Histories of a Legend – One Thousand Years of Arthur as a Warrior and a King

: One Thousand Years of Arthur as a Warrior and a King

: Ville Marttila, Carla Suhr

: Jukka Tyrkkö, Olga Timofeeva, Maria Salenius

: Helsinki

: 2013

: Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique

: Ex Philologia Lux: Essays in Honour of Leena Kahlas-Tarkka

: Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique

: 475

: 498

: 978-951-9040-46-2

: 0355-0192

King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table are one of the more iconic characters in European literary culture. This essay will examine the varying representations of Arthur's character in Arthurian literature from the earliest 9th-century texts mentioning him to this Victorian revival from two separate but intertwined viewpoints: Arthur as a warrior and a king, and Arthur as a mythical and historical character. Despite the predominant modern conception of Arthur's origins as a mythical literary character, he was for a long time considered to be a true historical king of England. Furthermore, despite the later emphasis on his kingship, many of the earlier accounts of his exploits portray him not as a king but a conquering warrior and military commander. In this paper, we will not only discuss how the different works portray the historical and literary Arthur either as an errant warrior or a sedentary king, but relate the descriptions of his weapons, martial activities and enemies to the contemporary martial realities and historico-political developments of each period. We will show how an originally mythical figure, possibly inspired by earlier historical events, was first historicized and integrated into British national history and subsequently literarized and remythicized, and relate this development to Arthur's evolution from a warrior to a conquering warrior king to a sedentary ruler, arguing that the representations of Arthur in each period, up to the present day, have changed according to contemporary social, cultural and political needs.