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The Legend of King Arthur

Module description

The deeds of King Arthur and his court are imprinted on the landscape, embedded in (pseudo-)historical texts, and have been repeatedly re-invented in romances, novels, film and television programmes. This interdisciplinary module asks you to investigate the appeal of the ‘once and future king’ from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, including the ways in which his legend has been adapted and extended over time. The Southwest has unique links to the Arthurian myth, and this module allows you to explore the manuscript and archaeological resources that distinguish this region.

No prior knowledge, skills or experience are required: this module is suitable for all students at this level.

NB This module is also listed as an MA option: undergraduate and postgraduate students will be taught together in mixed classes. An undergraduate student who has taken this as a Stage 3 module cannot then take it as a masters module.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module explores the development and deployment of the legend of King Arthur from the Middle Ages to the modern day. You will engage with a wide range of Arthuriana, including, but not limited to, historical documents, literature, film and television programmes, and you will consider what this evidence tells us about the changing nature of the legend and the needs or desires of the societies in which it is evoked. You will evaluate aspects of the legend through an essay as well as practising your ability to write for different audiences and different types of publication via a review portfolio.  

This module is intended to promote interdisciplinary approaches and to introduce undergraduate students to the multi-disciplinary field of Medieval Studies. This module is also offered as an MA-level option and has been designed for mixed cohorts of students. This means that it includes a greater emphasis on independent learning and is intended to bridge the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate study.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced critical understanding of the legend of King Arthur and how it has changed from the Middle Ages to the present day.
• 2. Demonstrate an advanced capacity to place changes in the reception of the legend, both popular and scholarly, in the context of wider intellectual, social, cultural and political developments.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse texts and cultural products, making appropriate use of critical and stylistic analyses
• 4. Situate texts and cultural products within their socio-historical contexts

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Through seminar work, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 6. Through written work, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, such as information retrieval and interpretation, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose

Syllabus plan

The module will cover a selection of the following topics, although the exact content may vary from year to year:

• Historical and archaeological evidence for Arthur
• Welsh legend of Arthur
• Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae and its adaptations, e.g. Wace’s Roman de Brut
• Medieval social and political contexts for Arthur
• Romance texts
• Magic and the Supernatural
• Love, Sex, Marriage and Adultery
• The Grail Cycle
• Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
• King Arthur in the early modern period
• King Arthur in Georgian and Victorian Britain and America, e.g. Idylls of the King; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• King Arthur in the twentieth century, e.g. Monty Python and the Holy Grail; T.H. White, The Once and Future King
• Contemporary Arthurs, e.g. BBC’s Merlin

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to redo the assessment(s) as defined above. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Geoffrey of Monmouth and adaptations
  • Judith Weiss (ed. and trans.), Wace’s ‘Roman de Brut’ (A History of the British): Text and Translation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005)
• ‘Romance’ texts
  • Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, ed. and trans. by William Kibler (London: Penguin, 1991)
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 5^th edn (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016)
  • Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginia Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, and Peggy McCracken, Thinking Through Chretien de Troyes (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011)
• Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
  • Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. P.J.C. Field (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2017), single-volume paperback edn
  • Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton, eds, A New Companion to Malory (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2019)
• King Arthur in Georgian and Victorian Britain and America
  • Alfred Lord Tennsyon, Idylls of the King, ed. by J. M. Gray (London: Penguin, 1996)
  • Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (London: Harper Press, 2011)
  • Inga Bryden, Reinventing King Arthur: The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)
  • Stephanie Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• King Arthur in the 20^th century
  • Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest for the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon, 2006), pp. 143-75
  • Robert Bartlett, The Middle Ages and the Movies: Eight Key Films (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), pp. 77-104
• Contemporary Arthurs
  • Jon Sherman, ‘Source, Authority and Authenticity in the BBC’s Merlin’, Arthuriana 25.1 (2015), 82-100

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – Faculty to provide hyperlink to appropriate pages

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Camelot Project: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot-project

Key words search

King Arthur, medievalism, romances, legend