Once and Future

I was thinking lately about how few 'Arthurian' illustrations I have in the files. Lots of Merlin's, yes, from before he was even born until he was put in his magical prison, and the few King Arthurs that do appear often feature Merlin too.  Pellinore and Up on the Tower were inspired by the T. H. White books.

Into the Archive: Arthurian Romances

Arthurian Romances (Penguin Classics) Paperback

by Chrétien de Troyes (Author), William W. Kibler (Translator), &  Carleton W. Carroll (521 pages)

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Fantastic adventures abound in these courtly romances: Erec and Enide, Cligés, The Knight of the Cart, The Knight with the Lion, and The Story of the Grail. – Amazon

Little is known of [Chretien’s] life, but he seems to have been from Troyes or at least intimately connected with it. Between 1160 and 1172 he served (perhaps as herald-at-arms, as Gaston Paris speculated) at the court of his patroness Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, daughter of King Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who married Count Henry I of Champagne in 1164. Later, he served the court of Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders. As proposed by Urban T. Holmes III, Chrétien's name, meaning literally "Christian from Troyes", might be a pen name moniker of a Jewish convert from Judaism to Christianity, also known as Crestien li Gois. - Wikipedia

Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chrétien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen Guinevere, and in The Knight with the Lion Yvain neglects his bride in his quest for greater glory. Erec and Enide explores a knight's conflict between love and honour, Cligés exalts the possibility of pure love outside marriage, while the haunting The Story of the Grail chronicles the legendary quest. Rich in symbolism, these evocative tales combine closely observed detail with fantastic adventure to create a compelling world that profoundly influenced Malory and are the basis of the Arthurian legends we know today. – Penguin

 

Today the last of my May order of books was delivered, about a week earlier than I had been led to believe it would. I am pleased that I got them all so quickly, but I also like when they’re staggered a bit more so I can savor the anticipation.

Chretien de Troyes. I can never read that name without hearing Joss Auckland (as C. S. Lewis) saying it to his English class in the first film adaptation of Shadowlands. De Troyes has been on my radar for quite a while as a profound influence on the Arthurian legends and my recent look at my own history with the Matter of Britain has awakened my interest again in one of the ‘primary sources.’  I was intrigued to find out his connections to King Henry II and Elanor of Aquitaine (see The Lion in Winter 1968).

A reading will have to wait for a while. I am already doing a daily rotation with Eary Christian Writings, Eusebius’ The History of the Church, and The Life of Sir John Falstaff. For amusement and relief, I am throwing in the occasional Borges short story. For now, Arthurian Romances waits safely in the Archive for its chance to come around.

I was expecting the ‘white band’ Penguin edition, but I got the older ‘yellow background’ version. It matters not; it is the same thing under different covers. The book is slightly marred by a Used sticker on the spine, but for $2.34 ($6.82 with shipping and so on) that’s simply aesthetics. Oh, and Erec and Enide sounds more like an Edwardian love story (Eric and Enid) than a Medieval romance.

 

Let Us Ride To ... Camelot!

 

The Shadow Library: Misty Memory

 

It wasn't until I was gathering some of my Arthurian materials that I remembered I had briefly owned a copy of The Mists of Avalon (1983) by Marion Zimmer Bradley, One of the many books I got by accident through the Science Fiction Book Club. I tried to give it a read, but could not choke it down and sold it soon after. I understand a lot of people consider it a classic and they even made a TV series of it in 2001, kind of sliding in on the wave of Fantasy films of the time. Reaction to it was 'somewhat positive' but it was 'hampered by cheesiness'.

I never particularly cared for Bradley, her opinions, or her writing, although she was one of the co-founders of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Still it surprises me that since her death in 1999 "... her reputation was posthumously marred when in 2014 it was revealed by her children, daughter Moira Greyland and son Mark Greyland, that she was guilty of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children. Bradley's daughter Moira Greyland said that Bradley had not only been aware of Breen's child molestation activities but also sexually abused her. Many science fiction authors have since publicly condemned Bradley." - Wikipedia. Should her artistic work be cancelled or condemned? Maybe not, but it might be approached with caution.

Into the Archive: The Bright Sword

 

The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur (Hardcover)

by Lev Grossman (Author)

A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.

They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.

The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, full of duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It also sheds a fresh light on Arthur’s Britain, a diverse, complex nation struggling to come to terms with its bloody history. The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, who are looking for a way to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves. - Amazon.

Well, this is the first book I've gotten in September (yes, it came on the last day of August, but rather late and bought with September funds). I knew it was coming and went out and started waiting on the porch at 4:30 PM. I went in at 6 PM to go to the restroom, then checked Amazon and saw it was three deliveries away. I got out just in time to accept the package from the hand of the deliveryman himself. I took it in, opened it up, and found a beautiful book of surprising heft; 673 pages to be exact. I hadn't realized it would be so big, but it's fine with me. I certainly enjoyed Lev Grossman's The Magician's Trilogy (I was surprised to learn he had written four other novels, two before The Magicians and two for chilren after the Magicians books). Please don't judge the Magicians books by the adaptations done on the SciFi channel. What I like about Grossman is that he likes to write Fantasy and he is an obvious fan of Fantasy on any level, and isn't afraid to show it. The very epithet of the first section of The Bright Sword is this quote: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government." But that is the author's comment. He combines legend, historical detail, and a modern sense skewed through applicability to these lenses. Grossman does this (so far; I haven't read a lot) with a light touch that is never intrusive; the only retelling (major or otherwise) that has taken this particular approach in so far as I can tell. The closest comparison might be T. H. White (with less sheer anachronism), a statement I believe that Grossman would find a compliment. 

Every generation of modern readers gets its own retelling of Arthur; it is a tribute to the applicability and even malleability of the legends. From Malory's Le Mort D'Arthur to Tennyson's The Idylls of the King to T. H. White's The Once and Future King to John Boorman's Excalibur, we find a different king and court  that the times interpret for themselves. I think we might have the next major one here.

I have been following 'the Matter of Britain' since at least the fourth grade (with the Blanche Winder Stories of King Arthur book), perhaps even earlier (check out Arthur! and His Square Knights of the Round Table). Here are but a few of the iterations I have filed in my skull.

(slightly edited)