Arthurian Chronicles [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION'The nature of a preface', said Dry den, 'is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it.' The pronouncements of a thousand oracles contain no more of truth for him who writes of Arthur. Let him rear as high as he likes he will keep one hoof in the rut; let him be grave, soft and circumspect and he will crash through safe hedgerows to the dubious verges of truth.Luckily the two works now to be introduced to new readers do not involve us too deeply in the problem of Arthurian origins. The origins of Layamon are to be sought mainly in Wace, and the origins of Wace mainly in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and at Geoffrey (a Monmouthshire man is speaking) we can draw the line.Geoffrey completed his Historia Regum Britannia about 1135-7, and it is simple and true to call it a major contribution to the Arthurian legend. It is an important part, that is to say, of that immense literature in a score of languages which pays tribute to one of the foremost figures and symbols ever to enchant the human imagination. To begin with, let us listen to yet another twelfth-century writer and share his amazement at what had happened to the fame of Arthur as early as the 1170's. The testimony occurs in the commentary on Geoffrey's Prophetia Merlini, long but erroneously attributed to Alanus de Insulis:What place is there within the bounds of the empire of Christendom to which the winged praise of Arthur the Briton has not extended ? Who is there, I ask, who does not speak of Arthur the Briton, since he is but little less known to the peoples of Asia than to the Bretons, as we are informed by our palmers who return from the countries of the East? The Eastern peoples speak of him as do the Western, thoughv