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Walh Hara
May 11, 2012
Oh interesting, although the lack of information is a bit dissapointing as well. Do we even know when Arthur lived (if he is based on a real person)? Do we know in which part of England he lived (if he is based on a real person)?

quote:

Does anyone have particular questions or things they'd like me to cover in future posts? I don't want to just be rambling up here by myself :P

It's a bit hard to ask questions when chances are high you'll adress the answers anyway in a future post. One question I'd like to see answered that you might not talk about : does Arthur's legend have (m)any similarities with legends from other places?

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Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

For "where," the only relatively concrete, "period" information we have is that list of battles. "Caledonian" means "in Scotland", so presumably at least one of the battles was up north; people tend to assume that Cair Lion means modern Caerleon in South Wales; there are a couple candidates for the "City of the Legion" based on cities that had had Roman legions in them. Most of the other locations are a matter for speculation.

Some writers scatter these battles all over England and take that as evidence that when Nennius says Arthur was Commander, using the latin term "dux bellorum," that he was specifically referring to a military title and that Arthur had been chosen by the various and sundry small kings of Britain to act in the role of co-ordinating military leader for the entire island. That's probably a bit of a stretch since "Dux" was just latin for "leader." Ashe and Gidlow tend to put Arthur in south-eastern England and eastern Wales, but for different reasons. Ashe likes to take spots that were "traditionally" connected with Arthur and start digging things up until he finds something that dates to the post-Roman period, then immediately declare whatever he finds to be Camelot. Gidlow, conversely, uses a lot of complicated reasoning based on which Celtic kingdoms were conquered when, basically putting Arthur on the Celtic/Saxon border at the relevant time period.

So "when" and "where" are connected. If you believe a certain set of dates -- say, the ones in the Welsh Annals -- that limits where Arthur was, since at that time certain areas of Britain were Celtic and others were Saxon.

As to "when," again, it depends on when you date Gildas and how accurate you think the Welsh Annals are, but roughly speaking, sometime in the middle 6th century seems about right. Any earlier and you're in the Roman era, any later and you're in the Saxon era. Right around 500-600 AD there's an Arthur-shaped hole in history.


Yes, lots. You could actually trace the history of the Arthur legend as a historical person gradually getting shifted to conform to Joseph Campbell's universal Hero with a Thousand Faces. Some of what I'll talk about will be instances where legends from other places seem pretty clearly to have been straight-up added to the Arthur story. In other cases Arthurian motifs seem to recur for other, later legendary heroes in other places.

The more I read the more I doubt he actually existed in any form we would recognise today.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces was actually already on my list with books people recommended to me. I never got around to read it because at the time it got recommended I was struggling with The Golden Bough (which I consider to be a very good book that requires too much effort to read for someone completely unfamiliar with mythology/anthrophology) and I feared it would be more of the same. Also because the wikipedia synopsis made it seem like the "monomyth" is so extremely vague that it's hardly revolutionary that so many myths fit it, but this may be entirely unfounded criticism. Do you recommend it?

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