: it is a major link in English storytelling, and Arthurian illiteracy shuts off the ability to recognize huge tracts of allusion in the rest of English literature. In this course, we will fix that.

The journey to Camelot is a journey like no other: here one will encounter damsels in distress, giants, dragons, fairies, demons, and every manner of magic. All is not as it seems; but dangers of this sort are the necessary presupposition for adventures, and it is through adventures that one seizes glory. So join me and see the dream of Camelot rise, briefly flourish, and then collapse. Come and see for yourself why this story has fascinated the imagination for so many centuries.