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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Let me see: Sherlock Holmes was real, but Charles Dickens wasn't. I wonder who wrote his books then.
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Originally Posted by Skybird
Oh, a king Arthur did exist for real, but he had nothing in common with the hero of the saga. In fact it seems he was a ruffian not any better than most other local rulers of that time.
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Really? I've read a lot of opinions and books on the subject, and not one historian or writer has been able to point to a real prototype other than "Oh, there must have been." Do you have some evidence I haven't seen? |
I just read it in a critic's review of the formidable triology on the King Arthur theme by Gillian Bradshaw from the late 80s (if you do not know it: highly recommended, I love those books), where a bit of comparison between saga and real man was done, too. The real figure was in no way extraordinary, it was said there, and really did not separate in any way from the mass of other local small kings and army leaders that spend their time with raids and wars against each other. It is even in doubt that he really was a king. Time probably around the 6th century. It is possible that he only was remembered for maybe having played some role in one of the defensive battles against the Saxon invasion in Britain, but the name Arthur (and it's glorification in the saga and the material around the holy grail) did not get written down before - if I remember correctly - the 11th century. It became very popular material in the Franconian and germanic countries. That's why it is usually referred to to be a saga of French origin - which may be correct or not, because it could be that a French poet was the first to write somethign down on arthus, or it was a Normanic or Briton living in France. what is relatively sure is that the first version was written in Frnech language, no matter by whom and when. Malory's basic version also is originally in French (La mort d'Arthur).
That's what I vaguely remember from that. It is MANY years ago I stumbled over that reading. whatever, I like the saga very much, like I like the nordic and Franconian and Germanic sagas in general.
Another interesting detail that got mentioned in the docu material to one of the LOTR DVDs is that Tolkien, himself having been a professional expert on mythology, said that the British do not really have any "original" British mythology, and that the - wrongly presumed Britsh - Arthur saga's origin is foreign. This was the reason why he initially started to develope Middle Earth, they said in that docu, he saw it as an attempt to compensate for that lack and give the British something that he saw as a surrogate mythology, so to speak - that's why it is so very detailed inclusive fictional languages and historic event and family trees. I think that was in the docu material for the first of the three movies. but since there are hours and hours, I could mix it up with one of the other two DVD boxes as well.
P.S. Just asked Wikipedia on Arthur:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur
Wikipedia says I am wrong on Malory having written his epos in French. Well, I don't know, but the original book-title has been French, this I know for sure - the books stand on my bookshelf (in German, and pretty boring, I must say - I never came beyond the end of the first of three books)