King Arthur and the Round Table

King Arthur and the Round Table

The importance of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae to the development of the Arthurian legend cannot be overstated. Geoffrey is the one who adds Merlin to the story, writes of Arthur’s conquest of Rome, casts an aura of mystery around Arthur’s death, and connects knightly feats of valor to romantic love. His text was so popular that within just a few years of its appearance, other writers were reworking King Arthur. This is the case with the two writers you will learn about in this lecture: the Anglo-Norman scribe Robert Wace and the English cleric known as Layamon. ¹

Robert Wace was a Norman Frenchman. He translated Geoffrey’s work into old Northern French. Wace’s work underscores the connection between the Britons and the Bretons. Wace gave us the heritage of Arthur and the important fact that Arthur and his knights sat at the Round Table. He also introduces the idea of courtly love, that knights are interested in being awesome primarily because they are also interested in ladies.

Layamon describes himself in his poem as a priest, living at Areley Kings in Worcestershire. His poem had a significant impact on medieval history writing in England and the development of Arthurian literature and subsequently provided inspiration for numerous later writers, including Sir Thomas Malory and Jorge Luis Borges.² Although his primary source for his text—which we call simply the Brut—was clearly Wace, he also mentions in the opening to his text that he had consulted the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and had used also a third source, which he calls the “book of Saint Albin” and which scholars have yet to conclusively identify. Whereas Wace was all about emphasizing the courtly and the genteel, Layamon seems much more interested in giving us all the gory details of battle. Layamon deletes almost every mention Wace makes about love, chivalry, romance, and courtly concerns and recasts the Arthurian community as a little more violent, brutal, and primitive than does Wace. ³

Sources: ¹ Great Courses; ² Wikipedia; ³ King Arthur History and Legends: Professor Dorsey Armstrong, Purdue University

Image: Arthur’s Round Table