Arthur of the Britons
The once and future king?
"King Arthur, the development of a myth"

For a thousand years or more, the figure of King Arthur has entertained and inspired. Each age is in need of a hero, each nation in need of an inheritance to be proud of, and monarchs in need of an ancestry. The tale of Arthur has been all these things and more; romantic legend has anointed him king, put a crown on his head, adorned him in armour and surrounded him with jousts and tourneys. These romances have introduced magic and tempted him with all the sins that mortal flesh is heir to, poets have brought their dreams and artists their visions. The quest for the Holy Grail and deeds of knightly valour have added both a moral and religious force that have transcended the historic and have confused and obscured a distant reality. Recently they have even attracted characters with somewhat ‘schizophrenic’ ideas of their personal identities.

Although the stories of Arthur may have started as merely a tale of a warrior’s exploits, over the centuries they soon became the stuff of legend. For too many people however the ‘mere warriors tale’, became first a legend and then developed further into the realms of myth that has bordered on the fantastic. The concept of a sleeping king who lies ready to save his people at the hour of their greatest danger fulfils the need for certainty in an uncertain world and has been embraced whole-heartedtedly by generations of people. Arthur is not the only leader who rests until his country needs him, but the confidence he evidently inspired in northern Europe is reflected in claims for his dormant presence in places as far apart as the coast of Norway and the Celtic fringes of France. The heroic king, sleeping or not, has never been allowed to die; he has become a central focus of and possibly the very spirit of the British concept of nationhood.

For Britain the figure of King Arthur became arguably the most powerful symbol of national identity, the very essence of ‘Britishness’. The tales surrounding the adventures of this enigmatic figure have long stirred the imagination and become a focus for the patriotism of the British people. It inspired the Welsh to rebel, and has been used to justify the claims of successive English kings to territorial claims throughout the British Isles.

Although the existence of Arthur as a king of Britain is taken to be fact, it is in actuality very ambiguous, historically speaking, though recent research has pushed forward a re-evaluation of this. The tales of his life and mythical exploits are so indelibly engraved on the psyche of a huge majority of Western Europeans, to make proving the fact of his existence unnecessary for hundreds of years. It is a reasonably modern phenomenon to try to prove the actual existence of the historical Arthur, the need to strip away mystery, to have empirical proof of his existence. For hundreds of years a real Arthur was taken for granted, whether he be a story or an actual personality was unimportant, what was important was he existed in the tale itself. It was the tale that carried the lessons, moral, social and religious, from the past that would equip current generations.

It is however, a complex task to unravel the ‘Gordian Knot’ of interwoven poetic, romantic and historical tales of this ephemeral character. To examine Arthur is to take a step into the realms of both the mundane and the fantastic. His life and adventures have become such, that his importance transcends the mere historical, they enter the realms of the mythic 'origin' of the nation and became a moral metaphor.

This paper intends to examine the historical evidence of the reality of an Arthurian figure, chart the development of his establishment through literary tradition as a firmly held mythological belief, and explore the reasons for the perpetuation, relevance and popularity of the character in the modern world. It will be arranged in three main sections, the first looking at the historical proof for the figure known as Arthur, including the sources that are used as evidence of his existence. The second will examine the major literary traditions and motifs that have allowed the Arthurian tales to actually have developed to mythical status. The third section will try to ascertain whether the author of the version of the tales that has become the modern standard, was actually trying to ‘create’ a myth or was merely indulging in artistic licence.

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© Rob Bracewell 2004
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