Geoffrey of Monmouth

The legend of King Arthur is undoubtedly one of the most famous stories of all time. People from all walks of life know the tales of his courage and loyalty, his knights and the search for the Holy Grail. But, the big question is, was King Arthur a real person? In 540 CE, Gildas, a Welsh Historian, reported that near the turn of the century there was a great warrior named Ambrosius who stopped the Anglo-Saxons from taking over the western part of Britain. Gildas never directly said he was a commander

others in relations to his selfishness. In the narrative, Monmouth wrote Merlin to be a man who wanted nothing to do with anyone, except for himself. After the 1900’s, author of The Daughter of Merlin took a different perspective and gave the character a child that shared the same qualities. Gaster gave new meaning to Merlin’s character that will be put in texts of the Arthurian Legend. In the narratives, The Life of Merlin by Geoffrey Monmouth and The Daughter of Merlin by Madison J Cawein, Merlin’s

as an ideal Christian hero and as among God's elect. Young Arthur is able to withdraw the sword from the stone because he has been chosen by God to be the next king. Officers in the Roman army carried shields bearing portraits of their emperors. Geoffrey describes Arthur having a shield with the likeness of

A professor Charles Thomas translated it to read “Pater Coliavi ficit Artognov--Artognou, father of a descendant of Coll, has had this built.” The Latin name Artognov is Arthnou in Britain. People thought differently about what the name meant. Geoffrey Wainwright said it is so close to the name Arthur that it must be referring to the famous

(King’s second in command). Merlin isn’t just a character from the Arthurian Legends, “Writer Geoffrey of Monmouth is credited with creating Merlin in his 1136 A.D. work, Historia Regum Britanniae - The History of Kings of Britain. While a large portion of Historia Regum Britanniae is a historical account of former kings of Britain, Merlin was included as a fictional character (although it is likely that Geoffrey intended for readers to believe he was a figure extracted from long-lost ancient texts).”

the ninth century that the legend of Arthur really began to take shape. Nennius of Wales wrote History of the Britons, which depicted King Arthur as a heroic warrior. It soon became the basis for the Arthurian legend. Three centuries later, Geoffrey of Monmouth told the story of Arthur’s birth and added Merlin, Excalibur, and Queen Guinevere into the mix. The legend further developed throughout Europe into a complex, romantic story that included Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table. The French

themselves to add different perspectives to the legends. Alfred Tennyson, an Arthurian enthusiast, believed in the monarch as a historical figure and gear his poetry to toward a masculine Christian theme. Much of his history arrived through the Geoffrey of Monmouth and historiography of British monarchs. This belief in a true King Arthur allows readers of Tennyson’s poems to reevaluate his meaning and interpretation of the characters involved including their masculinity, femininity, honorable characteristics

the whole of the Arthurian legend to be this way is problematic. The same can be said for the claim that Arthur is both expansionist and isolationist. These traits typically depend on the time period and the origin of the author. For example, Geoffrey of Monmouth shows a violent process of cultural and geopolitical circulation while also being isolationist in his Latin Historia Regum Britannie. After Arthur is crowned, he has to give a gift to all his men, but he has nothing to give, so “Arthur, accordingly

of the original Welsh, was impractical because of its similarity to the Latin or French word for excrement, surely an inappropriate name for a great hero). (Bruce) Yet the Merlin of this story is not the great magician of later works. In his tale, Geoffrey uses not the Latin word "magus," which would imply that Merlin was some sort of sorcerer, but rather the word "vates," commonly indicating a poet or, often, a prophet or seer. (Tatlock) Merlin does exhibit many features of a mystic in Geoffrey's

Historia where a bear and a dragon fight together. There the bear is slain, but here he is victorious against the supernatural beast he fights against.   Dreams have been important in much of Arthurian literature, from the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth to Wace's Brut and the alliterative and stanzaic Morte Arthures. In those works, a vivid dream came to Arthur at some crucial point or points, whether on the way to Gaul, in his camp at Rome, or in England before his battle with Mordred. In