‘While Arthur’s medieval guise is the most familiar, he is a shapeshifter. He has been in succession the patriotic leader of Celtic Britain, the focus of Welsh heroic saga, the lord of a chivalric Utopia, the Tennysonian idealist. His legend’s repeated fading out and revival show a vitality best explained by a feature that persists throughout - its appeal to the multiform daydream of a past golden age.’
British historian Geoffrey Ashe is the world’s leading scholar of the Arthurian myth. He has written a number of books studying every angle of this compelling figure. Here he turns to a recurring feature of the legend – the idea of a golden age, presided over by the heroic king and his handpicked knights who surround the round table, itself a symbol of unity and inclusion, with no one man sitting at the head.
The myth and imagery of Arthur, his wife Guinevere, the magician Merlin and the court at Camelot was so strong that it held sway over the imagination of poets and artists for centuries. In this accessible study, Ashe looks at the origins of the story and takes us right through to the modern age, and his reemergence in modern fiction, in films and in musicals. He posits that the secret of his vitality lies in his relation to a perennial myth or dream, one that takes a variety of shapes in legend, in religion, even in politics. President Kennedy’s all too brief court was dubbed Camelot, reenacting the myth of the golden king, his beautiful wife by his side, whose reign and dream of a golden age was cut short by malignant outside forces, just as Arthur’s was.
As Ashe explains, it is the myth of a lost, and better, society which makes this iconic legend so fascinating and explains its enduring appeal.
Born in London in 1923, Geoffrey Ashe graduated from the University of British Columbia in Canada before continuing at Cambridge, UK. He has written numerous books, many focussed on the Arthurian legend. In 1963 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and he was awarded an MBE in 2012. He is recognised as a pre-eminent cultural historian and author, and lives in Glastonbury, England, where he is an Honorary Freeman “in recognition of his eminent services to the place”, with his wife Patricia.
‘While Arthur’s medieval guise is the most familiar, he is a shapeshifter. He has been in succession the patriotic leader of Celtic Britain, the focus of Welsh heroic saga, the lord of a chivalric Utopia, the Tennysonian idealist. His legend’s repeated fading out and revival show a vitality best explained by a feature that persists throughout - its appeal to the multiform daydream of a past golden age.’
British historian Geoffrey Ashe is the world’s leading scholar of the Arthurian myth. He has written a number of books studying every angle of this compelling figure. Here he turns to a recurring feature of the legend – the idea of a golden age, presided over by the heroic king and his handpicked knights who surround the round table, itself a symbol of unity and inclusion, with no one man sitting at the head.
The myth and imagery of Arthur, his wife Guinevere, the magician Merlin and the court at Camelot was so strong that it held sway over the imagination of poets and artists for centuries. In this accessible study, Ashe looks at the origins of the story and takes us right through to the modern age, and his reemergence in modern fiction, in films and in musicals. He posits that the secret of his vitality lies in his relation to a perennial myth or dream, one that takes a variety of shapes in legend, in religion, even in politics. President Kennedy’s all too brief court was dubbed Camelot, reenacting the myth of the golden king, his beautiful wife by his side, whose reign and dream of a golden age was cut short by malignant outside forces, just as Arthur’s was.
As Ashe explains, it is the myth of a lost, and better, society which makes this iconic legend so fascinating and explains its enduring appeal.
Born in London in 1923, Geoffrey Ashe graduated from the University of British Columbia in Canada before continuing at Cambridge, UK. He has written numerous books, many focussed on the Arthurian legend. In 1963 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and he was awarded an MBE in 2012. He is recognised as a pre-eminent cultural historian and author, and lives in Glastonbury, England, where he is an Honorary Freeman “in recognition of his eminent services to the place”, with his wife Patricia.