Although most modern scholars doubt the historicity of King Arthur, parts of the legend were accepted as fact throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval accounts of the historical Arthur, however, present a very different king from the romances that are widely studied today. Richard Moll examines a wide variety of historical texts including Thomas Gray's Scalacronica and John Hardyng's Chronicle to explore the relationship between the Arthurian chronicles and the romances. He demonstrates how competing and conflicting traditions interacted with one another, and how writers and readers of Arthurian texts negotiated a complex textual tradition.
Moll asserts that the enormous variety and number of existing chronicles demonstrates the immense popularity of the historical Arthur in medieval England. Since these chronicles were the dominant source of Arthurian information for the late medieval reader, they provide an invaluable, and neglected, interpretive context for modern readers of Malory and other later medieval romances. The first monograph to look at the impact of these historical texts on Arthurian literature, Before Malory is also the first to show how canonical vernacular romances interacted with chronicle texts that have since dropped out of the canon.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 820.9/351
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 21
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 0802037224 9781442671225
- LCCN
- PN57.A6
- LCCN Item number
- M64 2003eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (ix, 368 p.)
- Published in
- Canada
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00600370 (OCoLC)752277382 (CaOOCEL)418464
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Contents 6
- Preface and Acknowledgments 8
- Introduction: Facts and Fictions 14
- Chapter 1: The Years of Romance 22
- Chapter 2: The Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Gray of Heton 42
- Gray's Autobiographical Prologue as Chivalric Self-Fashioning 46
- Arthur and the Chivalric Past 56
- Chapter 3: Defending Arthur 75
- Thomas Gray's Defence of Arthur 78
- John Trevisa's Polychronicon 83
- Chapter 4: History curiously dytit 92
- Andrew Wyntoun on Huchown's gret Gest of Arthure 99
- The Alliterative Morte Arthure 108
- Chapter 5: Adventures in History 134
- The Awntyrs off Arthure 136
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 151
- Chapter 6: Making History: John Hardyng's Metrical Chronicle 168
- Hardyng's Adventurous Knights 177
- Chapter 7: Fifteenth-Century Scribes 209
- Robert of Gloucester, Arundel MS 58 210
- The Prose Brut: The Trinity/Cleveland Abbreviation and Lambeth Palace Library, MS 84 221
- Conclusion: Reading about Arthur 228
- Notes 244
- Bibliography 336
- Index 362
- A 362
- B 363
- C 365
- D 366
- E 366
- F 367
- G 367
- H 370
- I 371
- J 371
- K 372
- L 372
- M 373
- N 375
- O 375
- P 375
- Q 376
- R 376
- S 377
- T 377
- U 378
- V 378
- W 379
- Y 379
