England’s Arthur : the legend of Arthur and the creation of an English national identity

Abstract

'Racial history is beyond me,' said Kay. 'Nobody knows which race is which. They are all serfs in any case.' T. H White, The Witch in the Wood. Arthur of Britain is a figure shrouded in mystery, whereas Arthur of England is famous to all. While the Celtic origins around which the legends of King Arthur were built are hazy and largely lost to us today, the popular conception of Arthur as a heroic king who stood for honour, justice, ,and benevolent authority is as strong as ever. "When and why did he shed his ethnic origins and change from a Celtic warlord to an English king, from a warrior fighting a doomed resistance against Saxon invaders to an imperialist aggressor, able to subdue all of Western Europe to his will? By studying a selection of Arthurian texts written between the beginning of the twelfth and the end of the sixteenth centuries I hope to achieve two aims: firstly, to show how Arthur's myth, despite maintaining an air of continuity and stability, was actually a highly malleable body of literature that was fashioned and refashioned to better serve the ends of the societies its audience and authors inhabited. By examining these changes and the reasons behind them an insight into the preoccupations and concerns of medieval English society can be had. Secondly, to illustrate through this process of gradual textual manipulation, how a precursor to modem English na90nal identity existed from as early as the twelfth century. Conventional thinking places the modem nation and any associated identity firmly within the era of industrialisation and modernity, usually dating from the eighteenth century onwards. I challenge this assertion by providing evidence of a nation-like communal identity existent and thriving in England throughout the medieval era. Without a doubt this identity was not the same as the modem English one, and I am not advocating the eternal existence of any national structure and identity. Instead I believe that the modem nation and conceptions of it did not spring wholly from the pressures and requirements of the modem age, but rather fanned from an existing tendency that was imbued with a new intensity under the demands of modernity.