Posted on 06/29/2008 6:26:55 PM PDT by blam
King Arthur is propaganda, say French
By Peter Allen in Paris
Last Updated: 10:56PM BST 29/06/2008
French historians have accused the English of propagating the legend of King Arthur for "political reasons".
King Arthur: 'a mythical character who was invented at a certain point in history for essentially political reasons'
Even if a character who vaguely resembled the fabled leader did exist, he would probably have been a Welshman with strong connections to Brittany and whose sworn enemies were the Anglo-Saxons, they said.
The organisers of a conference and exhibition to be held at Rennes university in northern France next month said they will provide ample evidence that the Arthurian legend has continually been updated, often as a sop to English nationalists attempting to revive the Age of Chivalry.
The event, "King Arthur: A Legend in the Making", will highlight the argument that historians were joined by artists and writers in creating the "fiction" of the legend.
Typical was the Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, who at the height of the British Empire portrayed Arthur as a thoroughly decent Englishman whose manly virtues and trusty sword, Excalibur, were directed towards establishing heaven on earth.
Sarah Toulouse, curator of the Rennes exhibition, said: "King Arthur is a mythical character who was invented at a certain point in history for essentially political reasons.
"If he had really existed there would be more concrete historical traces of him."
Highlighting Arthur's fictional nature, Mrs Toulouse said: "These stories deal with universal themes. The earliest fragments of the tales can be traced back to Wales in the seventh century.
"But by the 13th century stories based on the Arthurian legends were being told right across Europe."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
They are worried about a legend that is thousands of years old?
I fart in your general direction!
Joan of Arc?
So? Joan of Arc was a schizophrenic. CHECKMATE!
Yeah, but crazy chicks are HOT!
Well, Maurice, 'E 'as been dead a long time. I sink we can probably beat him.
Yep. Which explains my odd attraction to Amy Winehouse until recently (she has gotten WAY too crack whoreish as of late).
And my first two wives.
no, they’re worried about discrediting any noble vestige of chivalry and honorable behavior, including western tradition and Christian heritage. certainly the idea of the knight who respects those who are weaker than he fits into that ideal. whether arthur existed or not is really immaterial; what’s important to people like this is proving that all things, even tales of knights who honor God and others before themselves, are really just political devices created to achieve selfish ends.
Marry one. Once. And then come over to the less crazy side.
/johnny
BRAVO!!!!!!
/johnny
Heh. Where were you and your advice when I married the second crazy one?
Oh well, third time's a charm.
Ugh!!! An ugly (and disgusting) White woman trying to sound like and ugly Black woman. What next?
bump
Well, she was certainly “hot” at the end.
Smokin!
I don’t think Chretien de Troyes was very English.
The idea of the noble knight is a wonderful thing. The reality of the actual noble knight sucked really hard.
Let's leave the hapless USC "brain surgeons" out of this.
Other than kicking the Muslims out centuries ago, what French history is there? I’ve heard that history is written by the victors.
And even the first tales of Arthur had him fighting the saxons
10-4
Exactly true. Chivalry was an ideal put forth to attempt to make the absolute rule of Iron men palatable. Tyranny is never palatable, even from guys in suits of armor sworn to uphold the weak, defend the defenseless and all those other things that seem to have been very common in legend and very rare in history.
However, that the ideal existed probably helped to restrain (some of) the iron men (some of the time).
For that reason the development of the ideal was a very good thing. Nazism was essentially a reversion to the rule of the iron men, but minus the ideal of the protection of the weak. It sucked much harder than medieval knighthood.
nahh...they’re still pissed about the Pink Panther movies
et tu, brute?
et tu, brute?
The french would not know Chivalry if it came up and bit them on the ass!!
bump for later
HIC JACET ARTURUS REX QUONDAM REXQUE FUTURUS
The ideals of chivalry and the Arthurian ideals were mostly, like with Alexandre Dumas, a yearning for a bygone era that expressed itself by fictionalizing and idealizing that bygone era.
If you asked most 11th century Knights to describe the ideals of Knighthood they would talk a lot more about couching a lance and serving as a warrior to their feudal lord than anything about upholding the weak, defending the defenseless, protecting women, etc.
Indeed when their feudal lord called their Knights to muster it was often to prey upon the weak, despoiling the defenseless, with a bit of looting and raping thrown in for spice.
Some watery tart throwing a sword at you is not the basis for a system of government.
Not surprising, since the idea of chivalry as intended to protect the weak and women didn't really get going till the middle/late 12th century.
One of the most interesting things about the chivalric code is that a similar, although certainly not identical, code developed at about the same time in Japan. The samurai corresponded in many ways to the knight, as bushido did to chivalry.
It's pretty obvious the knights of the 12th and later centuries liked to think of themselves as more than just the "Brute Squad" of the local Chief Thug. Such longings for an ideal can in the long run create the ideal.
Quite true. The most common form of medieval warfare was a raid on the enemy's territory. You'd pillage, rape and burn. (Hopefully in that order, although this was difficult to get through the medieval skull.) Serfs and other noncombatants would be slaughtered as a way of damaging the enemy lord's economic resources. This went on for many centuries. The greatest and perhaps the worst were the many decades of English raids into and through France during the Hundred Years War. But the Scottish and English borderers kept the tradition going even longer.
Courtesy ping to the tart in question.
A very cogent point. Anything than ennobles or embiggens the spirit of man is a step upon the correct path. ;)
Better that we all be free armed men than under the absolute rule of those with a government monopoly on the tools of warfare. But as long as people were ruled by a “brute squad” for the local “Chief Thug”, it helps immeasurably if that “brute squad” has pretensions to a nobler aim, as in the cases of Chivalry and Bushido.
Lol! I thought of Monty Python too.
Why is this news?
Obviously if there was an historical figure on whom Arthur was based, he was a Romanized Celt, almost certainly Welsh, who opposed the Saxon repagization of Britain.
And obviously the Arthurian legend was used as a national-unity narrative to create a ‘British’ identity at the point when the Norman royalty of England needed to unite their nation, Norman, Saxon, Welsh, Cornish, . . . against the French at the time of the Hundred Year War.
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