Why is arthurian stuff so well known, but so little read?
Everyone knows Arthur, most heard of lancelot, and some know of gawain
Everyone knows the holy grail, most heard of the round table, and some know of the bleeding lance
but even though many people know these WORDS, these tropes, people rarely actually engage with Arthurian literature itself it seems. Even disregarding them being old, it still seems way more people interact with Shakespeare or other cultural touchstones like the greeko-roman myths.
Do you think its because of the confusing nature of medieval Arthurian publications? There not really being A "definitive" reading of most stories, but it being spread out over many authors over a few hundred years and some authors work being continued by multiple other sources later on making separate, somewhat confusing, continuities.
It took me a minute to sus out where to begin too, but I do think if you want the heart of the genre, the Work of Chretian de Troyes I think is the closest to the "definitive" as you can get stylistically. there are other great works like Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, but that and the bulk of other post 1200's works seem to really start as a concrete genre of conventions with Chretian. Reading less like a pseudo history like Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain, or even Wace's more fanciful history, and more like entertaining adventures of men and women trying to become better than themselves and navigating this world and maybe the next.
All and all it just seems like a hard subject to get "in" too compared to others, not because of any problem with the writings themselves, but because there is no clear entry point to get familiar with it.
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No one's fault but your parent's if you didn't read Arthurian literature as a child. I honestly assumed everyone did, even if just in simplified language.
what versions did your parents read?
again, I dont think its (necissarily) a problem of arcane language. Chretien for instance is very readable and not at all esoteric. The translations included. the style of his works are supposed to br clear and very easily palatable (way more than shakespeare or even Ivanhoe from the early 1800s). There where wroting styles that where less clear at the time as well, but it seems french verse very often valued clearity and curtness.
On your point of medieval literarure being fairly inaccessible, I think I largely agree, outside of some big exceptions like aquinus which is often published for philosophy/theology. Though I think its generally more because you dont see it much in the wild rather than it not being there.
On the TH white version, I was kind of hesitent to read it because I read ivanhoe and it largely seemed to be a product of its time rather than truelly authenticity medieval in mindset. Not that its bad, I actually really liked Ivanhoe, but you could definitely tell that it was made in the bergeoning of the nation state conceptually. distinctly 19th century in feel. Though it did have insights into the medieval. And I hear White’s had similar indicators of his time added to the backdrop of arthur. so its on my “read later” list.
Ive been personally reading/listening to the translations available on librivox.
>Ive been personally reading/listening to the translations available on librivox.
What have you been reading? I've been meaning to get together a list of medieval works, similar to the basic selections for the greeks and romans.
again, like I mentioned, chretian’s Knight of the carte, and Chretian’s Yvain.
Both free on librivox.
Not on librivox, but I bought Percival (and its various continuations, Percival seems to be the story he was writing when he died) off of Audible.
Unfortunately, I do think Percival WOULD be the best starting point, but A: the version im reading is payed and B: the story itself is unfinished by the author.
So in lue of that, I think Yvain might be the best start. because it has a little of everything.
>B: the story itself is unfinished by the author.
BUT its also interesting because there are 4 major continuations of it written by different authors. so you have this interesting 4 way “what if” split that gives different continuations and conclusion’s to the grail quest (chretian’s percival being the first mention of it), Percival’s journey to knighthood, and percivals spiritual journey. Some are more spiritual, some more worldly, some mire sudtle, some more blunt.
I like reading the modern rewrites that are kinda YA style, not really interested in any of the older source material I guess yeah because it’s harder to read.
Even then they all vary in stories and characters. Example some have mordred and some don’t. I need to find more to read
Seems like all medieval literature is fairly inaccessible. Even as someone interested in reading about the era, I've read shockingly little of the actual literature.
I know Arthur from TH White, not de Troyes.
I'm the same. I'm interested in the Middle Ages but read very little of it. I wonder if it because there isn't an entry-level collection of medieval works.
I always felt like Medieval texts lack the clarity of Ancient ones. Some do pretty well for themselves like Matthew Paris, Froissat or William of Tyre but they are exceptions to the norm. Even some clear works like Attaleiates end up falling victim to the sophist style which infects works of patronage which is all too common in the Middle Ages.
I may be speculating but it's because in the Middle Ages you read the same text over and over and over again
so it made sense that authors respected that and even the works of fiction (e.g. de Troyes, von Eschenbach, Chaucer) were geared for such "unfolding enjoyment," with a good measure of built-in ambiguity to help bring forward the personality of the reader and lead to fruitful debates
in antiquity, like today, there were tons of texts... especially drama and history (which was probably read as we read fiction today, but with an added dose of cold sweat)
>Why is arthurian stuff so well known, but so little read?
it is a philosophy, not a "literary thing"... and in that respect the fact that it's more known about than read reflects it's success
similarly how many of those who recognize the "wheel of fortune" motif have read Boethius?
back then books were subordinate to ideas, not the other way around like since the invention of movable type
I think it's because there is no one singular, definitive Arthurian text. Some have Lancelot, some dont. Some are written in old English, some are written in super old English, and some are written in French. And none of these stories really follow what modern audiences regard as a satisfying hero's journey with character development and stuff. None of the Arthurian characters are as dimensional as say Shakespeare's characters, because they werent meant to be realistic, they were meant to be allegorical.
Modern readers currently see Arthurian legend as a sort of tragic story about a king whose wife cheated on him and his bastard son destroyed Camelot, but that is not what the Arthurian legend is about.
>And none of these stories really follow what modern audiences regard as a satisfying hero's journey with character development and stuff.
thats one part I highly disagree with. Of course it depends on version, But Chretians again usually has a rather robust character arch in his stories. Especially in Yvain (where its largley about Yvain making up a broken promise to his wife) and Percival (basicly a ground up story of someone learnerning what it means to be a knight through trial and error). And there tends to be a lot of mini side character arcs as well, like a lady who begged lancelot to spare her husband, which he did, searching high and low for lancelot and repaid him by freeing him from a tower he was locked up in by an evil adversary. Not to mention the tension of Lancelot doing something blatently sinful in wanting and laying with guenivere, the kings wife, knowing what his heart wants and duty demands being opisite.
Not to say the more strictly allegorical is t there as well, some continuations of percival are more like that, but there very much is character progression in the way we mean nowadays in these texts too.
>I think it's because there is no one singular, definitive Arthurian text.
True and in this aspect it reminded me of superhero comics. There's no definitive Superman story, for example. Many different versions.
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot-project
Enjoy!
Chivalric romance is perhaps the genre that aged the worst of all medieval genres. It has no exotic appeal like the norse or the celtic works do and it hasn't the theological perfection of Dante or the aestheticism and relatability of the troubadours. I also think that when we think we want to read chivalric romance what we actually want is some sort of dechristianized,Tennysonian-victorian doom and gloom and struggle towards perfection in an imperfect era, but that's a tone that the modern reworkings of those tales created, not something that was originally present in those tales.
It's probably because people care more about The Once and Future King related media than they do about actual Arthurian stories. The Sword in the Stone got the Disney adaptation, and The Ill-Made Knight and The Candle in the Wind got adapted into Camelot.
As someone in the thread said, there is no definite "one true source" for Arthurian stuff, so most of what they know comes via cultural osmosis or modern adaptations. I personally prefer the more or less original/Middle Ages writings to anything new but I'm aware to a normal reader they'd be cumbersome, boring or vastly outdated.
>Shakespeare or other cultural touchstones like the greeko-roman myths
These are actively studied in school, aren't they? Also the Greek or Roman myths usually "mean" The Iliad, The Odyssey and maybe the Aeneid, whatever else people know also comes from cultural osmosis or modern adaptations. Hell, they even get The Iliad wrong, I've seen descriptions for museum objects on museum websites mentioning shit like the fall of Troy or Achilles's death IN THE ILIAD.
>studied in school
Anon, the average school-age person in the US has never heard of Homer or Virgil. In the US, schools tended to assign someone like Edith Hamilton for mythology with a unit on Homer, but they've been phasing that out and prefer to allow for either Rick Riordan or similar as schools move toward full digital. Homer is mentioned usually in a single lesson and then discarded. It's not better in the UK. In some ways, their education is even worse. At best, 1 in 200 could tell you anything intelligible about the the Iliad or Odyssey, virtually nobody on the street could tell you anything about Virgil. If they do know the basic myths, it's from playing Hades.
> the average school-age person in the US has never heard of Homer or Virgil
I do not believe you. I had to read Sophocles in 7th grade. At an American public school. In 1998.
Is Evola's book on the Holy Grail a good starting point into Arthurian literature or literature about the Grail?
if you have the time and conditions, you could start by reading von Eschenbach's "Parzival" or de Troyes "Mort d'Arthur"
otherwise yes, it's an excellent starting point, a great alternative to classical introductions like Weston, Loomis etc.
Malory's 'La Morte d'Arthur' is the standard text, certainly for English readers but possibly in any language.
Oxford publishes a version in original spelling by Vinaver and in modern spelling by Cooper.
>Why is arthurian stuff so well known, but so little read?
Arthurian stuff isn't actually that well known. Let us take Monty Python and the Holy Grail as an example. Now, you will be surprised to find that this movie is actually extremely faithful to its depiction of the Arthurian legends. Of course there is some comedy and absurdity, but most of it is grounded in textual sources. The rabbit that decapitates men? Yes, that is textual, but with a slight modification. In Arthurian legend, instead of a hell-rabbit, it's a hell-cat fished from a lake near Lausanne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cath_Palug). Remember that scene where Lancelot kills everyone at a wedding and it's all just a big misunderstanding. Yeah, Lancelot does shit like that all the time. He kills a bunch of people, then he makes up with the nobility and they pretend like the carnage never happened. There's also some really funny shit too. I might be misremembering the character, but not situation, but Lancelot I think happens upon an empty pavilion. He enters it to sleep, undresses and gets in bed. Then the knight who owns the pavilion comes back. Undresses, gets in bed, and thinks Lancelot is his lover. He starts to try to frick Lancelot but then realizes he's holding a man in his arms. Lancelot wakes up when he feels himself about to get fricked and chops the dude's head off.
Ok, I guess I've gone off on a tanget, but the other point I want to make is the reason this stuff isn't well read today is because it is quite "forgettable" when you actually read it. It's the same story framework repeated a million times over and over. Copy and paste battle scenes. Copy and paste damsels leading knights to a castle to test their bravery to free the locals from a curse/enchantment. It gets very tiresome after a while.
The other problem is on a surface level, these books are all plot. Character wasn't developed to quite the degree that we are familiar with now. The influence of Stendhal is of course not present, and by that I mean that we never see a character's internal thoughts or motivations or how they are feeling. Everything is narrated as, X happened, then Y happened, then Z happened, then AA happened,......So for a modern reader it's not as appetizing as the novel post-Stendhal. However this is not to denigrate medieval prose works. They have their own charm, namely their strong faith. A big theme running throughout Arthurain legends is that everything is foretold/pre-ordained by God, and as the reader you merely witness the fulfillment. And it's this mindset of predestination that permeates the Arthurian legend. Men fight duels for the honor of others/damsels, and it's not about who is right or wrong, but who is right or wrong is determined by God, which is done by winning a duel. Our world is far too secular to appreciate the beauty of medieval thinking. When was the last time you heard someone invoke God's blessing? Or wish someone into the care of the Lord?
Arthurian stuff is folk tales, just like the Celtic and to a lesser extent Germanic or Scythian if you believe that myths they were based on. There's not a single master text, it's a cultural heritage that is told and retold through the generations. People aren't wrong for mostly learning it via osmosis and recent adaptions.
I mean, if you don't want to read translations of Medieval Sources, you could always read The Once and Future King.