Before the Pilgrimage leaves Glastonbury I will share three recent online articles that relate to the Arthurian legends Many places have claims to participate in that vast corpus of poetry and prose, but Glastonbury is one of the central players, where history, legend and literature interweave so signally.
The first relates to the story of Sir Percival and is from The Collector. The article seeks to link the twelfth and thirteenth century stories of Chrétian of Troyes, Robert Borron and Wolfram von Eschenbach to earlier or contemporary Welsh tales and to actually place Perceval/Peredur as a real historical figure in the sixth century.
The illustrated article can be viewed at The Real Historical Background of Sir Percival's Arthurian Legends
I do not claim sufficient expertise in Arthurian studies to give an author at I’ve comment but the pieces does appear to be coherent and considered. Percival is usually suggested, because the early stories come from there, to have come from Wales. This interpretation makes him come from the area around York. As a Yorkshireman myself the thought that Percival was, so to speak, a Yorkshire lad is intriguing.
Wikipedia has an account of the various strands of the story of Percival which can be accessed at Perceval
Sir Marrok is not one of the well-known Knights of the Round Table and gets only a tantalising mention by Malory. Socially he was disadvantaged, having been made into a werewolf by his wife, but then, these things happen ….
What is known of his story and later variants on it is outlined in a post from Historic Mysteries at Sir Marrok: The Werewolf at the Court of King Arthur
The reputed grave, or place of entrapment, of Merlin, is claimed for several places. Atlas Obscura has a piece about a site in Brittany which has been associated with Arthurian stories since the middle ages and more particularly since the nineteenth century. The article can be seen at Merlin's Tomb
No comments:
Post a Comment