This article brought some serious ragebait for anyone with an inkling of the myth and history of that particular figure. Stating outright "He's the mythical Celtic warlord who held out against the Anglo Saxon invasion of what would come to be called England" ignores about half of the possible stories. One of the more popular threads is that he was a Roman general. Neither Saxon nor Norman, and certainly not Celtic.
The stories around King Arthur are not confined in that way. Heck, Lancelot was a self-insert hero, that came during a renaissance around the myths. He came a few hundred years after the mythos was established.
The historians try to point out that things are as about in-flux as possible, but the author misses it. They do end on a line reflecting the meaning, and explore some of the various aspects, but... they tend to use "is", forgetting that Arthur has been the fanfic of the world since Medieval times, over and over, and over again. You can be certain of exactly nothing when it comes to those myths.
Excalibur? Not in the earliest stories. No sword in stone, no Lady in the Lake. Caliburnus and Excalibur might be the same sword, in which case Caliburn is noted in an early piece of Celtic origin, but just as a sword belonging to a warlord (Bram). Nothing much special about it. (Wikipedia's page on the sword is... Painful. Most of the focus is on the latter adaptions, of course. But the origin is not clearly Welsh. There is... Debate.)
Merlin? There's a possibility that Merlin and Arthur were the same person at one point. Artr Myrrdin Gwyls is one of the earlier mythical names for the magical bard. (Where Robert Jordan pulled a lot of his inspiration for Artur Hawkwing, rather than more modern tales.)
Guinevere? Didn't exist until seven hundred years after the original tales became widespread. Part of the romantic movement.
Arthur fought the Saxons, right? Sometimes it's the Saxons. Sometimes the Romans. Sometimes the French. Whoever the writer felt it in-vogue to fight, pretty much.
Rant over... They got close to the point, but missed it. Arthur is a story without grounding. It's supposed to be something you can take, shape, and tell a moral about your own culture. And we do. The TV shows, movies, and constant reinventions, are what the character has been for most of its existence. A tale, waiting to be told.
A tale that many of us will read, and watch, and listen to, time and time again, for when the next author finds something to be inspired for.
You can say that about literally any mythos/origin story, including bible and probably old hebraic stuff too.
The problem is when... maybe not so smart or experienced in life people come, and desperately need things to be clear and simple for them. Clear yes and no, good and evil, good wins, just tell me what to think and what is the right way. People don't want to hear about boring life facts or how life is infinitely complex and everything and everybody is some form of shade of grey. I can see it well and alive these times too so additional education ain't gonna save us.
The only difference with say bible is that nobody sat for a while few centuries after (if anything actually happened at all, pretty skeptical here) and wrote it down clearly enough so that major deviations from that point were hard to justify. Until of course new canon is written and everything old is thrown out of window... would love to see how original biblical verses read compared to over-translation that happened 1500 years later, given what was left in mostly old testament I'd say it would read pretty horribly and be completely incompatible with our modern values and ways of life.
> they tend to use "is", forgetting that Arthur has been the fanfic of the world since Medieval times, over and over, and over again. You can be certain of exactly nothing when it comes to those myths.
This is super important to emphasize. In its first hundred years, the printing industry made much (if not most) of its profit off of what were essentially trashy paperbacks, pumped out as fast as they could acquire them because there was no concept of copyright yet. The authors tasked with writing that content took all the old history books - most of dubious historicity to begin with - and wrote wild fantasies based around them. The King Arthur legend is one of the most popular ones, probably as widely read as the flood of translations of the classics.
Since this coincided with a large increase in literacy, these fiction books calcified the fiction into legend and pop culture.
That's a sobering thought right there: that one people's mythos, the foundations of their culture, could trace back to... a bunch of randos in the early printing era, who figured out they can get rich quick by flooding the world with slop.
I wouldn’t expect any mythos to be perfect, because they have often been constructed quickly and hastily due to external pressures for national unity. Various countries that saw a surge for independence during the 19th century age of nationalism, often based their mythos on Romantic-era poetry that sometimes has aged well (e.g. the Kalevala), and sometimes has aged quite badly (a few Eastern European countries).
I thought the article was fine, historically, as a pop travel article. You seem to have hate-read it because it wasn't encyoclopedic enough and left out some of your favorite bits of Arthurian trivia.
You seem to have missed my final point - it isn't about the trivia. The reason that Arthurian legend is so broad and encompassing, is because it's all fiction. That people should write new stories with it.
It isn't about what my favourite trivia is. It's that everyone can have their favourite bits.
>Heck, Lancelot was a self-insert hero, that came during a renaissance around the myths.
The way I understand it, the French also loved the tale(s) of King Arthur but hated that they didn't have a role in it because Anglo/French rivalry is like that. So they wrote fanfiction (Lancelot), which eventually became part of canon.
Hmm? Nah, you can do that, references that only exist on paper and have to be sought in physical libraries are perfectly fine. What edit do you refer to that was rejected?
"Definitive statement", what? If an old manuscript says something about excalibur (or Caliburc or whatever), you can say the old manuscript says it. This is not a problem. If instead you want to say "Excalibur definitely was of Irish origin because this old manuscript said so", you're using Wikipedia to promote your own original research, which will conflict with the next wingnut's original research about how Excalibur was in the Old Testament ... and doing that would obviously be a problem. There's no "sadly" about this. "Sadly, guidelines discourage the cranks from fighting over fringe theories in article space".
This article brought some serious ragebait for anyone with an inkling of the myth and history of that particular figure. Stating outright "He's the mythical Celtic warlord who held out against the Anglo Saxon invasion of what would come to be called England" ignores about half of the possible stories. One of the more popular threads is that he was a Roman general. Neither Saxon nor Norman, and certainly not Celtic.
The stories around King Arthur are not confined in that way. Heck, Lancelot was a self-insert hero, that came during a renaissance around the myths. He came a few hundred years after the mythos was established.
The historians try to point out that things are as about in-flux as possible, but the author misses it. They do end on a line reflecting the meaning, and explore some of the various aspects, but... they tend to use "is", forgetting that Arthur has been the fanfic of the world since Medieval times, over and over, and over again. You can be certain of exactly nothing when it comes to those myths.
Excalibur? Not in the earliest stories. No sword in stone, no Lady in the Lake. Caliburnus and Excalibur might be the same sword, in which case Caliburn is noted in an early piece of Celtic origin, but just as a sword belonging to a warlord (Bram). Nothing much special about it. (Wikipedia's page on the sword is... Painful. Most of the focus is on the latter adaptions, of course. But the origin is not clearly Welsh. There is... Debate.)
Merlin? There's a possibility that Merlin and Arthur were the same person at one point. Artr Myrrdin Gwyls is one of the earlier mythical names for the magical bard. (Where Robert Jordan pulled a lot of his inspiration for Artur Hawkwing, rather than more modern tales.)
Guinevere? Didn't exist until seven hundred years after the original tales became widespread. Part of the romantic movement.
Arthur fought the Saxons, right? Sometimes it's the Saxons. Sometimes the Romans. Sometimes the French. Whoever the writer felt it in-vogue to fight, pretty much.
Rant over... They got close to the point, but missed it. Arthur is a story without grounding. It's supposed to be something you can take, shape, and tell a moral about your own culture. And we do. The TV shows, movies, and constant reinventions, are what the character has been for most of its existence. A tale, waiting to be told.
A tale that many of us will read, and watch, and listen to, time and time again, for when the next author finds something to be inspired for.
You can say that about literally any mythos/origin story, including bible and probably old hebraic stuff too.
The problem is when... maybe not so smart or experienced in life people come, and desperately need things to be clear and simple for them. Clear yes and no, good and evil, good wins, just tell me what to think and what is the right way. People don't want to hear about boring life facts or how life is infinitely complex and everything and everybody is some form of shade of grey. I can see it well and alive these times too so additional education ain't gonna save us.
The only difference with say bible is that nobody sat for a while few centuries after (if anything actually happened at all, pretty skeptical here) and wrote it down clearly enough so that major deviations from that point were hard to justify. Until of course new canon is written and everything old is thrown out of window... would love to see how original biblical verses read compared to over-translation that happened 1500 years later, given what was left in mostly old testament I'd say it would read pretty horribly and be completely incompatible with our modern values and ways of life.
> they tend to use "is", forgetting that Arthur has been the fanfic of the world since Medieval times, over and over, and over again. You can be certain of exactly nothing when it comes to those myths.
This is super important to emphasize. In its first hundred years, the printing industry made much (if not most) of its profit off of what were essentially trashy paperbacks, pumped out as fast as they could acquire them because there was no concept of copyright yet. The authors tasked with writing that content took all the old history books - most of dubious historicity to begin with - and wrote wild fantasies based around them. The King Arthur legend is one of the most popular ones, probably as widely read as the flood of translations of the classics.
Since this coincided with a large increase in literacy, these fiction books calcified the fiction into legend and pop culture.
That's a sobering thought right there: that one people's mythos, the foundations of their culture, could trace back to... a bunch of randos in the early printing era, who figured out they can get rich quick by flooding the world with slop.
I wouldn’t expect any mythos to be perfect, because they have often been constructed quickly and hastily due to external pressures for national unity. Various countries that saw a surge for independence during the 19th century age of nationalism, often based their mythos on Romantic-era poetry that sometimes has aged well (e.g. the Kalevala), and sometimes has aged quite badly (a few Eastern European countries).
change "printing era" to "ai era" and you might be onto something!
I guess your main reference is Historia Brittonum, the oldest source about Arthur's myth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Brittonum
I thought the article was fine, historically, as a pop travel article. You seem to have hate-read it because it wasn't encyoclopedic enough and left out some of your favorite bits of Arthurian trivia.
You seem to have missed my final point - it isn't about the trivia. The reason that Arthurian legend is so broad and encompassing, is because it's all fiction. That people should write new stories with it.
It isn't about what my favourite trivia is. It's that everyone can have their favourite bits.
What's your favorite film or book on the topic?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Once_and_Future_King
is funny and serious in the right moments.
Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex is even more wittier.
If I have a comfy chair, nice music, and an afternoon to relax, probably Le Morte d'Arthur. Or if I'm looking to forget the world, Mists of Avalon.
For more historical diving, Oxford maintains a list of books and papers written on the matter.
>Heck, Lancelot was a self-insert hero, that came during a renaissance around the myths.
The way I understand it, the French also loved the tale(s) of King Arthur but hated that they didn't have a role in it because Anglo/French rivalry is like that. So they wrote fanfiction (Lancelot), which eventually became part of canon.
Change the Wikipedia page for Excalibur if you have better info.
That was rejected a few years back for using written references that weren't digitised as they're hundreds of years old. Wiki couldn't validate them.
Hmm? Nah, you can do that, references that only exist on paper and have to be sought in physical libraries are perfectly fine. What edit do you refer to that was rejected?
Yeah sadly you need an academic paper on the written reference and then a WP:RS on the paper to make a definitive statement on Wikipedia survive.
"Definitive statement", what? If an old manuscript says something about excalibur (or Caliburc or whatever), you can say the old manuscript says it. This is not a problem. If instead you want to say "Excalibur definitely was of Irish origin because this old manuscript said so", you're using Wikipedia to promote your own original research, which will conflict with the next wingnut's original research about how Excalibur was in the Old Testament ... and doing that would obviously be a problem. There's no "sadly" about this. "Sadly, guidelines discourage the cranks from fighting over fringe theories in article space".