King Arthur and the Tudor Dynasty

The reception of the legend of Arthur in the Tudor era presents something of a paradox. On the one hand, Arthur featured prominently in pageants and public spectacles throughout the period, and at times played a surprisingly important role in foreign policy. On the other hand, chroniclers found it increasingly difficult to defend Arthur’s historicity, and the period failed to produce a major work of Arthurian literature beyond Spenser’s Faerie Queene, in which the British prince cuts a perplexingly elusive figure. With its complex and conflicting attitudes to the Arthurian tradition, the Tudor era seems to constitute a bridge or way-station between the Arthur of the Middle Ages and the Arthur of more securely post-medieval (and, hence, medievalist) eras.

Arthur in the Celtic Languages, The Arthurian Legend in Celtic Literatures and Traditions, ed. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages IX. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019, xxiv, 408 pp.

In twenty-four chapters, Arthurian tradition in Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish, or Scottish Gaelic is surveyed by writers from Wales, Germany, the USA, and beyond. What they offer is familiar enough, with no surprises. The surprises are in what is ignored, not what is said. Before we reach that, however, a summary of contents.

Celtic Heroines: The Contributions of Women Scholars to Arthurian Studies in the Celtic Languages

This article surveys some of the main contributions of female scholars to the study of Arthurian literature in the Celtic languages from the nineteenth century to the present day. Scholarship by women has been integral to the study of Celtic Arthurian literature since the translations of native Welsh texts by Lady Charlotte Guest. Since then, women’s contributions have been foundational to the field, influencing theories of transmission, analysis and the standard editions of much Arthurian material in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic and Breton. They remain vital to the life of Arthurian scholarship, and the final section addresses contributions by younger scholars whose lasting influence remains to be seen.