Arthurus Redivivus: Arthurian Imitation in Early Plantagenet England, 1154–1307

Description

This dissertation is a diachronic study of when and how the first five Plantagenet kings of England and their opponents attempted to use the figure of King Arthur for political gain. Medieval chronicles, chivalric biographies and occasional poetry from the British Isles and Continental Europe constitute its raw materials. Fundamental to this work is the reconstruction of the ways in which the pseudo-historical Arthur existed in historical memory in the time and places under consideration. This study provides a history of Arthurian self-fashioning that is concomitantly a reception study on medieval understandings of Arthur. The ideological basis for the practice of Arthurian imitation is the myth of King Arthur’s return: the idea that the legendary sixth-century hero of the Britons would somehow rise again and ‘re-establish’ a great Western European empire based in Britain. Although it is commonly assumed that exspectare Arthurum was an indigenous belief of the Brittonic peoples of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, this dissertation underscores that there is no evidence to sustain the position that the construct was either ancient or Brittonic in origin. The idea’s earliest attestation dates from 1125 and is a statement about Brittonic belief by a non-Brittonic writer. The central argument of this dissertation is that the Plantagenets, beginning with Henry II, exploited the myth of Arthur’s return in two ways. First, they advanced the idea that the Brittonic Celts mistakenly clung to a literal interpretation of exspectare Arthurum and were fruitlessly awaiting the return of the original King Arthur. Explicit analogies were drawn with the Jews awaiting their messiah; the purpose of this racist stereotype was to provide moral justification for Plantagenet expansion into Wales and Brittany. Second, the Plantagenets communicated that the myth should be understood figuratively and that they, by virtue of their insular crown and territorial possessions, were Arthur’s true successors. The monarchy’s exploitation of the Arthurian myth reached a highpoint with Edward I, after the reigns of John and Henry III, who, for political reasons, gave the myth less attention.