King Arthur’s Lovers
Arthur himself is not quite so chaste and honourable as popular culture tends to imagine. He too takes several lovers, and he acts rather terribly in his affairs.
From Monmouth to Malory: A Guide to Arthurian Literature
Here are ten important steps in the development of medieval Arthurian literature.
The Magical Kings of Medieval England
While magic and historical figures seem like polar opposites to many today, in the Middle Ages, they were frequently connected. Medieval historical records even contain several accounts of former kings who used magic in their reigns: one king magically constructed hot baths, while the other used magic to build a bridge over the English Channel.
Ghosts in Medieval Literature
Looking to get into the Halloween spirit? Check out a few of the ghosts that the medieval literary world has to offer.
Manuscript fragments of the Merlin legend now published
Their collaborative research and findings, which include a full transcription and translation into English of the text, have been brought together in a new book called The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment
Before Arthur and the Round Table: The Knights of Franc Palais
The Knights of Franc Palais have their roots in the fourteenth-century Le Roman de Perceforest, a massive prose romance that recounts the rise and fall of a legendary dynasty in pre-Arthurian Britain.
In Search of the Once and Future King: A Continuing Quest
In our final entry, we examine the case for Arthur’s historicity as well as the pertinacious campaign waged by scholars, amateur historians and enthusiasts to discover the real Arthur.
What are Merlin’s Prophecies?
A look at Merlin and his prophecies, which anticipated many of the events that would happen over the course of England’s history.
In Search of the Once and Future King: A Constructed Authenticity
Trying to give the Arthurian legends greater credence and authenticity by locating them in a more accurate historical context.
In Search of the Once and Future King: In Glorious Technicolour
How the story of King Arthur gets told during Hollywood’s Golden Age – the 1950s and 60s.
In Search of the Once and Future King: A Stranger In A Strange Land
The Arthurian Legend comes to America with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
In Search of the Once and Future King: King of the Who?
The story of King Arthur moves into the Victorian Age, where it is revitalized by Walter Scott and Alfred Tennyson.
The Original King Lear
Most people today know the story of King Lear from Shakespeare’s tragic play. But the original story actually comes from the medieval period, and it actually has a very happy ending.
In Search of the Once and Future King: Arthur and the Twilight of the Middle Ages
Written sometime around 1468 amidst the gathering dusk of the medieval period Le Morte d’Arthur was an ambitious attempt to forge the self-contained, tonally dissonant, and sometimes contradictory fragments of the Arthurian legends’ broad canon into a single cohesive work.
In Search of The Once and Future King: Attack of the Prequels
As far as Arthurian literature was concerned, the fourteenth century was a time of spinoffs and magic, of original characters and adventure; and the greatest of these tales was Perceforest.
The Story of Merlin and the Demons who made him
In the medieval tradition, Merlin was created by demons to bring about the downfall of Christianity.
In Search of the Once and Future King: Arthur and Edward I
King Edward I of England found not only a role model but a political tool every bit as puissant as the legendary king himself.
Medieval Netflix Review: Cursed
The latest filmed adaptation of the Arthurian legend is Cursed, released earlier this month on Netflix. How good is this series, and how does it portray the Middle Ages?
Finding Sir Lancelot in Medieval Poland
Today, being the world’s only Lancelot wall paintings preserved in situ, the Siedlęcin set ranks among the most outstandingly complete and well preserved in Europe.
Medieval Reads: Creating stories with Mary Stewart and Geoffrey of Monmouth
Mary Stewart’s rather well known Arthurian trilogy-with-extra-volumes used a sub-Roman British setting, and placed an entirely twelfth century story of Arthur into it.
The Politics of Misadventure at Camelot
A third of the way through La mort le roi Artu (c.1230), an early thirteenth-century Old French prose romance that concludes the Lancelot Grail Cycle, ‘the greatest misadventure in the world’ takes place at Camelot, the court of King Arthur of Logres.
A Guide to Arthurian Literature
This week is all about King Arthur and his Knights on The Medieval Podcast.
Lanval: A Tale of a Knight of the Round Table
Listen to the story of Lanval, a knight of the Round Table who is loved by a mysterious lady of the Otherworld – for better and for worse.
Playing Merlin: Authorship from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Neomedievalisms
Interestingly, the writers of each new version of the Arthurian legend have chosen Merlin as their avatar: he functions in each text as historian, author, and prophet.