Back

I. Preliminaries:

1. Greeting.

2. Distribute syllabi. Go through it, explaining difference between 65B and 165B.
Class list, check numbers, announce that handouts such as bibliography/chronology, will follow.

3. What brings you to the class? What is your experience of Arthurian? (On sheet: name , class, major, your comment)

II. Introduction to the Course

A. Modern Medievalism
Part of your experience:

1. Popularity of Medievalism (look in Bookstore under fantasy, novels; separate section devoted to Arthurian myth, at end of the Medieval section).

Continuous power of the Arthurian legend.
"...but never more than in our own time."

Examples:
Poems of 19th century: e.g., Tennysonís Idylls of the King, give way to novels of the 20th c.

Novels:
Popular children's and fantasy adult in 19th and early 20th (e.g., Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), but Explosion after T. H. White's Once and Future King (1958):

John Steinbeck, The Acts of Arthur (1958)
Margaret Atwood, Avalon Revisited (1963)
Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave (1970)
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
A. A. Attanasio, Kingdom of the Grail (1992) [sample trash p. 23]
John Updike, Brazil [Trisao and Isabel Leme--transformation of story;
A World Called Camelot
The last Defender of Camelot
Camelot 3000

b. Musicals: since Rodgers and Hartís, Connecticut Yankee (1927):
Lerner and Loewe, Camelot (1960)

c. Opera: After Henry Purcell and John Dryden's King Arthur, or the British Worthy (1691), Wagner, Tristan, Parzifal; modern attempts, most recently, Sir Harrison Birtwhistleís Gawain (1991)--read review in SJ Merc June 1, 1991.

d. Films: Tay Garnett, Connecticut Yankee (1949)

The Sword and the Stone (1963)
Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Terry Gilliam, The Fisher King (1991)
Eric Rohmer, Perceval le Gallois (1990)
John Boorman, Excalibur (1981)
Hans Jrgen Syberberg, Parsifal (1982)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade [Grail legend]

e. Media. TV, Newspapers, Tabloids: read Oct. 19,m 1993, tabloid Sun: Grave Discovery: King Arthur's Tomb is Found in Nevada Cave!

2. The grip of the myth:

Camelot, Quondam rex et futurus:
American Presidential mythologizing: Kennedy/Clinton

3. Each age adopts and enlarges and rewrites, reinscribes the myth.
Examples:

a. Caxton's Malory
b, Tennyson (See Dedication of Idyls), Burne-Jones and William Morris
c. Twain (preface to Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, p. 24; illustrations by Daniel Cater Beard: Tennyson as Merlin, Victoria as sow; Henry VIII as Supreme head of the Church---and some other heads, with caption)
d. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mists of Avalon. (title page blurb and prologue)

B. Medieval Arthuriana
My field. My job in the course: to serve as your guide.
1. Myth: basic myth of Western Culture. --->(Campbell. )

a. Myths so central to civilizations, which the literature records: Near Eastern (Gilgamesh), Bible, with Genesis and Exodus, NT, Greek (Iliad, Odyssey)and Roman (Aeneid), Germanic English (Beowulf), Frankish (Roland). Perhaps most powerful for the western world: Celtic+French+German+English.

b. Celtic--Briton:
(1) WARRIOR SAVIOR/MESSIAH Arthurian emerged as quasi-historic and mythological: Arthur, dux bellorum +, like Hercules, godlike (cf. Arcturus, Artemis--ark*= bear).

Emerges out of mythic past into chronicle in Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150)
At once myth of individual and comitatus
Arthur
Knights: Gawain, Yvain, Lancelot, Kay, Perceval, etc.
Relation of Celtic and Christian mythoi.
Bright and dark side of myth (incest).

2. COURTLY ROMANCE HERO ---real advent of Arthurian: 1150-1250, England: 1350-1500--Tudor).

3. LOVE VS. LOYALTY: Lancelot, Arthur and Guenevere, Tristan, Mark and Isolde.

Back