spot on. legends tend to be a mixture of truth, half truth, and damn right fiction. Arthur I suggest is 1% truth, 1% half truth and 98% fiction. That Arthur existed is probably true, but Merlin, The round table, Excalibur the sword in the stone, sir Lancelot and the rest I suggest is total fiction. not that I'm complaining though, the story is fantastic and who cares if it is not totally 'historically accurate'.
Aghart: After checking on what is known (or accepted as being known) I tend to concentrate on the 1% and wonder what it might have sprung from. Here we have a thread started seeking information on the round table - something which has become common "knowledge". That there was a round table, I doubt. That there was a sword in the stone, I doubt. It comes down to representation and distortion. The sword in the stone - lets assume there was a basis for the tale. A sword, a stone. How did they interrelate orginally? There may have been a sword, there may have been a stone. We know how the English "I couldn't care less" has become the American "I could care less". Distortion, original meaning lost or mistranslated. The sword is representative of something, and may even be directly referring to a sword, and heirloom perhaps, or a symbol of rulership for its owner. What was the stone? a similar concept, a token or symbol of rulership, or something different? How did the sword come to be "in" the stone"? These are the questions which plague me. I look at the round table in a similar way. I start from a basis of assumption that there was an ideal in the man who has become Arthur - a set of values by which he gathered his soldiers. Those ideals may or nmay not have been what they are purported to be now. Then, we we look at the writers of his "history" - mostly christian monks, probably zealous in their belief, and men writing for a particular audience. What is a table but a gathering point, a meeting place, a circle for men of similar ideas? How would they have interpreted their own idea of the man who was Arthur, and how would they have presented the story to their peers in a language they would understand? Is it a coincidence that the last supper was held at table, that Arthur, a supposedly christian man, held court at table? And his values were supposed to be one of equality, as has been said before - thus the table would need to be round to represent that. Monks, interpretation... a legend. The progression of events leading to the writing of the legend is easy enough to see if you look. My interest is more in the reality of things.
Wolf: And the task of originality is what plagued the intepreters of our history, who were, quite simply, storytellers. So they romanticised the menial and made it heroic. From this, I gather, the average sword and the average stone fused into an above-average symbol that transcended the ages- Excalibur jutting out from a magical rock only pliable to one future king. Much prettier. The storyteller's name is now immortalized. He tells a wonderful story. Or it could be symptomatic of Cinderalla- how romantic to think of a beautiful, humble girl who grew up to marry the prince who hunted her down with a tiny glass slipper. But there are hundreds of versions of this story in many languages, including some where Cinderalla is a viscious minx plotting the death of her grandmother. Its only in those stories derived from the French that the slippers are glass- in the original versions, her slipper is made of fur. "Vaire" is an old French word for ermine, a type of fur from some small ferret looking animal (I think). But "Verre" in French (not old French) means glass. Somewhre in the storytelling and the writing of it, there was either a mistaken identity of words or deliberate attempts at romancing the ennui of furry sandals with the charm and fanstasy of glass slippers. I'm no etymologist, but I'm willing to bet mistakes were made in translations between Old, Middle and Modern English. By shoving Christianity disguised as heroic fiction up a peasent's colon like a tampon. Like so: C.S. Lewis did the same thing, but to little children.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What's nonsense other than your reincarnations, Anus? That's only a picture of the true Guenevere, before Mallory took her fiercesness and curled its hair into stupid curls and made her the weakling that Christians jack off to.
I find the idea of Keira Knightly as Guinevere mildly disturbing. Especially after reading an article regarding her playing the part. Still - I'll see it, and make up my mind afterwards.
Oh no... I'm simply not sure she's tough enough to play a celtic warrior convincingly. I'm expecting to see makeup, and neat hair.
sorry, let me improve the caption Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! keira, the love goddess, decked out in leather, makes me all tingly and shit. wreck your vengeance on me, babe. i need it
that to me would have made a better 'king Arthur' story, but then with the current 'war' in Iraq maybe not so politically correct...
It is, actually - first I'd known of it. Wace mentions a round table in the 12th century - Did people take on the idea from him, or did he take the idea from them? This "first recorded instance" of a round table (13th century) might suggest nothing more than Wade's tale being rather popular, and therefore emulation at the fashionable do's of the time. Wikepedia doesn't actually go so far as to provide sources, either. Still... The thought remains that perhaps there is something in it.
And now it's a wonderful movie. History still distorted, but becoming fact in popular retelling. I've said it before... how many now believe "Braveheart" was an accurate depiction of the life of William Wallace? How much damage is being done in the name of entertainment? Here's what Kiera had to say about the idea behind making the new movie : "It's a lot more gritty", says Knightly, though she notes familiar elements such as Merlin, the fabled Round Table and the love triangle between Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot remain intact. "We've made a reality out of the myth". No, Keira - They haven't. They've merely made the myth more real in the light of current research. It's still only a story set in what we know of that period. I have to admit though - it's a marked improvement on the ideal behind "First Knight". And on the strength of that alone, I might be tempted to see it. Precisely. Distortion. One wonders if we'll ever know, if there is anything out there, perhaps yet undiscovered, which might shed light on the truth of things. Just let me loose in the vaults of the Vatican alone, and you'd never hear of me again.
It (round table dances) are likely to have spurn from Wade and been developed as a mock celebration of equality and goodness. The source is R.S. Loomis, so it might be doubtful. But it’s clear this festival type dance would have served the purpose of the myth of the ‘knights of the round table’. Have you seen this? again no sources are listed... This is a piture of Caerleon's 'round table'. http://www.caerleon.net/history/arthur/page13.htm
I’d be interested about what you think about the claim that the Monks of Glastonbury went looking for bones in an effort to re-establish Glastonbury as a pilgrim centre after the fire in 1184. Not distortion because they did find bones. I guess I’m too post-modern to believe in the idea of ‘truth’, real or factual. For sure the Round Table was not what we today would call a round table. As I see it first came the grain of sand, and then the layers of saliva, and now we have a pearl, which without the sand and the saliva would not exist. But unlike the metaphor you can’t separate them out because factual always depends on what you want to see.
As for old writings: In the days of old, writers didn't sit down at a heap of parchment and say "I shall write an account of the Battle of ...", or say "I would like to explore romantic love a bit." Most texts were written *by order*, usually the orderers were the nobility or high Church officials. They were employing writers to write for them. All this is visible in the texts -- they are usually more or less distorted accounts of reality. Whereby this distortion has a certain direction: it glorifies the one who ordered the text, or usually it glorifies certain ideals that the orderer was pursuing. As such, the texts dealing with knights and kings are now regarded as a self-idolization of the court. The court and the noblemen are presented as they thought they *should be*, and not as they actually were -- the difference is crass. (As a consequnce, all sorts of anachronisms and contradictions are possible: In Veldekes Aeneasroman, for example, the story takes place around the Trojan war and then the establishing of the beginnings of Rome. There are knights, people are heavily dressed in complex dresses (it is described in detail what folds and bordures they have), beds and houses are such as they had them around the 13th century, Aeneas prayed to the one and only true god -- all things that were there when the text was written, and not in the time the story of the text takes place.)
They probably assassinate you, so we definitely wouldnt hear form you again. But on topic, i agree entirely about the reimagining of the myth. But even now, some peopel have pointed out that the kind of bow miss knightly is using isnt exactly authentic, nor is some of the wall in the back ground, and various other points which I cant remember. In looking at texts about King arthur, it is also useful to remember that the people writing and illustrating them used examples from their own time period, thus we have the Macjiowski bible (however yous pell it) with perfect 13th or 14th century illustrations of arms and armour, but on David versus goliath. So, the people writing and rewriting these things would have updated details as tehy went along. Then theres the Mabinogion. It mentions arthur and suchlike, but you can see how the story has been altered to make it more up to date, and I cant remember any references to a round table. But my translation is an older one, it might be one of the somewhat supsect earlier ones, I need to check.
It's not - they didn't use recurved bows. Actually, I've seen it mentioned that the saxons use crossbows in the movie as well - another historical inaccuracy considering the crossbow didn't come until much later. And Miss Knightly's hair is just artfully dishevelled enough to annoy me - as attractive as she may look. Need to do some research before I get back to you Weebee - I'll get there eventually.
