The Matter of Britain (; ; ; ) is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. The 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth's (History of the Kings of Britain) is a central component of the Matter of Britain.

It was one of the three great Western story cycles recalled repeatedly in medieval literature, together with the Matter of France, which concerned the legends of Charlemagne and his companions, as well as the Matter of Rome, which included material derived from or inspired by classical mythology and classical history. Its pseudo-chronicle and chivalric romance works, written both in prose and verse, flourished from the 12th to the 16th century.

Name

The three "matters" were first described in the 12th century by French poet Jean Bodel, whose epic ' ("Song of the Saxons") contains the lines:

The name distinguishes and relates the Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "Matter of Rome", and from the tales of the Paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constitute the "Matter of France".

Themes and subjects

King Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain. The others are stories related to the legendary kings of Britain, as well as lesser-known topics related to the history of Great Britain and Brittany, such as the stories of Brutus of Troy, Coel Hen, Leir of Britain (King Lear), and Gogmagog.

Legendary history

Geoffrey of Monmouth's is a central component of the Matter of Britain. Geoffrey drew on a number of ancient British texts, including the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, the earliest known source of the story of Brutus of Troy. Traditionally attributed to Nennius, its actual compiler is unknown; it exists in several recensions. This tale went on to achieve greater currency because its inventor linked Brutus to the diaspora of heroes that followed the Trojan War. whose daughter, Helena, marries Constantius Chlorus and gives birth to a son who becomes the Emperor Constantine the Great, thus tracing the Roman imperial line to British ancestors. It prominently included the King Arthur material, in which the post-Roman Britons led by Arthur briefly conquer much of Europe, including Rome itself, in the style of great world conquerors of antiquity. Geoffrey's pseudo-history succeeded in providing a body of national myth for the new Norman England, portraying the Norman Conquest as a restoration of Britain of the Celtic Britons, delivered from the rule of Arthur's ancient enemies, the Anglo-Saxons. Geoffrey's work, especially the Arthur material, was further expanded on and reworked by later medieval chroniclers in his wake.

The Arthurian tales have been changed throughout time. Various characters and stories have been added by different authors, often expanding on various members of Arthur's chivalric order, the Knights of the Round Table. The legend of Arthur and his knights is full of Christian themes, notably the quest for an important Christian relic, the Holy Grail. Another major element involves relationships in the tradition of courtly love, prominently between Lancelot and Arthur's wife Guinevere. The legend of Tristan and Iseult would also became an integral part of the Arthuriana, especially through the vast Prose Tristan.

The advanced manifestation of Arthurian romance in its cyclical prose forms began in the early 13th century with the Vulgate (Lancelot-Grail) Cycle, a long collection of often interlacing episodes spanning the entire time of Arthur and even beyond. It contains two major threads. One of these concerns Arthur's kingdom of Logres and his court of Camelot, envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of the heroes like Arthur, Gawain, and Lancelot, and their moral and spiritual failures. The other concerns the history of the Grail and the grand quest of the various knights to achieve it: some succeed (Galahad, Perceval, Bors) while others fail. Once an enormously popular subject, the interest in the Arthurian legend largely waned by the end of the Middle Ages, albeit continuing in England as well as through the Italian Renaissance and the French Renaissance. By the 17th century, it would be still considerably holding out only in England and to some degree in France, before fading away there too. there have been attempts by the Celticist scholars and folklorists (e.g. Albert Pauphilet, Alfred Nutt, Arthur Charles Lewis Brown, Emmanuel Cosquin, Gaston Paris, George Lyman Kittredge, John Rhŷs, et al) to link the tales of King Arthur and the Grail with Celtic mythology, usually in highly romanticized, reconstructed versions. The trend arguably peaked by the middle 20th century with Roger Sherman Loomis and Jean Marx. Similarly, Geoffrey's Leir of Britain, who later became the Shakespearean King Lear, has been connected to the Welsh sea-god Llŷr, related to the Irish Ler. Much of Arthurian content without a doubt does have roots in ancient Celtic British material, but which had been already Christianised and otherwise transformed (if not just forgotten) by the 12th century.

Another school of Arthurian scholarship, the mythologists, concerned themselves rather with researching the nature of myth. One theme explored by mythologist Joseph Campbell amongst others is to read the Arthurian literature, particularly the Grail tradition, as an allegory of human development and spiritual growth. Yet another school became known as the ritualists (e.g. Jessie L. Weston, William A. Nitze), Weston's 1920 From Ritual to Romance traced Arthurian imagery through Christianity to roots in early nature worship and vegetation rites, though this interpretation is no longer fashionable. More recent unconventional schools of Arthurian scholarship include the anthropologist proponents of the Scythian/Sarmatian origins theory (notably C. Scott Littleton), There is also a long-going debate regarding the possible existence of Arthur as a historical figure, with many candidates for such a hypothetical historical Arthur having been brought forth by various authors.

Medieval literature

Named authorship

<!-- adapted from fr:Légende arthurienne Auteurs du Moyen Âge (VIe siècle - XVIe siècle) -->

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+

! Author !! Century

!Language!! Oeuvre

|-

|Béroul||12th

|Old Norman||Tristan

|-

|Chrétien de Troyes||12th

|Old French||Erec and Enide, Cligès, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, Perceval, the Story of the Grail

|-

|Geoffrey Chaucer||14th

|Middle English||The Canterbury Tales

|-

|Thomas Chestre||14th

|Middle English||Sir Launfal, Libeaus Desconus

|-

|Geoffrey of Monmouth||12th

|Latin||,

|-

|Gottfried von Strassburg||13th

|Middle High German||'

|-

|Hartmann von Aue||12th

|Middle High German||Erec, Iwein

|-

|Layamon||13th

|Middle English||Brut

|-

|Thomas Malory||15th

|Middle English||Le Morte d'Arthur

|-

|Marie de France||12th

|Anglo-Norman||Lais of Marie de France: Lai de Yonec, Lai de Frêne, Lai de Lanval (...)

|-

|Nennius||9th

|Latin||Historia Brittonum

|-

|Robert de Boron||12th

|Old French||Merlin

|-

|Taliesin||6th

|Middle Welsh||Book of Taliesin

|-

|Thomas of Britain||12th

|Old French||Tristan

|-

|Wace||12th

|Old Norman||Roman de Brut, Roman de Rou

|-

|Wolfram von Eschenbach||12th

|Middle High German||Parzival

|-

|Raoul de Houdenc||12th

|Old French||Meraugis de Portlesguez, La Vengeance Raguidel

|-

|Païen de Maisières||12–13th

|Old French||La Mule sans frein

|-

|Rustichello da Pisa||13th

|Franco-Italian||Roman de Roi Artus / Compilation (including Guiron le Courtois and Meliodus)

|-

|Ulrich von Zatzikhoven||13th

|Middle High German||Lanzelet

|}

Anonymous

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+

! Oeuvre !! Century

!Language

|-

|Alliterative Morte Arthure||14th–15th

|Middle English

|-

|The Awntyrs off Arthure||14th–15th

|Middle English

|-

|L'âtre périlleux||13th

|Old French

|-

|'||14th–15th

|Middle French

|-

|Elucidation||13th

|Old French

|-

|'||13th

|Old French

|-

|Folie Tristan d'Oxford||12th

|Anglo-Norman

|-

|De Ortu Waluuanii||12–13th

|Latin

|-

|'||13th

|Old French

|-

|'||13th

|Old French

|-

|Jaufre||13th

|Old Occitan

|-

|The Knight with the Sword||13th

|Old French

|-

|The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain||15th

|Middle Scots

|-

|Lancelot-Grail Cycle||13th

|Old French

|-

|Life of Caradoc||12th

|Old French

|-

|Mabinogion||11th–13th

|Middle Welsh

|-

|'||13th

|Old French

|-

|Meliadus||13th

|Old French

|-

|Of Arthour and of Merlin||13th

|Middle English

|-

|Palamedes||13th

|Old French

|-

|Perceforest||14th

|Middle French

|-

|Perceval Continuations||13th

|Old French

|-

|Perlesvaus||13th

|Old French

|-

|Post-Vulgate Cycle||13th

|Old French

|-

|Prose Tristan|| 13th

|Old French

|-

|Roman de Fergus|| 13th

|Old French

|-

|Romanz du reis Yder|| 13th

|Anglo-Norman

|-

|Sir Gawain and the Green Knight||14th

|Middle English

|-

|Stanzaic Morte Arthur||14th

|Middle English

|-

|La Tavola Ritonda|| 15th

|Tuscan

|-

|Vera historia de morte Arthuri|| 12th/13th

|Latin

|}

See also

  • Avalon and Glastonbury
  • Battle of Badon and Battle of Camlann
  • Breton mythology and Cornish mythology
  • English historians in the Middle Ages
  • Historicity of King Arthur
  • List of Arthurian characters
  • List of Arthurian literature
  • List of works based on Arthurian legends
  • Sites and places associated with Arthurian legend

References

Citations

Cited works

Further reading

General Arthuriana

Regional traditions

  • Arthurian Folklore - a website detailing Welsh Arthurian folklore
  • Arthurian Resources: King Arthur, History and the Welsh Arthurian Legends - detailed and comprehensive academic site, includes numerous scholarly articles, from Thomas Green of Oxford University
  • Arthuriana - the only academic journal solely concerned with the Arthurian Legend with a selection of resources and links
  • Celtic Literature Collective - provides texts and translations (of varying quality) of Welsh medieval sources, many of which mention Arthur
  • International Arthurian Society
  • The Camelot Project - provides valuable bibliographies of freely downloadable Arthurian texts from the sixth to the early 20th centuries, from the University of Rochester
  • The Heroic Age - an online peer-reviewed journal which includes regular Arthurian articles
  • The Medieval Development of Arthurian Literature - from H2G2
  • Vortigern Studies - a collection of articles on King Arthur by various Arthurian enthusiasts