I will admit, having a blog all about the stories around a king who may or may not be a complete fabrication is a tad strange. Like most, I first came across the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, and the knights of the round table as a child. Growing up, I loved Disney’s The Sword in the Stone and my overall obsession with fantasy books led me to similar stories. In my freshman year of high school, I was assigned to read T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, the basis for Disney’s The Sword in the Stone and one of the essential books in the Arthurian canon. While I hated that class and the teacher who assigned it (he was a verbally abusive piece of trash who should never have been allowed in a classroom), I fell in love with White’s anachronistic and comedic retelling of the story. As an avid reader and by this point, aspiring writer, I relished being able to dive into the characters I knew so well and all of their possible complexities.
My discovery of The Once and Future King was soon followed by the other two pieces of Arthuriana which influenced my love of the story: Merlin (a 1998 television mini-series starring Sam Neil, Helena Bonham Carter, Rutger Hauer, and Isabella Rossellini) and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s massive novel The Mists of Avalon. I recorded Merlin and rewatched and hung onto that VHS tape until I no longer owned a VCR. Was it a great movie? Probably not, but it was well cast, and it was fantasy, and it was Arthur, and I loved it. Also, the cast includes a young Lena Headey (aka Cersei Lannister) as Guinevere.
Then came The Mists of Avalon. I was probably too young to be reading that book the first time I read it, but I loved it. Not only is it considered one of the greatest fantasy novels of all time (even though it turns out it was written by a person who is basically a monster), but its retelling of the story of King Arthur through the eyes of women was a revelation for me, who then and now, will always go to bat for a strong female character, especially in fantasy. Also, for someone who grew up in an areligious household but has always been super interested in religion, the way it dealt with the conflict between old religions and new also sparked my interest. And it likely made me a Guinevere hater, but that’s a topic for another time.
The last big piece of the “Why Arthur” puzzle came into play while I was working on my bachelor’s degree in English. We had some pretty great medievalists in our department and one of them decided to offer a class in Arthurian literature (hi Dr. Schwartz!). I had never been more determined to get into a class in my life and when I did, it was amazing. It gave me the opportunity to explore the Arthurian canon and write a term paper on The Mists of Avalon. It was also the class that taught me the term Arthuriana and that there are people out there who spend their lives studying Arthurian literature. At this point, I seriously considered getting an M.A. and Ph.D. in medieval literature but instead settled for a less obvious but still probably unhealthy obsession with everything King Arthur.
That leads us to this blog, where I will endeavor to pursue my own studies in Arthuriana. I’m going to work my way through the first texts associated with the story while also taking a look at modern interpretations across literature, film, and television. And eventually, yes, there will be a Pendragon tattoo.
Recent Comments