Arthurian Legends

Kris Pena

6th Honors English

Facts about Arthurian Legends

• For more than 800 years, poets and writers have been telling tales about King Arthur. From scraps of history, and lost legends, from fact and fiction, storytellers have tailored one of the greatest epics in all literature, full of heroes, love and spiritual quests.

• It was founded from a shady young and subordinate Welsh prince of whom we know nothing for sure. If Arthur was real, he would have lived in the sixth or seventh centuries AD.

Facts about Arthurian Legends• The earliest forms of the Arthurian legends mixed Celtic

history and myth. Scholars today have not been able to tell whether King Arthur is based on a historical person who really existed, although several early histories of Britain mention him.

• He may have been a Celtic war leader who helped defend Britain against Anglo-Saxon invaders in the a.d. 400s or 500s.

• Arthur himself may be based on a legendary Welsh priest-king named Gwydion, another wizard, and Merlin clearly comes from Myrddin, both a prophet and a madman in Welsh and Scottish folktales, who predicted and carried out his own death.

Facts about Arthurian legends

• Bards and Scops chronicled the heroics of warriors to preserve the deeds and the pride of the people. They elevated heroes, and were sometimes as important as the heroes themselves.

• They communicated tem by word of mouth

• Celtics, derived from greek Keltic were barbarians

Authors of Arthurian legends• Writers during the middle Ages remade the Arthurian legends. In the early

1100s, an Englishman named Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote the History of the Kings of Britain, which showed Arthur as a national hero. New influences, such as Christianity, entered the legends. An old Celtic story tale about a search for a magic cauldron, for example, was changed into the quest for the Holy Grail.

• Another key influence was the medieval ideal of chivalry, the code of behavior that was followed by the Knights of the Round Table. French writer Chrétien de Troyes wrote poems on Arthurian subjects between 1155 and 1185. He focused on magic and marvels and introduced the theme of the quest for the Holy Grail. The Grail also inspired a German by the name of Wolfram von Eschenbach

• In 1485 Sir Thomas Malory, an Englishman, wove together strands of the Arthurian legends into a volume called Le Morte D'Arthur, which is By-far the best-known version of the legends. Malory's work has been the basis of most modern interpretations. Many writers since Malory have adapted the Arthurian legends.

Recent Authors of Arthurian legends

• In 1859 the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson published the first part of Idylls of the King, an epic about Arthur and his knights. The American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson published three poems on the Arthurian subjects of: "Merlin," "Lancelot," and "Tristan." One of the most popular modern Arthurian novels is T. H. White's The Once and Future King published in 1958. Other writers, like Mary Stewart and Marion Zimmer Bradley, have retold the stories from different viewpoints, including those of the women in Arthur's life.

• Merlin is an enigma, supposedly there is no one else like him, no one else to compare him to or compare him with. He has had an extraordinary impact; in the middle Ages and long after, almost everyone who knew and had heard about him believed that he was real.

• Merlin first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.Geoffrey combined already existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt, a North British madman who had no connection to King Arthur whatsoever, with tales of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the character he called Merlin Ambrosius.

• He was a wizard, born from a male demon, from which he inherits his powers

Excalibur

• The mythical sword of king arthur, some people say that it was magical.

• Arthur obtained it when he pulled it from the stone, or the lady in the lake gave it to him, either way he got the sword.

Sir Lancelot

• Lancelot is a knight of the round table, and is considered the best and most trusted knight.

• His father was overthrown as king, and in the process of fleeing, he was kidnapped and raised by the Lady in the Lake.

• He eventually carried on a secret relationship with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife, and brought down Arthur’s ideals.

Celtics

Story of King Arthur

• King Arthur is the result of King Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine. Merlin took charge of him as a kid, and arranged for him to be raised by a knight names Sir Ector. Nobody else knew that Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon. When King Uther died, he left no heir to the throne, and the kingdom fell into chaos with everyone fighting. Finally, it was said that whoever pulled the sword Excalibur from the stone, would be the next king and would bring peace to the land.

• There was a competition in London, and Sir Ector brought Arthur and his son Sir Kay, but Sir Kay realized that he had left his sword at home, and sent Arthur to get it. Arthur was locked out, and not wanting to disappoint Sir Kay, he pulled the sword out of the stone, with no one around, and gave it to Sir Kay who immediately realized what it was, and told Sir Ector that he had pulled out the sword.

• Sir Ector, of course not believing any of this, plunged the sword back into the rock and asked Sir Kay to pull out the sword, who after failing at pulling the sword out admitted that Arthur was the one who pulled it out. Later on in his life though, some stories say that it was the Lady of the Lake who gave him the sword. Either way, he became King, and with the help of the Wizard Merlin, he defeated all those who opposed him.

• Arthur fell in love with Guinevere, and he married her. Guinevere’s parents gave Arthur the Round Table as part of her Dowry. The Table eventually became a symbol of the knights. But then Lancelot had a secret affair with Guinevere, which Mordred pointed out, and it disrupted the court.

• When the armies met near the town of Salisbury, and the commanders came to talk peace terms, someone saw a snake in the grass and drew his sword, and in a flash, all the knights drew their weapons and fought each other. Arthur killed Mordred, but was mortally wounded himself. He asked the sole survivor Sir Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the lake.

• At first Bedivere was reluctant to do so, but he did eventually and a hand shot out of the lake and caught the sword. Then a mysterious barge appeared, and Bedivere put Arthur on it, and it carried him away to Avalon, a sacred island in the west. There he would be cared for by Morgan Le Fay and healed of his wounds. Legends say that he would return one day when England’s need of him was great.

Clips• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=90GVoOsFSL0&feature=PlayList&p=054CEF0F242E0CBD&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=4 merlin spell

• Good vs evil• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=BKRbwBGWk6U&feature=related• jump to moon • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zAA8fpM9_M&NR=1