Essay About Surviving Written Account And History Of King Arthur

King Aurther
King Aurther
the feast of Pentacost all manner of men assayed to
pull at the sword that wold assay, but none might prevail but Arthur,
and he pulled it afore all the lords and commons that were there,
wherefore all the commons cried at once, We will have Arthur unto
our king; we will put him no more in delay, for we all see that it is
Gods will that he shall be our king, and who that holdeth against it,
we will slay him.
And therewith they all kneeled at once, both rich and
poor, and cried Arthur mercy because they had delayed him so
long. And Arthur forgave them, and took the sword between
both his hands, and offered it upon the altar where the Archbishop
was, and so was he made knight of the best man there.
The above passage is from LeMmorte dArthur : the history of King Arthur
and his noble knights of the Round Table, by Sir Thomas Malory, a book that
was written and published between 1469-1470, during the reign of King Edward
IV. Prior to this document, the exact origins of Arthurian legend are difficult to
trace reliably before the twelfth century, when Geoffrey of Monmouth produced
the History of the Kings of Britain, in which he devotes the last third of the book
to King Arthur, with the first two thirds leading up to this climax. Although
Monmouths history contains passages which can be deemed mystical in
nature, especially in regards to Arthur, the preceding pages leading up to King
Arthurs appearance, read as straight history as opposed to mythical tale. I founf
this not only hard to follow but also hard to swlaoow. I think
its all in the
interpeators eyes. Some see the same facts or so-called-facts and read the
same documents of the same time periods and come up with completly different
ideas. King Arthur would have lived in the end of the fifth century to the
beginning of the sixth century, with his birth most likely occurring around 470
A.D. and his death, as related in the folklore, in the year 539, at the Battle of
Camlan. This means that six hundred years transpired between Arthurs life span
and any surviving written account, history or folklore, of a king named Arthur.
Although the majority of the British population in the fifth and sixth centuries was
illiterate, there was a classically educated, Romanized minority that could read
and write, as well as a literate monastic society. In the year 545, a monk named
Gilda wrote an account of the decline of Roman authority in Britain and the
events which followed. Most contemporary scholars and historians dismiss this
source as unreliable and in many places entirely wrong, in any event, there is no
mention of King Arthur in Gildas writings. This absence of early written sources
pertaining to King Arthur suggests three hypotheses:
1)There is a document or written account that historians have not found or do
not have access to;
2)The history of King Arthur was an oral tale, passed down verbally through a
number of generations before it was recorded in written form; or,
3)King Arthur is solely a creation of Medieval, romantic literature.
Cadbury was inhabited as a military strong hold, in the Dark Ages, in Britain.
Whether it was occupied by King Arthur is not proven, what is proven