King Arthur and Chivalry [TTC Audio]
English | 2001 | 12 hrs and 24 mins | MP3 | 170 MB
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 247
Taught by Bonnie Wheeler
Southern Methodist University
Ph.D., Brown University
These 24 lectures, taught by the editor of the only scholarly quarterly in the world devoted solely to Arthurian lore, invite you to explore the time-honored and timeless legends of King Arthur and their links to the world of chivalry in the literature of the Middle Ages.
Professor Bonnie Wheeler shows why she has won teaching award after teaching award as she blends historical analysis with the study of literature to heighten your understanding of both.
Professor Wheeler offers this searching lecture series on the great chivalric romances of the Middle Ages and their tales of knightly quests, courtly love, and an extraordinary place called Camelot.
These lectures trace the development of the chivalric mentality in literature and thought from the Middle Ages to modern times.
You discuss texts including:
The Dream of Rhonabwy
The Song of Roland
Andreas Capellanus's On Love
Poem of My Cid
Silence
Chr tien de Troyes's Erec and Enide, Yvain, and Lancelot
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Malory's Le Morte Darthur.
The Lore of King Arthur: "More, and better besides!"
"As a teacher," says Professor Wheeler, "I never meet anyone who can talk to me for more than two minutes about King Arthur and Camelot without asking, Is it true?'
"In response, I often want to quote Winston Churchill: And more and better, besides!' "
There are few figures in literature as compelling as Arthur and his knights. Why?
"In contrast to the starkly individual heroism of ancient epic, Arthur's world is one where there are many different heroes, where each can be heroic in a special way," notes Professor Wheeler. "This gives Camelot and the Round Table a unique and original appeal that is still strong today.
"This is important and fascinating because chivalric life itself was so closely modeled on literature, on the stories of Arthur and his court," she continues.
Drawing from folklore, archaeology, history, and literary studies, Dr. Wheeler evaluates knighthood and chivalry as historic institutions and ideals. Then she builds on that understanding in order to shed light on the great Arthurian stories that we have inherited from the High Middle Ages and which continue to fascinate readers today.
From Legend to Literature
The course starts with the flowering of chivalry in the 12th-century West. The stories and literature of King Arthur form the central thread around which Professor Wheeler weaves studies of chivalry.
Tracing the rich story cycle (or "legendary") of King Arthur and his knights from the mists of the Dark Ages to the edge of modernity, Professor Wheeler devotes the first two-thirds of her course to compelling treatments of topics including:
scholars' efforts to pinpoint the Arthur story's origins in the history and folklore of post-Roman Britain, and to find its traces on the British landscape
early written accounts of Arthur, especially Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1138), the medieval Latin blockbuster that painted an unforgettable portrait of Arthur as the ideal monarch
the beautiful use made of Arthurian characters and narratives by the French poet Chr tien de Troyes, whose romances vividly portray both the glories and the paradoxes of the chivalric ideal
the recently rediscovered romance Silence, which tells the story of a young woman raised as a boy to save her from disinheritance
the comparative perspective on Arthur offered by a look at other great medieval heroes
the exquisite 14th-century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which Camelot's Christmas revels are interrupted by a hulking visitor with a very strange proposal
how the chivalric hero and the Arthurian moment become permanently bonded in the "matter of Britain"
the reality of chivalry in medieval society, which lets us ask how close the literature of chivalric romance came to real life.
Malory's Masterpiece
The last third of the course is devoted to Sir Thomas Malory's late 15th-century masterpiece, Le Morte Darthur.
No previous literary version of the Arthurian story is as complete. The fiction provides biography with the individual stories of Arthurian knights (Arthur, Lancelot, Gareth, Gawain, Tristram, and Galahad, primarily), and it provides the overarching framework of Round Table history from inception to destruction as the symbol of the civilization represented.
Malory's Le Morte Darthur is a work that stands on the frontier of the Middle Ages. The one surviving manuscript of Malory's work was finished by 1470; England's first printer, William Caxton, used this, as well as another manuscript, when he printed his version of the text in July of 1485 during the terrible English civil war known as the War of the Roses.
Malory's moving and brilliant treatment of such famous Arthurian themes as the Grail Quest, the love affair between Guenevere and Lancelot, and the final battle of Arthur and Mordred has left a deep mark on all of English literature.
Although fairly little is known about Malory himself, his sprawling, magnificent prose narrative is the most influential and resonant telling of the Arthurian story in English.
In offering the fullest account of Arthur's birth, life, and disappearance to the Isle of Avalon, Malory looks deeply into the passions, pains, and achievements of the Knights of the Round Table. We see how King Arthur's Round Table is born, flourishes, and is extinguished.
To see Arthur and the Round Table fellowship through Malory's eyes is to enter into a singularly intense yet ambiguous historical vision that blends sober narrative with wild tales of adventure and probes the depths, heights, and limits of the chivalric way of life.
Arthur's Court: Coming Home
"Traces of chivalric life are gloriously reflected in medieval literature, especially as it was pressed into the mold of King Arthur and his companions," notes Professor Wheeler.
"These stories are full of marvelous and poignant episodes, adventures that sweep us along but always leave us wonderingabout the true nature of love, of wisdom, of courage, and of sanctity.
"Yet that doesn't require that those who are characters in the fiction question their world at all. They just have to figure out how to live excellently, and to succeed as those who will have the right kind of story to bring home, because Arthur's court is always the place that everyone calls home."
"Should I buy Audio or Video?"
The video format contains several dozen images and paintings that help to tell the stories of the Arthurian legends. There is also useful on-screen text to make clear definitions, foreign words, and selected texts. This course works well in any format.
lecture 1. Arthur in history and legend ;
lecture 2. In search of Arthur ;
lecture 3. The land and its stories ;
lecture 4. The matter of Britain ;
lecture 5. Two Welsh tales ;
lecture 6. Dreaming Arthur ;
lecture 7. Honor, shame, and largesse ;
lecture 8. Knighthood and how it grew ;
lecture 9. The lover's curriculum ;
lecture 10. The round table in French ;
lecture 11. Lancelot and Guenevere ;
lecture 12. Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
lecture 13. Gender bending in French romance ;
lecture 14. Fearful festivals ;
lecture 15. The game of blame, the comedy of shame ;
lecture 16. Malory's vision of history ;
lecture 17. The Pentecostal oath ;
lecture 18. The return to Rome ;
lecture 19. He passed all other knyghtes ;
lecture 20. The Arthurian golden boy ;
lecture 21. Sir Tristram and the anxiety of chivalty ;
lecture 22. The quest for the grail ;
lecture 23. Passion and loss ;
lecture 24. To the Isle of Avalon
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