I believe was rather than is.
Who else first read the last line in the obit to say the funeral was gonna be in Camelot?
Operation Ripper, would you mind providing some kind of precis of the link. Maybe even a little bit more than that?
Furthermore, that link is a very small obit of someone who “found” that a supposedly legendary figure was “real”. Providing a link to the actual research might be nice.
As far as Arthur being a “real person”, rather than an amalgam of historical and legendary figures, I’m afraid the jury’s still out.
I give you a grudging 0.5 out of 10 for using a question mark in your thread title.
Or is this a joke thread?
Oh, I dunno - “Once and Future King” and all that.
Seriously, the link is pure hype. Nobody has established that Arthur was real with anything like the certainty needed for it to be called a “discovery”. We’re talking about the *sixth century * here, the most obscure period in recorded British history.
And as for Lancelot, Guinevere and the rest, I believe most scholars think they’re medieval additions to the Arthur story.
Hooey. This reads like an obit that was written by a credulous family member and submitted to a local newspaper. I’m reasonably conversant with Arthurian studies, and I have never heard of Goodrich, nor I have seen evidence that Guinevere and Lancelot were Scots. Honorary knighthoods are given to Americans extremely infrequently, and nearly always for a major diplomatic or military accomplishment. (Colin Powell got one, for example.) The LA Times - if indeed it made the assertion about the knighthoods - needs to check its facts.
Indeed. The article also gives this quote: “He [Arthur] did not live in Britain or Wales but in Scotland.” Um, hello, both Wales and Scotland are on the island of Britain.
As for Norma Goodrich’s Arthurian theory, again quoting the LA Times, “Goodrich determined that King Arthur was an actual person who once lived in Scotland, not in southwestern England or Wales as others had postulated. Guinevere was a Pictish queen, and Lancelot was a Scottish king.”
This is a simple and reduced form of a simplistic and reductionist theory. As written here it’s flat-out wrong. It is true that there are Scottish elements to the Arthurian cycle, but everyone today recognizes that there are also Welsh and French and other cultures in the mix, and myth and legend as well as (probably) some actual history. Her books (King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, all pub. by Harper) are not highly regarded.
Our earliest stories of Arthur might allow for him to be Scottish or Welsh, but these early stories do not include Lancelot or Guinevere. So if they are accurately reporting her conclusions, she was basically a crackpot.
As to the Op, please provide more than just a link in the future, you have been here long enough to make a better attempt at posting questions in GQ.
Jim
I thought it was pretty well established that Lancelot was a very late addition to the Arthur mythos by French writers trying to make the story more relevant to their own culture.
That is the accepted logic, but the only definite is that the early mentions only mention Arthur and Merlin of the most famous characters. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the British Kings provides some early detail. It was completed in the 1100s.
This seems to be where Guinevere and Mordred appeared. No Lancelot yet.
There is some early Arthurian tales from Wales that point to a king or chieftain that fought off the Saxon invasion for a time and culminated at the battle of Badon Hill. I believe there is no Guin or Grail yet.
I believe the most well accepted current theory of the origin of Arthur is in a 5th Century Chieftain Rhiothamus (Sp?) who was of Partial Roman descent. This is not universally accepted by any means.
Jim
I would also remind the OP that, as per his own recent admonitions, “Google is your friend.” A few seconds of Googling would have easily turned up the information that Arthur was largely mythological, and the article linked to was BS.
That piece of info was provided to the LA Times by “her longtime assistant and friend Darin Stewart.”
I could find no newspaper article in searching historical databases for that assertion being true.
A relatively good Wikipedia account of Riothamus as more-or-less-historical figure, with brief discussion of him as possible historical analog to Arthur.
The Arthur-as-Scot meme, by the way, finds very little support except, as one might expect, among those romantic at heart in the Lowlands and Southern Uplands. There is minimal evidence for an Arthurian presence in Cumbria, as there is in much of western Britain. But other areas, notably Somerset, have a much stronger claim – insofar as anybody has a claim at all. (Like Atlantis, anything historical that might underlie the myth and legend is very elusive.)
A great deal of the earliest Welsh literature is believed to have come from the “Old [Welsh] North,” that is, the Brythonic-speaking parts of what are now the Lowlands and Cumbria and a few other allied places. The Gododdin is an example of this, though the events it commemorates took place in what is now Yorkshire. But, that said:
- The British kingdoms of Strathclyde, Rheged, and Elfed cannot be said to be “Scottish” in any sense except anachronistically. Even then, Rheged might have been and Elfed certainly was in what is now England.
- Their cultural contributions to the Arthurian cycle are only a very small part of the whole.
- Since all the Old North literature came through Wales, it is impossible to decide what is truly from what-is-now-Scotland and what just says it was, e.g. Owein ap Urien Rheged. Maybe a historical figure, maybe not.
As for Guinevere and Lancelot, Guinevere appears in early Welsh poetry (as Gwenhwyfar) and has an Irish analogue, at least linguistically, in Finnabair, so she has a very good Celtic pedigree. Finnabair survives in Scottish lore as Fionnabhair, but I doubt if that’s what Goodrich meant. Besides, there’s no Arthur in the Fionnabhair stories and no Picts, either.
Lancelot was introduced by the French writer Chrétien de Troyes and has absolutely no early connection to Britian, much less Scotland. On the other hand, Guinevere has a number of male abductors in the early Welsh poetry, so perhaps Goodrich was arguing that these figures were of a Lancelot “type.”
Thanks for the link and the spelling, I could not remember and I did not bother to google.
Dr. Drake, Lancelot may predate Chrétien de Troyes, I have read several articles that de Troyes codified some of the French tales of Arthur. They are only sure that Geoffrey did not have Lancelot and that he appears to be a French add-on. I always liked the Gwenhwyfar name better than Guinevere. I am not sure where that came from, but when I named my Daughter I chose Guenivere as phonetically it was closer to Gwenhwyfar and CSN’s spelling Guennivere.
Jim
Here is the LA Times obituary. The “knighthood” reference is on the 2nd page:
I don’t need to do any research to know that that assertion – as quoted – is false. I find it rather a bizarre claim to make in any case. Even if Prof. Goodrich had been knighted (extremely unlikely, as Sonia Montdore said, and certainly not “into British royalty”), why on earth would her husband have received the same honor?
Oh well, I suppose that since Prof. Goodrich and Mr. Stewart were known for thumbing their noses at existing historical research, and putting those stuffy academics and nitpickers in their place, it’s only fitting that the obituary would contain such an outlandish claim. Perhaps the knighthoods were conferred in some Celtic neo-Arthurian ceremony (Monty Python would have been so proud, given that their own Arthurian romp was filmed in Scotland), and the phrase “knighted into British royalty” refers to a royal house other than those upstart Mountbatten-Windsors? :dubious:
I must say that although the OP has done some annoying things in other threads, it looks like he is being jumped on here without proper provocation. The point of the title coupled with the story at the link was clear to me, though possibly with too great an economy of expression. At most I might have asked: “I thought Arthur was a legend. This article says otherwise. What’s the Straight Dope?” The boad is filled with such brevity. A gentle suggestion might be in order, but I think a rebuke from a mod is overkill.
Also, if everyone used Google and other online resources skillfully and exhaustively before posting to this forum, there would be damn few threads. Half the fun here is in the discussion that ensues, not just the dry, scholarly answer.
The hamsters ate my last post. Let’s try again
I have an entire collection of books claiming to identify particular historical persons as King Arthur, starting with Geoffrey Ashe’s 1985 book The Discovery of King Arthur (which pegged Riothamus). Each successive book feels the need to trash its predecessors. I’m impressed that we even know the names of so many candidates, let alone have historical evidence for each case. I thought I knew Arthurian history, but I’m lost in the welter of names, kingdoms, and chroniclers.
There’s no shortage of possibilities as to “who” Arthur might have been. There’s certainly lack of consensus. It’s not even clear to me that any of these candidates is correct. Interesting stuff.
“Jumped on?” :dubious: Exactly two posters have remarked on the brevity of the OP, and suggested more detail should be in order. Most of the others have merely commented on the lack of credibilty of the linked article, without directly criticizing the OP.
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It certainly is not. I would challenge you to find a significant number of other threads in GQ consisting of nothing more than a title and a link.
What are you talking about? There hasn’t been any rebuke from a mod. **Samclem ** is the only moderator who has posted in this thread, and he made a simple statement of fact in response to a post by Sonia Montdore. He said nothing about the OP.
Take it up with the OP. He’s the one who has given a hard time to other posters by telling them to “Google it.” I was simply reminding him of his own position on the issue.
I found, in the description of one of her books, that she had the letters “Ph.D., KC, FSA Scot”, after her name. Now, Ph.D. is obvious, and the FSA Scot. indicates she was a fellowof the Society of Antiquities of Scotland.
Now, I hjave no idea what the “KC” is. I don’t recognize it as a legitimate post-nominal recognition in the British Honour system, at least.