Worlds of Arthur
Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages
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- £13.99
Publisher Description
King Arthur is probably the most famous and certainly the most legendary medieval king. From the early ninth century through the middle ages, to the Arthurian romances of Victorian times, the tales of this legendary figure have blossomed and multiplied. And in more recent times, there has been a continuous stream of books claiming to have discovered the 'facts' about, or to unlock the secret or truth behind, the 'once and future king'.
Broadly speaking, there are two Arthurs. On the one hand is the traditional 'historical' Arthur, waging a doomed struggle to save Roman civilization against the relentless Anglo-Saxon tide during the darkest years of the Dark Ages. On the other is the Arthur of myth and legend - accompanied by a host of equally legendary people, places, and stories: Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad and Gawain, Merlin, Excalibur, the Lady in the Lake, the Sword in the Stone, Camelot, the Round Table.
The big problem with all this is that 'King Arthur' might well never have existed. And if he did exist, it is next to impossible to say anything at all about him. As this challenging new look at the Arthur legend makes clear, all books claiming to reveal 'the truth' behind King Arthur can safely be ignored. Not only the 'red herrings' in the abundant pseudo-historical accounts, even the 'historical' Arthur is largely a figment of the imagination: the evidence that we have - whether written or archaeological - is simply incapable of telling us anything detailed about the Britain in which he is supposed to have lived, fought, and died. The truth, as Guy Halsall reveals in this fascinating investigation, is both radically different - and also a good deal more intriguing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A historian of late antiquity, Halsall successfully explains in his newest (after Humor, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages) why there's good reason to doubt the validity of the many histories and legends of King Arthur. He begins by discussing the "traditional narrative" of the famed (and likely fictitious) king and exploring the archeological records of Britannia, before moving on to note the scarcity of extant contemporaneous written sources, many of which, the author asserts, have been "cherry-pick" in the service of mythmaking. He also denounces claims of corroborative "lost written sources" as no more than "superficially attractive." In the latter half of the book, Halsall leaves Arthur far behind and turns his attention to the grander question of the provenance of Arthur's world England itself yet this section, like the tale of Arthur, suffers from a lack of convincing evidence. Halsall pursues some compelling argumentative threads, such as the time line and scale of Anglo-Saxon migration to the isles; scholars will find plenty of academic fodder, but the import of Halsall's conclusions is hazy. 20 b&w images, 15 maps.
