The Fall of King Arthur: Why Le Morte Darthur Still Enchants Us | Lecture 4
Adam Walker - Close Reading Poetry
8,912 views
Why must Excalibur be returned? What kind of story is Le Morte D'arthur ... romance, epic, elegy, or proto-novel? And what does it mean that England’s greatest king fades into legend, not history?
In this lecture, we consider the climactic end of the Arthurian world in Book XXI of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D'arthur. We enter a forest-green labyrinth of dreams, death, and destiny in which knights receive visions from the dead and swords vanish beneath the surface of haunted lakes. Along the way, we trace the origins of Arthurian legend from Welsh heroic poetry to French romance, examine the structure of enterlacement, and consider Malory’s poetic style in light of the War of the Roses.
Whether you’re a lover of medieval literature, Arthurian myth, or simply curious about the power of old stories, this is a book worth getting lost in.
🗡️ Topics Covered:
– The death of Arthur and the fall of Camelot
– The genre of medieval romance and chivalric adventure
– The epic, the proto-novel, and the poetics of enchantment
– Origins of Arthurian legend in Welsh, French, and Latin traditions
– Middle English style and the vernacular revolution
– The Excalibur episode and the mystery of Arthur’s fate
– Malory’s political context during the Wars of the Roses
#medieval #kingarthur #malory
20 Comments
He captures the owl haunted beauty of the final days and the slow ticking of ghost clocks, love as
the dissolution of the ordered world, the dark castles of our mind.
Some today consider it dry, but for its age its straight forward, and brutal.
We made up poems, roll played a tiny bit, but mostly read and talked.
I still have my 2 Everyman volumes and notes stuffed in the sleeves.
I think we ended up finishing and then did some IRC chat (all with ascii art like pure nerds. I mean you haven’t lived until you have seen a knight on his destrier, banner flying all done in ASCII art)
The Fall of King Arthur: Why Le Morte Darthur Still Enchants Us | Lecture 4
Adam Walker - Close Reading Poetry
8,912 views
Why must Excalibur be returned? What kind of story is Le Morte D'arthur ... romance, epic, elegy, or proto-novel? And what does it mean that England’s greatest king fades into legend, not history?
In this lecture, we consider the climactic end of the Arthurian world in Book XXI of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D'arthur. We enter a forest-green labyrinth of dreams, death, and destiny in which knights receive visions from the dead and swords vanish beneath the surface of haunted lakes. Along the way, we trace the origins of Arthurian legend from Welsh heroic poetry to French romance, examine the structure of enterlacement, and consider Malory’s poetic style in light of the War of the Roses.
Whether you’re a lover of medieval literature, Arthurian myth, or simply curious about the power of old stories, this is a book worth getting lost in.
🗡️ Topics Covered:
– The death of Arthur and the fall of Camelot
– The genre of medieval romance and chivalric adventure
– The epic, the proto-novel, and the poetics of enchantment
– Origins of Arthurian legend in Welsh, French, and Latin traditions
– Middle English style and the vernacular revolution
– The Excalibur episode and the mystery of Arthur’s fate
– Malory’s political context during the Wars of the Roses
#medieval #kingarthur #malory
When he fought the giant on the Roman campaign, it was his almost laughably dead-set will and refusal to give up that his comrades stood in awe of. This bred confidence in his warriors that he was worthy to rule them. His fairness too was what garnered fealty far and wide. Only gray-eyed Arthur could have held in check the seething hatreds of Gawain and Pellinore’s feud, and only because both families for the most part liked and trusted him. To carry it out openly would have sparked civil war, but out of honor for Arthur they hid the depth of their rancor and wrought their vengeances secretly.
It’s a point that’s often missed. Without trust, obedience will falter. Receiving swords from strange ladies in lakes might be no basis for civil government today, but the state is based on principles hardly less mystical: reason, liberty, universalism, etc. These will be ideals in the worst sense – vaporous nothings – unless there are stories to give them life. Nowadays the franchise is a lot broader than the circumference of the Round Table, yet even so, it only all the more needs to find purchase in the people’s hearts, lives, and story. Personal loyalty was the glue that held Arthur’s kingdom together. Its unravelling in the end was for personal reasons too. But then, it always is.