The Arthurian Tradition

An Introduction

Arthur’s Popularity

• Growing popularity– Since Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum

Britanniae (1135)

– Popularity has grown

– Literature in• English

• French

• German

• Italian

• Yiddish

Arthur’s Popularity

• Major early English works:– Geoffrey– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight– Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale– Malory– Spenser’s Faerie Queene

Arthur’s Popularity

• Major early continental works:– Lancelot du Lak (French)– Grail cycle (French)– Arthurian Romances, Chrieten de Troyes

(French)– Prose Vulgate cycle (French)– Parzival (German, Wolfram von Eschenbach)

Arthur’s Popularity

• Modern works– Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls

of the King– Tom Thumb– Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in

King Arthur’s Court

Arthur’s Popularity• 20th-Century Works

– E. B. White’s Once and Future King (1958)• compilation of stories written beginning in 1938

– E. B. White’s Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King (1977)

– Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon– Stephen R. Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle

• Taliesin• Merlin• Arthur

Arthur’s Popularity

• Popular Culture– Comic Books– TV– Film– Animated features– Video games

Comics

Classic Comics

• Prince Valiant– Debut in Feb. 13, 1937– Still runs– Hal Forster created it

• Also did illustrations for Tarzan

Modern Comics

Arthur-Specific Comics• Arthur: King of Britain

• Black Knight

• Camelot 3000

• Knights of the Round Table

• Legends of Camelot

• Merlin

Film

• The Sword in the Stone (Disney, 1966)– Based on E. B. White’s story

• The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1951). Television series.

• Arthur the King (1986). Released on video as Merlin and the Sword.

• Arthur's Quest (2000). • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1989).

Film• The Excalibur Kid (1998). • Dragonheart (1996). • Knights of the Round Table (1953). • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). • Merlin (1998). • Merlin: The Return (2000). • "Once Upon a Future King," Hercules: The

Legendary Journeys (1999). • The Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979). Also

known as A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. (Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee.)

Film

• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

• Camelot (1967)

• Sword of the Valiant (1982)--SGGK

• Excalibur (1981)

• First Knight (1995)

• The Fisher King (1991)