Does anybody else dig King Arthur et al.? What’s your favorite thing to read about the Knights of the Round Table?
Mine is The Once and Future King (and its sequel/s) by T.H. White. I also loved The Mists of Avalon although it didn’t really happen that way.
On the more academic side I have Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur both in the beautiful Caxton/Everyman’s Library edition and in a nice translation by Keith Baines. Also La Mort le Roi Artu (The Death of King Arthur) translated by James Cable.
My mom sent me the Mary Stewart series (The Crystal Cave, etc.) Sad to say, I can’t get through the first one. I just don’t care what happens to Merlin anymore. I don’t think the writing is all that great either.
The Invincible Iron Man #150. Dr. Doom and Iron Man get sent back in time to the Arthurian age…which pisses off Iron Man to no end, because there’s no technology. (Although he’s quite happy with Camelot’s custom of providing female “companionship” to overnight guests.)
…probably not what you had in mind. Hey, it’s the only Arthurian story I’ve read.
I had to read a version called “King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table” by Roger Lancelyn Green… I liked it very, very much… It’s what got my obsession with arthurian legend started… best retelling of Gawain & the Green Knight to this day… enjoy!
Ok, and also Roger Zelazny’s short story The Last Defender of Camelot. Sir Launcelot du Lac, old but still undefeated in battle, is wandering an unnamed 20th-century city, when he suddenly finds Mirgan le Fay reading palms as a storefront psychic… and then it starts getting starnge.
“Any horse in a storm, and I am Camelot’s last defender.”
Malory is awesome, especially “The Tale of Gareth” (I’m a sucker for happy stories.) I also like Marie de France’s “Lanval” and Chretien de Troyes’ Yvain for much the same reason. The last two books of Malory are lovely, but too sad to read very often.
I like The Once and Future King too, but I really wish I had read Malory first, because it’s hard to get T. H. White’s ideas of the characters out of your head once you’ve read it.
Not one of my favorites – his version of Arthur is just too squeaky-clean for my tastes, and he spends too much time moralizing about how Fallen Women Are the Root of All Evil. My favorite piece of Victorian Arthuriana is William Morris’ “Defence of Guenevere,” which makes her out to be a much more sympathetic character.
I quite enjoyed Mary Stewart’s series; I think she did a good job of painting both a picture of that time, and enlivening it with characters who really seemed like real people. I like her sense of humor, too.
The Mists of Avalon was okay.
Jack Whyte did a completely different take on the Arthurian legend. His series presents the story much as it might have happened in real life. Lots of interesting Romans-invading-Britain stuff. I liked the first two novels, but then things seemed to bog down a bit for me.
I haven’t read any of these since high school, but I would list Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck, and Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger. The latter is also one of my all time favorite books, very highly recommended.
Unfortunately, the only one of these I currently own a copy of is Iron Man #150. I would much rather have found Arthur Rex in the 25 cent bin.
I hated Mists of Avalon-for a book from a feminist point of view, the women certainly were annoying-Guinevere was a prissy, fundy prude, Morgan was a holier than thou pagan, Vivian was an interfering busybody, etc.
I myself loved Sharan Newman’s Guinevere trilogy: Guinevere The Chessboard Queen Guinevere Evermore
They’re funny, and neat, and they end happier than the others.
Also, Persia Woolley’s Guinevere trilogy wasn’t bad: Child of the Northern Spring Queen of the Summer Stars Guinevere: the Legend in Autumn.
The suits of armor they were wearing in the movie Excalibur were the high Gothic suits of interlocking metal plates with no mail in them at all. They were typically called “plate armor” – with our old friend, the AD&D rules, subdividing this category into “field plate armor” and “full plate armor”.
</nitpick>
(What was really amazing, though, was that the knights in Excalibur managed to keep their armor shiny all the time. I hate to break the news to these people, but in the Middle Ages, stainless steel hadn’t been invented yet. Suits of armor were typically made out of iron, and were so susceptible to garnering an outer coating of rust that they were frequently painted with pretty patterns to hide their blemishes.
Maybe Merlin had invented the secret art of Chrome-Plating or something.)
… Sir Hugh was singing, hand on hip,
When something came along
And caught him a terrific blip
Right in the middle of his song.
“A thunderstorm!” he said, “Of course!”
And toppled gently off his horse…
Once and Future King rocks my world. Though parts of it make me think T.H. White had issues…
And, as I’m the type to go in for that sort of thing, I really love what I’ve read of Malory (bits and pieces, both translated and untranslated. Malory untranslated isn’t that hard if you get an edition with modernized spelling). And of course Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – oh, and the alliterative Morte d’Arthur is pretty cool (though I skimmed that one because I didn’t take the class in which I read the thing for credit and it was due the same day as a paper or something). Alas, I have read neither in Middle English, though they’re both on my list.
And yes, I too enjoy Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
