The literary tradition where Arthur first appeared belongs to Welsh language, the immediate descendent of the Brittonic Celtic language spoken across most of the island of Britain before the subsequent arrivals of the Romans, then the Angles, Saxons and Jutes,1 and the Normans. At the turn of the sixth century, which marks the moment associated with the Arthur of history, the landscape and cultural outlook of Wales and northern Britain offered an anchor to what were probably oral stories in circulation. The earliest surviving Welsh Arthurian poems and narratives furnished the essence and the pathways for the later transmission and adaptation of the legends into other languages and territories throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.2 The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture (henceforth CHALC) acknowledges the longue durée of Arthuriana, from the origins of the Arthurian story to an exploration of its impressive reach across medieval Europe, then into the global world.

Lancelot is the sole Arthurian romance by Chrétien de Troyes not to have been directly adapted in German. However, the integration of elements of Lancelot material bears witness to an indirect reaction on the part of German Arthurian romance to the provocative and virulent narrative tradition surrounding the Knight of the Cart. From reminiscences of the abduction of the queen in the early narratives, this chapter turns to the radical reinvention of Lancelot as a serial monogamist who works to uphold social order and consolidate Arthurian rule in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet. It further discusses the remodelling of the fairy upbringing motif in Lanzelet and the anonymous Wigamur. Finally, the remarkable treatment of Guinevere’s abduction in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône is considered in connection with the problematic relationship of the German Arthurian tradition with the otherworld.

Arthurian tourist sites create what Stijn Reijnders, adapting Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux mémoire, calls lieux d’imagination: places that may or may not have their origins in history, but are compelling precisely because they join the real with a desired imaginary. We offer a tour of Tintagel Castle and Glastonbury Abbey in the UK, surveying the development of these sites from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c.1136) through the nineteenth-century Medieval Revival to today’s New Age religions and media tourism. We argue that Arthurian places are continually co-produced in processes far from finished; moreover, diverse groups have their own investments in such places – and are sometimes in conflict with each other. Thus we conclude with a discussion of two Arthurian sites outside the UK that exemplify how Arthuricity flourishes in unlikely places: the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, and Wewelsburg Castle, Himmler’s homage to the knights of the Round Table.

This chapter introduces Arthurian translations and adaptations originating in medieval Scandinavia, from the earliest translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth to a late ballad version of the story of Tristan and Isolde. It considers the translations of Marie de France’s Arthurian and Tristan-related works and the three romances of Chrétien de Troyes that made their way into Old Norwegian. The chapter demonstrates how this material had impact on the pre-existing Old Norse literary system, introducing new emotional expression into the saga repertoire, and providing popular motifs that were adopted in later indigenous romances.

Commencing with the allegorical adaptations and politicisations of Arthurian settings that arose in the wake of the 1688 Revolution, this chapter examines several discrete modes of literary Arthurianism across the long eighteenth century. As Britain formed around them, eighteenth-century English-language writers adapted the character of Arthur to new aesthetic tastes and modified the Arthurian story to suit emergent modes of story-telling, reshaping the vales of the Arthurian myth according to their own cultural and political concerns. The chapter explores the ways in which Arthur was increasingly embroiled in contested debates about English nationhood and English/British national identity whilst also tracing the evolution of the Arthurian legends into a wider Arthurian ‘mythos’ in which the overarching culture, settings, structures, symbols and themes of the Arthurian world became as significant as the individual figures and narratives featured within them.

Anglophone Arthurian films (including television) continually restage the triumphant break from the medieval that serves as the constitutive myth of origin for modernity.  The divinely appointed absolute monarch (Arthur) returns, but only to figure a sovereignty invested in the people.  Medieval Arthurian narratives explore the nature and exercise of political authority, providing ideological legitimacy for political institutions and defining the individual’s obligations within those institutions.  This chapter examines how modern Anglophone film and television remediate Arthurian legends, projecting contemporary notions of sovereignty back onto the Middle Ages.

This chapter will explore, for the first time, the existence, development and characteristics of a Latin American corpus of contemporary Arthurian literature (nineteenth to twenty-first century), written both in Spanish and Portuguese. So far, the collection and study of texts from the Latin-speaking nations of North, Central and South America (Latin America) has remained unexplored. This chapter will show that this area has suffered from unjust neglect; there is, therefore, an urgency to fill this gap in Arthurian studies. Arthur, Merlin and Isolde are found in the tropical lands of Mexico or the great plains of central Brazil, and their stories were added to local motifs; they add new meanings for different communities of readers. Latin American children and younger readers were equally fond of Arthur – as much as young readers elsewhere.

The early nineteenth-century literary revival of the Arthurian legends inaugurated a corresponding resurgence in the visual arts. New printings of historic romances and verse by contemporary poets, notably Alfred Tennyson, furnished artists with Arthurian subjects and stimulated popular demand for their work. Arthurian artworks proliferated everywhere from the Palace of Westminster to the walls of the Royal Academy to the pages of illustrated books. Under Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s leadership, the second generation of Pre-Raphaelites gave fresh forms to Arthurian narratives, imbuing them with melancholy and Romantic passion. In the latter half of the century, the trend spread from Great Britain to America and Canada, where artists introduced Arthurian figures into North American landscapes. In Europe, French, German and Belgian artists drew inspiration from Wagner’s Arthurian operas. The revival persisted into the 1920s, when post-war shifts in artistic and cultural values brought the long florescence of Arthurian art to a close.

This chapter addresses the complex theme of the penetration of the Arthurian subject in Italy through the circulation of manuscripts; the various forms that characterised this specific reception, ranging from narrative works adhering to French models to more autonomous reworkings, such as compilations (Rustichello da Pisa) and the cantari in octaves, truly anticipated the great epic poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. For a long time these texts, especially the vernacular versions, have been known among scholars by virtue of their linguistic relevance as the earliest witnesses in Italian literary prose, but it should not be forgotten that they saw the light thanks to the intensive Italian production and transcription of manuscripts in their original language. This phenomenon characterised most of the manuscript tradition of Arthurian romances in Italy (Tristan en prose, Guiron le Courtois cycle), and imposes today the use of refined and complex codicological, historical and palaeographical analyses.

This chapter takes up the complex and fluid topic of gender in relation to Arthurian romance. It explores the intersections of gender with chivalry, emotion and agency in the twelfth-century romances of Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France and their fourteenth-century English reworkings; the gendered treatment of desire, constraint and identity in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale; and finally the formative role of gender across Arthur’s reign in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Engagement with gender roles, emotional experience and the place and predicament of women is built into Arthurian romance from its inception, reflecting courtly interests in the nuances of behaviour and feeling. Medieval Arthurian romances repeatedly treat women as wielding profound power, including through unorthodox means of magic, but they also address the constraints of gender roles for women. Malory’s Morte Darthur illuminates the crucial part played by gender in the narrative of the rise and fall of Arthur’s kingdom, and the conflict between heterosexual and homosocial relations.

This chapter considers Arthuriana in two distinct linguistic zones: the Celtic languages (excluding Welsh) and Older Scots.  The Arthur of the ‘Gaelic world’ is a figure associated with marvellous, and sometimes comic, adventures – the overtly political themes that persist in Welsh and English writing are usually absent. In the Cornish and Breton regions, Arthur appears in politically complex hagiographical and prophetic material. Older Scots also offers complex and consistent engagement with politics, though from a different vantage point. Here, the dual themes of sovereignty and advice to princes are closely related both to one another and to the long and complex history of contemporary Anglo-Scots political and literary relations. At issue too are crucial questions of geography and national identity.

Tracing back to the uncertain origins of the Tristan legend, this chapter deals first with the earliest written forms of the story of Tristan and Isolde. It then describes the spread of the story throughout Europe, its gradual Arthurianisation, and discusses the place it may have occupied in courtly literature. The Prose Tristan concludes the rivalry between Tristan and Lancelot initiated by Chrétien de Troyes. At the same time, it completes Tristan’s integration into the canon of the Arthurian cycle. In later romances, Tristan is then regarded as equal to Lancelot on the battlefield, and the greatest of the knight-poets.

The period between 1500 and 1700 is sometimes associated with a dip in Arthur’s popularity. In fact, this was a time of Arthurian reinvention, rather than decline: if Arthur did not appear quite as frequently, his appearances nevertheless reached a new peak in terms of their creativity and variety. Increased scepticism surrounding Arthur had a freeing effect, allowing him to be invoked in new and different contexts, from satire to archery shows, and pre-existing Arthurian narratives and geographies were revised. Perhaps unexpectedly, Arthur’s diversification seems to have peaked during the years when Arthur’s narrative was the most potentially dangerous, such as England’s Interregnum and the early Restoration years. At the same time, popular medieval Arthuriana continued to be consumed in manuscript and print; and many local Arthurian traditions were first recorded and brought to wider knowledge during these years.

This chapter explores the transformation of medieval Arthurian knowledge in early modern Germany, starting with the last Meisterlieder from Hans Sachs and his followers till the middle of the sixteenth century, when medieval Arthurian literature gradually fell out of fashion. Only the Wigalois adaptations and the Prose Tristan were still printed until the late seventeenth century, and a few Arthurian topoi remained as well during this ‘Arthurian break’: the name of the sword of the king, the adultery of the queen and the opulence of the king’s court. The rediscovery of medieval literature in Germany after 1750 by Bodmer and his followers did not manage to remodel and adapt this material but instead connected the medieval tradition with classical models.

This chapter considers the Middle English Arthurian verse romances, and the ways in which these texts interact with the genre of Middle English romance at large. First, the chapter explores the relationship between expected audiences and the choice to write in verse when considering Arthurian subject matter. The chapter then turns to romances usually designated as non-Arthurian, and asks: to what extent do Arthur and his knights creep into narratives set outside, beyond or without the Arthurian court, and what might this tell us about the cultural impact of Arthurian material in medieval England? Finally, a number of romance tropes – the fair unknown, the loathly lady, and intruders of all kinds – are used to show Middle English verse romance’s potential to both reinforce and disrupt Arthurian courtly values.

Sir Thomas Malory’s late fiftenth-century prose work Le Morte Darthur is the most substantial Middle English account of the legendary king, and has strongly influenced later Arthurian writers, including Tennyson, Twain and T. H. White. We know little about  Malory and his reasons for writing (in prison); was it a commission? The Morte was printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, and frequently reprinted, but only one manuscript copy survives. I discuss Malory’s adaptation of the familiar story, using a remarkable range of sources in several languages. He gives surprising prominence to Lancelot, not a popular figure in the English tradition, and chooses to include the Grail Quest, in which most knights fail. I consider Malory’s deceptively plain style, his values, his attitudes to women, and also his historical context; he fought in the Wars of the Roses, so Arthur’s rise and fall must have had particular significance for him.