A bold but misguided exercise

King Arthur: photo by Julia Margaret Cameron

King Arthur: The Truth Behind the Legend
by Rodney Castleden.
Routledge, 1999.

Rodney Castleden is well known as an investigator into prehistoric enigmas such as the Minoan civilisation, Neolithic Britons and giant hill figures, and has here turned his attention to Arthur.

As expected, this is a widely researched book burrowing into scholarly literature, archaeological reports, fringe theories and texts both ancient and modern. There are photos of relevant sites and a generous helping of detailed maps, plans and figures mostly by the author himself (though, disappointingly, three illustrations by the present reviewer are uncredited and unacknowledged) and the whole is attractively laid out.

There are also a few typos, some of which didn’t seem to have been corrected for the paperback edition, but these don’t detract too much.

Chronicles, cranks and the credulous

A E Henderson’s 1935 reconstruction of Glastonbury Abbey before the Dissolution of the Monasteries

The Chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey:
An Edition, Translation and Study of John of Glastonbury’s
Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie
by James P Carley.
The Boydell Press, 1985.

Glastonbury has long been a Mecca for seekers after arcane knowledge, and certainly its reputation for being a world centre for occult teachings, legends and geomancy increased immeasurably after the middle of the 20th century with hippies, New Agers, latter-day druids and would-be witches making it not only a port of call but somewhere to settle. But belief in its mystic significance is not a modern phenomenon as this scholarly text — which I first reviewed in 1986 — makes crystal clear.†

Professor Carley first edited the text of a 14th-century work, Cronica sive Antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie, in 1978 for British Archaeological Reports, and that text reappears here with a very readable translation by David Townsend.

Over a third of the book is taken up with introductions, notes, bibliography and index, which are not only valuable for the student but thought-provoking for the interested lay-person. I shall return to these later.

Curious interpretations

‘The Boy’s King Arthur’ edited by Sidney Lanier, 1880, cover illustration by N C Wyeth, 1917

King Arthur: Chivalry and Legend
by Anne Berthelot.
Arthur et la Table ronde: La force d’une legende, translated by Ruth Sharman.
Thames and Hudson, 1997 (1996).

First published by Gallimard in 1996, this English version is part of Thames and Hudson’s New Horizons series and follows a similar format: a well-illustrated chronological survey of the chosen subject, followed by extracts from select documents, bibliography, credits and index.

The author was Professor of Medieval French Literature — and then of French & Medieval Studies — at the University of Connecticut (does that make her a Connecticut Frank at the court of King Arthur, perhaps?) and so her discussion of developments in Arthurian literature, from Wace and Layamon up to 20th-century cinema, is authoritative and thought-provoking.

For instance, she clearly charts how the Matter of Britain moved from chronicle format to poetry(eg Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace’s Brut) and then back to chronicle style, and how this reflected shifts in taste from pseudohistory to the flowering of chivalry and courtly love and then returning to the burgeoning nationalistic stance in England, as evidenced by Malory.

It is when she deals with the historical context of the legend, however, that we get some curious interpretations.