The Arthurian Handbook by Norris J. Lacy

To take a colourful example from the late nineteenth century: in the survey Arthurian Localities John Stuart-Glennie located his Arthur in southern Scotland and northern England, the Hen Ogledd (Old North) of Welsh tradition. The lack of any conclusive document or artefact to prove the literary figure true existence has left a vacuum, inhaling fourteen centuries of mythology and modern conjecture. Modern historians and pseudo-historians alike have struggled to establish the historicity, or historical possibility, of a king or nobleman of post-Roman Britain bearing the name Arthur. Focussing on the earliest transmission of Arthurian elements, this review concentrates on half of the anthology’s twenty-two chapters. Lacy, offers an opportunity to examine a modern readership’s encounter with original Arthurian sources.

Wilhelm’s The Romance of Arthur, co-edited by Norris J. The name of this contradiction is Arthur.Īfter twenty years as the standard Arthurian reader, the publication of a third edition of James J. It is from the literature of Wales and the earliest writings in its language that we derive the origin of an ancient and enduring contradiction which continues to trouble national and literary imaginations. Observe Britain’s other “Celtic” nation today and the “ambivalent, charged and complex” relationship between literature and nationality. In this way, literary identities seldom align neatly with their national analogues.

Thomas could protest and persuade in Welsh, but contributed to the nation’s poetry in English.

Remote from colloquial Welsh discourse, Conran gave readers of English access to the poetic inheritance of Welsh. Thomas (1913-2000), the Nobel-nominated Welsh poet and nationalist became fluent in Welsh in adulthood but maintained English as the only language of his poetry. For example, Welsh poet and scholar Tony Conran (1931-2013) translated historical Welsh poetry into English but was allegedly unable to conduct everyday conversation in modern Welsh. To live in Wales, or to be in any way Welsh, is to dwell in a landscape of contradictions. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples Part 1: ‘…he was not Arthur’ “It is difficult to believe it was all the invention of a Welsh writer.”

Wilhelm (eds.) The Romance of Arthur: An Anthology of Medieval Texts in Translation (Routledge, 2013)

The Arthurian Handbook by Norris J. Lacy