In this episode, we'll uncover the mysteries surrounding the legend of King Arthur, exploring his mythical kingdom of Camelot, his noble knights, and the infamous love triangle that led to his downfall.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Legend of King Arthur.
[00:00:25] From Ireland to Wales, England to Brittany, King Arthur appears as a mysterious figure, a legendary king ruling over a utopian, ideal kingdom and prophesised to come back to life when the world needs him most.
[00:00:40] But who really was King Arthur?
[00:00:43] Where did he come from?
[00:00:44] Was he a real king, or just a fictional creation?
[00:00:48] Well, let’s not waste a minute, and find out.
[00:00:53] In 1999, the American author Robert McKee published his seminal work, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.
[00:01:05] It is something of a bible for aspiring writers, both on screen and in literature.
[00:01:12] In it, he lists what he believes are the attributes of a successful story, a tale that has the potential to hook us in.
[00:01:23] These include well-developed characters with clear desires, motivations, and flaws. It includes tension and conflict, of course, both external and internal.
[00:01:35] It includes what he calls the three-act paradigm, where a story is set up, there is a confrontation and a resolution.
[00:01:45] There is the incident that starts the whole thing off, as well as the importance of cause and effect. There’s the importance of exploring deeper themes around human existence, and of course, the importance for a character to undergo a transformation as the story unfolds.
[00:02:03] McKee was writing this in the late 20th century, but if you read the story of King Arthur, the legendary English king, it's almost as if someone had crafted it following McKee’s blueprint to the tee.
[00:02:19] There’s the personal growth, the tension and conflict, the theme of morality and ethics, and of course, there is the three-arced hero’s journey.
[00:02:30] Now, the legend of King Arthur dates back to the 5th or 6th century, and it has changed a lot over the years, with new characters being introduced and the plot going in all sorts of different directions.
[00:02:44] So even if you know a story of King Arthur already, it might very well be a different story to the one I’m about to tell you.
[00:02:53] And if you have never heard of the legend of King Arthur, or you have but you can’t really remember it, well let me change that now with the most popular version of the legend.
[00:03:05] The story begins with the young Arthur, who is not a king at this point, but a mere squire, a young man who acts as a sort of servant to real knights before perhaps becoming a knight himself.
[00:03:18] Arthur comes across a sword that is stuck in a stone.
[00:03:24] It is said that only the true king of England will be able to remove the sword from the stone.
[00:03:30] Plenty of ambitious, strong knights have tried, but none have managed to remove the sword.
[00:03:37] Then, Arthur, still a young boy, gives it a go.
[00:03:42] To everyone’s surprise, he manages, proving that he is the true king of England.
[00:03:50] He is crowned king, and he establishes his kingdom, the mythical kingdom of Camelot.
[00:03:58] Under Arthur's rule, Camelot thrives.
[00:04:02] His court is based on chivalry, honour, and justice, all very important qualities in the medieval era, where his tale would become particularly popular.
[00:04:13] You might remember one of the key elements of Camelot, and that was the round table.
[00:04:20] The Round Table is a powerful symbol of Arthur’s ideals as king. In medieval times, someone’s place at a table, especially in court, said a lot about their status.
[00:04:33] The most important person, in this case the king, would sit at the head of the table, and the closer someone sat to him, the more important they were.
[00:04:45] Arthur wanted all of his knights to be equal, so they sat at a round table, with no ‘head’.
[00:04:52] Wherever a knight was sitting, he knew he would be treated as an equal to the other knights, and even to the king.
[00:05:01] And initially, life at Camelot was plain sailing, everything went smoothly.
[00:05:08] Arthur’s main companions, his sidekicks, if you will, included Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Sir Percival, as well as a bunch of other chivalrous knights who embarked on quests to uphold justice, protect the weak, and seek the elusive Holy Grail, a sacred relic associated with Jesus Christ.
[00:05:29] But, just like in any good story, things start to go wrong.
[00:05:35] Specifically, his best friend and most loyal knight, Sir Lancelot, turns out to be having a love affair with Arthur’s wife, Guinevere.
[00:05:45] What’s more, while Arthur is away, a man called Mordred causes trouble back at Camelot.
[00:05:53] Now, differing versions of the story describe Mordred in different ways.
[00:05:58] Some describe him as Arthur’s nephew, others as Arthur’s illegitimate son with his half-sister. In all versions, he is a nasty piece of work, a serious baddie.
[00:06:12] He leads an uprising against King Arthur, which culminates in an epic battle, the Battle of Camlann, where there is a huge showdown between Arthur and Mordred.
[00:06:24] The two men fight each other in the battle, with Mordred mortally wounding Arthur, and in some versions, Arthur mortally wounds Mordred in return.
[00:06:35] When the king realises that he is about to die, he entrusts his trusty sword, Excalibur, to one of his knights and instructs him to return the sword to the Lady of the Lake, who is a sort of fairy-like figure who lives in a lake.
[00:06:52] Thereafter, King Arthur is transported to a mythical island called Avalon, where some versions suggest he may be healed of his wounds.
[00:07:01] And the legend closes with the promise of Arthur's eventual return, leaving his kingdom and his loyal knights behind.
[00:07:09] Now, this is a brief overview of the general story, and as you’ll have realised, there are multiple different versions which all take the story in a different direction.
[00:07:21] It is a wonderful story, and, at least according to most historians, the reason that it is such a wonderful story is precisely because that’s all it is; it is fictional, with only a very minor basis in history.
[00:07:38] The Arthurian legend we know today really got started in the 1100s with the writings of a man called Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[00:07:48] Geoffrey set out to write a full history of the Kings of Britain, the so-called Historia Regum Britanniae.
[00:07:56] Now, if you are a British history buff, you may know that lists of “modern” British kings and queens often start in 1066, with William the Conqueror. But, clearly, there were kings and queens before that.
[00:08:12] And this was what Geoffrey of Monmouth set out to document.
[00:08:18] A king Arthur had appeared in a couple of historical texts from the 9th and 10th centuries, and Geoffrey of Monmouth sought to gather as much information as he could, to try to patch together his story.
[00:08:33] This story attracted a lot of what we might now call fanfiction, or retellings, including one a few decades later by a French writer called Chretien de Troyes.
[00:08:44] Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric, a clergyman, so his tale was somewhat matter-of-fact, it told the story without major flair or exaggeration, or indeed storytelling. It was intended to be a historical document after all.
[00:09:01] Chretien de Troyes, on the other hand, was a medieval poet, so he focused more on the story, the characters, and the romance.
[00:09:12] He explored ideas of courtly love, chivalry and knighthood, and added these dimensions to his story.
[00:09:20] It’s also thought that the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle was his addition, so we certainly have this French poet to thank for adding the romantic twist.
[00:09:32] But that’s not it.
[00:09:34] As the centuries rolled by, the tale was adopted and adapted by a bunch of different writers. In the 13th century, Christian authors added some more Christian morality to the story, including introducing consequences for the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and turning the previously non-religious Grail into the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from during the Last Supper.
[00:10:01] And in the 15th century, an English author called Thomas Mallory put this all together in a 300,000-word epic that he called Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:13] The title was in French–it means “The Death of Arthur” in English–but the book was written in English. He chose the French title because many of his sources for the book, including the work by Chretien de Troyes, were in French.
[00:10:28] Now, I’m not sure what Robert McKee would say about giving away what happens to your protagonist in the title of your book, but this is now the best-known version of the legend of King Arthur, and the story I told you at the start broadly follows the story in Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:46] But there is more to Le Morte d’Arthur than the Arthurian tale, it goes into detail about the stories of Arthur’s knights, and it is truly an epic piece of work. I mean, it’s 300,000 words long, and was published as a collection of 8 different books.
[00:11:05] So, if you are feeling particularly energetic and you want to pick up a book as ‘the’ Legend of King Arthur, then this is probably the one to start with.
[00:11:17] Now, as to the legacy of King Arthur in Britain, it is fairly monumental.
[00:11:23] Arthur is almost always in the top 10 most popular boys' names, although the names of other characters in the story, such as Guinevere, Lancelot and Mordred haven’t caught on to the same degree.
[00:11:36] You can visit the supposed Round Table in the town of Winchester, you can go to Glastonbury Abbey, which is supposedly the burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
[00:11:47] You can go to a castle in Cornwall which is also supposedly the burial place of King Arthur, you can even go to a small lake in Devon, next to Cornwall, which is supposedly where the Lady Of The Lake took back Excalibur, Arthur’s great sword.
[00:12:03] And of course, there are lots of reinterpretations of the Arthurian legend for all ages.
[00:12:10] You might remember the wonderful Disney film Sword in the Stone, which has a boy called Arthur as its main character, a sword stuck in a stone of course, and a wizard named Merlin.
[00:12:22] It was based on a book of the same name, but the book is a 20th-century children’s reinterpretation of the famous legend.
[00:12:31] Then there’s the kind of cheesy Hollywood telling of the story, the 1995 movie First Night, which starred Sean Connery, Julia Ormond and Richard Gere in the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.
[00:12:44] Or for a more gritty attempt at historical accuracy, or at least a less fluffy version, you can try the 2004 film King Arthur, with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley.
[00:12:57] And, lest I forget, there is also one that makes only a very fleeting attempt at historical accuracy but is very funny, and that’s Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
[00:13:09] So, to wrap things up, the legend of King Arthur is one of the most powerful and popular myths in English history.
[00:13:16] In all probability, there was no real King Arthur, and if there was, the probability that he had a round table, and an almost soap opera-like love triangle between his knight Lancelot and his wife Guinevere, well it seems very unlikely.
[00:13:33] But as long as you aren’t coming to the story of King Arthur and looking for historical accuracy, does it really matter? And who cares?
[00:13:42] I’d say that it makes it all the more interesting, the mystery around it has meant that dozens of people have taken the story and added to it over the years, with the result that the modern interpretation isn’t just one story, but the work of dozens, hundreds even, of people guiding the characters in the direction they wanted.
[00:14:05] And, as you’ve heard, the result is a simply legendary story.
[00:14:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Legend of King Arthur.
[00:14:17] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:14:21] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:14:25] Have you heard of the story of King Arthur before?
[00:14:27] Which version have you heard?
[00:14:29] And are there stories like this from your country that have evolved and developed in the same way?
[00:14:35] I would love to know, so let’s get the discussion started.
[00:14:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:14:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:14:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Legend of King Arthur.
[00:00:25] From Ireland to Wales, England to Brittany, King Arthur appears as a mysterious figure, a legendary king ruling over a utopian, ideal kingdom and prophesised to come back to life when the world needs him most.
[00:00:40] But who really was King Arthur?
[00:00:43] Where did he come from?
[00:00:44] Was he a real king, or just a fictional creation?
[00:00:48] Well, let’s not waste a minute, and find out.
[00:00:53] In 1999, the American author Robert McKee published his seminal work, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.
[00:01:05] It is something of a bible for aspiring writers, both on screen and in literature.
[00:01:12] In it, he lists what he believes are the attributes of a successful story, a tale that has the potential to hook us in.
[00:01:23] These include well-developed characters with clear desires, motivations, and flaws. It includes tension and conflict, of course, both external and internal.
[00:01:35] It includes what he calls the three-act paradigm, where a story is set up, there is a confrontation and a resolution.
[00:01:45] There is the incident that starts the whole thing off, as well as the importance of cause and effect. There’s the importance of exploring deeper themes around human existence, and of course, the importance for a character to undergo a transformation as the story unfolds.
[00:02:03] McKee was writing this in the late 20th century, but if you read the story of King Arthur, the legendary English king, it's almost as if someone had crafted it following McKee’s blueprint to the tee.
[00:02:19] There’s the personal growth, the tension and conflict, the theme of morality and ethics, and of course, there is the three-arced hero’s journey.
[00:02:30] Now, the legend of King Arthur dates back to the 5th or 6th century, and it has changed a lot over the years, with new characters being introduced and the plot going in all sorts of different directions.
[00:02:44] So even if you know a story of King Arthur already, it might very well be a different story to the one I’m about to tell you.
[00:02:53] And if you have never heard of the legend of King Arthur, or you have but you can’t really remember it, well let me change that now with the most popular version of the legend.
[00:03:05] The story begins with the young Arthur, who is not a king at this point, but a mere squire, a young man who acts as a sort of servant to real knights before perhaps becoming a knight himself.
[00:03:18] Arthur comes across a sword that is stuck in a stone.
[00:03:24] It is said that only the true king of England will be able to remove the sword from the stone.
[00:03:30] Plenty of ambitious, strong knights have tried, but none have managed to remove the sword.
[00:03:37] Then, Arthur, still a young boy, gives it a go.
[00:03:42] To everyone’s surprise, he manages, proving that he is the true king of England.
[00:03:50] He is crowned king, and he establishes his kingdom, the mythical kingdom of Camelot.
[00:03:58] Under Arthur's rule, Camelot thrives.
[00:04:02] His court is based on chivalry, honour, and justice, all very important qualities in the medieval era, where his tale would become particularly popular.
[00:04:13] You might remember one of the key elements of Camelot, and that was the round table.
[00:04:20] The Round Table is a powerful symbol of Arthur’s ideals as king. In medieval times, someone’s place at a table, especially in court, said a lot about their status.
[00:04:33] The most important person, in this case the king, would sit at the head of the table, and the closer someone sat to him, the more important they were.
[00:04:45] Arthur wanted all of his knights to be equal, so they sat at a round table, with no ‘head’.
[00:04:52] Wherever a knight was sitting, he knew he would be treated as an equal to the other knights, and even to the king.
[00:05:01] And initially, life at Camelot was plain sailing, everything went smoothly.
[00:05:08] Arthur’s main companions, his sidekicks, if you will, included Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Sir Percival, as well as a bunch of other chivalrous knights who embarked on quests to uphold justice, protect the weak, and seek the elusive Holy Grail, a sacred relic associated with Jesus Christ.
[00:05:29] But, just like in any good story, things start to go wrong.
[00:05:35] Specifically, his best friend and most loyal knight, Sir Lancelot, turns out to be having a love affair with Arthur’s wife, Guinevere.
[00:05:45] What’s more, while Arthur is away, a man called Mordred causes trouble back at Camelot.
[00:05:53] Now, differing versions of the story describe Mordred in different ways.
[00:05:58] Some describe him as Arthur’s nephew, others as Arthur’s illegitimate son with his half-sister. In all versions, he is a nasty piece of work, a serious baddie.
[00:06:12] He leads an uprising against King Arthur, which culminates in an epic battle, the Battle of Camlann, where there is a huge showdown between Arthur and Mordred.
[00:06:24] The two men fight each other in the battle, with Mordred mortally wounding Arthur, and in some versions, Arthur mortally wounds Mordred in return.
[00:06:35] When the king realises that he is about to die, he entrusts his trusty sword, Excalibur, to one of his knights and instructs him to return the sword to the Lady of the Lake, who is a sort of fairy-like figure who lives in a lake.
[00:06:52] Thereafter, King Arthur is transported to a mythical island called Avalon, where some versions suggest he may be healed of his wounds.
[00:07:01] And the legend closes with the promise of Arthur's eventual return, leaving his kingdom and his loyal knights behind.
[00:07:09] Now, this is a brief overview of the general story, and as you’ll have realised, there are multiple different versions which all take the story in a different direction.
[00:07:21] It is a wonderful story, and, at least according to most historians, the reason that it is such a wonderful story is precisely because that’s all it is; it is fictional, with only a very minor basis in history.
[00:07:38] The Arthurian legend we know today really got started in the 1100s with the writings of a man called Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[00:07:48] Geoffrey set out to write a full history of the Kings of Britain, the so-called Historia Regum Britanniae.
[00:07:56] Now, if you are a British history buff, you may know that lists of “modern” British kings and queens often start in 1066, with William the Conqueror. But, clearly, there were kings and queens before that.
[00:08:12] And this was what Geoffrey of Monmouth set out to document.
[00:08:18] A king Arthur had appeared in a couple of historical texts from the 9th and 10th centuries, and Geoffrey of Monmouth sought to gather as much information as he could, to try to patch together his story.
[00:08:33] This story attracted a lot of what we might now call fanfiction, or retellings, including one a few decades later by a French writer called Chretien de Troyes.
[00:08:44] Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric, a clergyman, so his tale was somewhat matter-of-fact, it told the story without major flair or exaggeration, or indeed storytelling. It was intended to be a historical document after all.
[00:09:01] Chretien de Troyes, on the other hand, was a medieval poet, so he focused more on the story, the characters, and the romance.
[00:09:12] He explored ideas of courtly love, chivalry and knighthood, and added these dimensions to his story.
[00:09:20] It’s also thought that the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle was his addition, so we certainly have this French poet to thank for adding the romantic twist.
[00:09:32] But that’s not it.
[00:09:34] As the centuries rolled by, the tale was adopted and adapted by a bunch of different writers. In the 13th century, Christian authors added some more Christian morality to the story, including introducing consequences for the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and turning the previously non-religious Grail into the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from during the Last Supper.
[00:10:01] And in the 15th century, an English author called Thomas Mallory put this all together in a 300,000-word epic that he called Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:13] The title was in French–it means “The Death of Arthur” in English–but the book was written in English. He chose the French title because many of his sources for the book, including the work by Chretien de Troyes, were in French.
[00:10:28] Now, I’m not sure what Robert McKee would say about giving away what happens to your protagonist in the title of your book, but this is now the best-known version of the legend of King Arthur, and the story I told you at the start broadly follows the story in Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:46] But there is more to Le Morte d’Arthur than the Arthurian tale, it goes into detail about the stories of Arthur’s knights, and it is truly an epic piece of work. I mean, it’s 300,000 words long, and was published as a collection of 8 different books.
[00:11:05] So, if you are feeling particularly energetic and you want to pick up a book as ‘the’ Legend of King Arthur, then this is probably the one to start with.
[00:11:17] Now, as to the legacy of King Arthur in Britain, it is fairly monumental.
[00:11:23] Arthur is almost always in the top 10 most popular boys' names, although the names of other characters in the story, such as Guinevere, Lancelot and Mordred haven’t caught on to the same degree.
[00:11:36] You can visit the supposed Round Table in the town of Winchester, you can go to Glastonbury Abbey, which is supposedly the burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
[00:11:47] You can go to a castle in Cornwall which is also supposedly the burial place of King Arthur, you can even go to a small lake in Devon, next to Cornwall, which is supposedly where the Lady Of The Lake took back Excalibur, Arthur’s great sword.
[00:12:03] And of course, there are lots of reinterpretations of the Arthurian legend for all ages.
[00:12:10] You might remember the wonderful Disney film Sword in the Stone, which has a boy called Arthur as its main character, a sword stuck in a stone of course, and a wizard named Merlin.
[00:12:22] It was based on a book of the same name, but the book is a 20th-century children’s reinterpretation of the famous legend.
[00:12:31] Then there’s the kind of cheesy Hollywood telling of the story, the 1995 movie First Night, which starred Sean Connery, Julia Ormond and Richard Gere in the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.
[00:12:44] Or for a more gritty attempt at historical accuracy, or at least a less fluffy version, you can try the 2004 film King Arthur, with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley.
[00:12:57] And, lest I forget, there is also one that makes only a very fleeting attempt at historical accuracy but is very funny, and that’s Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
[00:13:09] So, to wrap things up, the legend of King Arthur is one of the most powerful and popular myths in English history.
[00:13:16] In all probability, there was no real King Arthur, and if there was, the probability that he had a round table, and an almost soap opera-like love triangle between his knight Lancelot and his wife Guinevere, well it seems very unlikely.
[00:13:33] But as long as you aren’t coming to the story of King Arthur and looking for historical accuracy, does it really matter? And who cares?
[00:13:42] I’d say that it makes it all the more interesting, the mystery around it has meant that dozens of people have taken the story and added to it over the years, with the result that the modern interpretation isn’t just one story, but the work of dozens, hundreds even, of people guiding the characters in the direction they wanted.
[00:14:05] And, as you’ve heard, the result is a simply legendary story.
[00:14:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Legend of King Arthur.
[00:14:17] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:14:21] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:14:25] Have you heard of the story of King Arthur before?
[00:14:27] Which version have you heard?
[00:14:29] And are there stories like this from your country that have evolved and developed in the same way?
[00:14:35] I would love to know, so let’s get the discussion started.
[00:14:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:14:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:14:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about the Legend of King Arthur.
[00:00:25] From Ireland to Wales, England to Brittany, King Arthur appears as a mysterious figure, a legendary king ruling over a utopian, ideal kingdom and prophesised to come back to life when the world needs him most.
[00:00:40] But who really was King Arthur?
[00:00:43] Where did he come from?
[00:00:44] Was he a real king, or just a fictional creation?
[00:00:48] Well, let’s not waste a minute, and find out.
[00:00:53] In 1999, the American author Robert McKee published his seminal work, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.
[00:01:05] It is something of a bible for aspiring writers, both on screen and in literature.
[00:01:12] In it, he lists what he believes are the attributes of a successful story, a tale that has the potential to hook us in.
[00:01:23] These include well-developed characters with clear desires, motivations, and flaws. It includes tension and conflict, of course, both external and internal.
[00:01:35] It includes what he calls the three-act paradigm, where a story is set up, there is a confrontation and a resolution.
[00:01:45] There is the incident that starts the whole thing off, as well as the importance of cause and effect. There’s the importance of exploring deeper themes around human existence, and of course, the importance for a character to undergo a transformation as the story unfolds.
[00:02:03] McKee was writing this in the late 20th century, but if you read the story of King Arthur, the legendary English king, it's almost as if someone had crafted it following McKee’s blueprint to the tee.
[00:02:19] There’s the personal growth, the tension and conflict, the theme of morality and ethics, and of course, there is the three-arced hero’s journey.
[00:02:30] Now, the legend of King Arthur dates back to the 5th or 6th century, and it has changed a lot over the years, with new characters being introduced and the plot going in all sorts of different directions.
[00:02:44] So even if you know a story of King Arthur already, it might very well be a different story to the one I’m about to tell you.
[00:02:53] And if you have never heard of the legend of King Arthur, or you have but you can’t really remember it, well let me change that now with the most popular version of the legend.
[00:03:05] The story begins with the young Arthur, who is not a king at this point, but a mere squire, a young man who acts as a sort of servant to real knights before perhaps becoming a knight himself.
[00:03:18] Arthur comes across a sword that is stuck in a stone.
[00:03:24] It is said that only the true king of England will be able to remove the sword from the stone.
[00:03:30] Plenty of ambitious, strong knights have tried, but none have managed to remove the sword.
[00:03:37] Then, Arthur, still a young boy, gives it a go.
[00:03:42] To everyone’s surprise, he manages, proving that he is the true king of England.
[00:03:50] He is crowned king, and he establishes his kingdom, the mythical kingdom of Camelot.
[00:03:58] Under Arthur's rule, Camelot thrives.
[00:04:02] His court is based on chivalry, honour, and justice, all very important qualities in the medieval era, where his tale would become particularly popular.
[00:04:13] You might remember one of the key elements of Camelot, and that was the round table.
[00:04:20] The Round Table is a powerful symbol of Arthur’s ideals as king. In medieval times, someone’s place at a table, especially in court, said a lot about their status.
[00:04:33] The most important person, in this case the king, would sit at the head of the table, and the closer someone sat to him, the more important they were.
[00:04:45] Arthur wanted all of his knights to be equal, so they sat at a round table, with no ‘head’.
[00:04:52] Wherever a knight was sitting, he knew he would be treated as an equal to the other knights, and even to the king.
[00:05:01] And initially, life at Camelot was plain sailing, everything went smoothly.
[00:05:08] Arthur’s main companions, his sidekicks, if you will, included Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Sir Percival, as well as a bunch of other chivalrous knights who embarked on quests to uphold justice, protect the weak, and seek the elusive Holy Grail, a sacred relic associated with Jesus Christ.
[00:05:29] But, just like in any good story, things start to go wrong.
[00:05:35] Specifically, his best friend and most loyal knight, Sir Lancelot, turns out to be having a love affair with Arthur’s wife, Guinevere.
[00:05:45] What’s more, while Arthur is away, a man called Mordred causes trouble back at Camelot.
[00:05:53] Now, differing versions of the story describe Mordred in different ways.
[00:05:58] Some describe him as Arthur’s nephew, others as Arthur’s illegitimate son with his half-sister. In all versions, he is a nasty piece of work, a serious baddie.
[00:06:12] He leads an uprising against King Arthur, which culminates in an epic battle, the Battle of Camlann, where there is a huge showdown between Arthur and Mordred.
[00:06:24] The two men fight each other in the battle, with Mordred mortally wounding Arthur, and in some versions, Arthur mortally wounds Mordred in return.
[00:06:35] When the king realises that he is about to die, he entrusts his trusty sword, Excalibur, to one of his knights and instructs him to return the sword to the Lady of the Lake, who is a sort of fairy-like figure who lives in a lake.
[00:06:52] Thereafter, King Arthur is transported to a mythical island called Avalon, where some versions suggest he may be healed of his wounds.
[00:07:01] And the legend closes with the promise of Arthur's eventual return, leaving his kingdom and his loyal knights behind.
[00:07:09] Now, this is a brief overview of the general story, and as you’ll have realised, there are multiple different versions which all take the story in a different direction.
[00:07:21] It is a wonderful story, and, at least according to most historians, the reason that it is such a wonderful story is precisely because that’s all it is; it is fictional, with only a very minor basis in history.
[00:07:38] The Arthurian legend we know today really got started in the 1100s with the writings of a man called Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[00:07:48] Geoffrey set out to write a full history of the Kings of Britain, the so-called Historia Regum Britanniae.
[00:07:56] Now, if you are a British history buff, you may know that lists of “modern” British kings and queens often start in 1066, with William the Conqueror. But, clearly, there were kings and queens before that.
[00:08:12] And this was what Geoffrey of Monmouth set out to document.
[00:08:18] A king Arthur had appeared in a couple of historical texts from the 9th and 10th centuries, and Geoffrey of Monmouth sought to gather as much information as he could, to try to patch together his story.
[00:08:33] This story attracted a lot of what we might now call fanfiction, or retellings, including one a few decades later by a French writer called Chretien de Troyes.
[00:08:44] Now, Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric, a clergyman, so his tale was somewhat matter-of-fact, it told the story without major flair or exaggeration, or indeed storytelling. It was intended to be a historical document after all.
[00:09:01] Chretien de Troyes, on the other hand, was a medieval poet, so he focused more on the story, the characters, and the romance.
[00:09:12] He explored ideas of courtly love, chivalry and knighthood, and added these dimensions to his story.
[00:09:20] It’s also thought that the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle was his addition, so we certainly have this French poet to thank for adding the romantic twist.
[00:09:32] But that’s not it.
[00:09:34] As the centuries rolled by, the tale was adopted and adapted by a bunch of different writers. In the 13th century, Christian authors added some more Christian morality to the story, including introducing consequences for the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and turning the previously non-religious Grail into the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from during the Last Supper.
[00:10:01] And in the 15th century, an English author called Thomas Mallory put this all together in a 300,000-word epic that he called Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:13] The title was in French–it means “The Death of Arthur” in English–but the book was written in English. He chose the French title because many of his sources for the book, including the work by Chretien de Troyes, were in French.
[00:10:28] Now, I’m not sure what Robert McKee would say about giving away what happens to your protagonist in the title of your book, but this is now the best-known version of the legend of King Arthur, and the story I told you at the start broadly follows the story in Le Morte d'Arthur.
[00:10:46] But there is more to Le Morte d’Arthur than the Arthurian tale, it goes into detail about the stories of Arthur’s knights, and it is truly an epic piece of work. I mean, it’s 300,000 words long, and was published as a collection of 8 different books.
[00:11:05] So, if you are feeling particularly energetic and you want to pick up a book as ‘the’ Legend of King Arthur, then this is probably the one to start with.
[00:11:17] Now, as to the legacy of King Arthur in Britain, it is fairly monumental.
[00:11:23] Arthur is almost always in the top 10 most popular boys' names, although the names of other characters in the story, such as Guinevere, Lancelot and Mordred haven’t caught on to the same degree.
[00:11:36] You can visit the supposed Round Table in the town of Winchester, you can go to Glastonbury Abbey, which is supposedly the burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
[00:11:47] You can go to a castle in Cornwall which is also supposedly the burial place of King Arthur, you can even go to a small lake in Devon, next to Cornwall, which is supposedly where the Lady Of The Lake took back Excalibur, Arthur’s great sword.
[00:12:03] And of course, there are lots of reinterpretations of the Arthurian legend for all ages.
[00:12:10] You might remember the wonderful Disney film Sword in the Stone, which has a boy called Arthur as its main character, a sword stuck in a stone of course, and a wizard named Merlin.
[00:12:22] It was based on a book of the same name, but the book is a 20th-century children’s reinterpretation of the famous legend.
[00:12:31] Then there’s the kind of cheesy Hollywood telling of the story, the 1995 movie First Night, which starred Sean Connery, Julia Ormond and Richard Gere in the love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot.
[00:12:44] Or for a more gritty attempt at historical accuracy, or at least a less fluffy version, you can try the 2004 film King Arthur, with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley.
[00:12:57] And, lest I forget, there is also one that makes only a very fleeting attempt at historical accuracy but is very funny, and that’s Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
[00:13:09] So, to wrap things up, the legend of King Arthur is one of the most powerful and popular myths in English history.
[00:13:16] In all probability, there was no real King Arthur, and if there was, the probability that he had a round table, and an almost soap opera-like love triangle between his knight Lancelot and his wife Guinevere, well it seems very unlikely.
[00:13:33] But as long as you aren’t coming to the story of King Arthur and looking for historical accuracy, does it really matter? And who cares?
[00:13:42] I’d say that it makes it all the more interesting, the mystery around it has meant that dozens of people have taken the story and added to it over the years, with the result that the modern interpretation isn’t just one story, but the work of dozens, hundreds even, of people guiding the characters in the direction they wanted.
[00:14:05] And, as you’ve heard, the result is a simply legendary story.
[00:14:13] OK then, that is it for today's episode on The Legend of King Arthur.
[00:14:17] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:14:21] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:14:25] Have you heard of the story of King Arthur before?
[00:14:27] Which version have you heard?
[00:14:29] And are there stories like this from your country that have evolved and developed in the same way?
[00:14:35] I would love to know, so let’s get the discussion started.
[00:14:39] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:14:47] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:14:52] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
