Arthurian Legend: Development and Participants
Development: 6th–15th Centuries
| Welsh | English | Anglo-Norman | French | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 545 | Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae | ||||||
| 600 | The Book of Aneurin | ||||||
| 945 | Nennius, Historia Britonum | ||||||
| 955 | Annales Cambriae | ||||||
| 10th c. | Culhwch and Olwen, The Dream ofRhonabwy | ||||||
| 12th c. | Black Book of Caermarthen | 1125 | William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum (in Latin) | ||||
| 1135 | Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, Historia Regum Britanniae (in Latin) | 1140 | Geoffrey Gaimer, L'Estoire des Engles | ||||
| 1155 | Robert Wace, Roman de Brut | ||||||
| 1160s | Chrétien de Troyes | ||||||
| 1175 | Marie de France, Lanval and other lais | ||||||
| 1197 | Walter Map (attrib.), a lost Latin Lancelot | 12th c. | 2 Tristram romances (Thomas and Beroul) | ||||
| 1205 | Layamon, Brut (based on Wace) | 1202 | Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie, Merlin, Perceval | ||||
| 13th c. | Prose Lancelot and Tristram | ||||||
| 13th c. | Prose Vulgate (includes Queste del Saint Graal) | ||||||
| 1360 | Alliterative Morte Arthure | ||||||
| 1400 | Stanzaic Morte Arthur | ||||||
| 1469 | Thomas Malory | ||||||
Some Modern Treatments in English
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (allegorical poem; 1590, 1595).
John Dryden and Henry Purcell, King Arthur, or The British Worthy (an opera; 1691).
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Merlin” (a short poem in two parts; 1847).
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (poetry; 1857-1885, 1889).
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Merlin, Lancelot, and Tristram (three long poems; 1917-1927).
Charles Williams, Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944) (two [very difficult] poem sequences).
T. H. White, The Once and Future King (prose fiction; 1939).
C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (prose fiction; 1946).
Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising series (prose fiction): Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), The Dark Is Rising (1973), The Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975), Silver on the Tree (1977).
Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave (1970), The Hollow Hills (1973), The Last Enchantment (1979), and The Wicked Day (1983) (prose fiction).
Rick Wakeman, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (musical suite, 1975).
Gillian Bradshaw, Hawk of May (1980), Kingdom of Summer (1981), In Winter's Shadow (1982) (prose fiction).
Robertson Davies, The Lyre of Orpheus (prose fiction; 1989).
Still Other Participants
England: Swinburne, Arnold, Masefield.
America: Twain, Eliot
Italy: Rusticano of Pisa
Germany: Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Eilhart von Oberge
… and many others