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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 undergraduate option: undergraduate and postgraduate students will be taught together in mixed classes. An undergraduate student who has taken this as a Level 3 module cannot then take it as an MA 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 You will engage with a wide range of Arthuriana, including, but not limited to, historical documents, literature, film and television programmes, and you will consider what this evidence tells us about the changing nature of the legend and the needs or desires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 extended 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 postgraduate students from programmes beyond the MA Medieval Studies to the multi-disciplinary field of Medieval Studies. This module is also offered as Level 3 undergraduate option and has been designed for mixed cohorts of students.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

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

• 1. Demonstrate a sophisticated and intellectually mature understanding of the legend of King Arthur and how it has changed from the Middle Ages to the present day.
• 2. Demonstrate a sophisticated and intellectually mature 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. Demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to analyse texts and cultural products, making appropriate use of critical and stylistic analyses
• 4. Demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to 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 advanced research and bibliographic skills, such as information retrieval and interpretation, a sophisticated and intellectually mature capacity to construct a coherent substantiated argument, and an advanced ability 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 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of referral will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Primary Sources

• Anon., ‘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)
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. P.J.C. Field (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2017), single-volume paperback edn
• Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966)
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, ed. J. M. Gray (London: Penguin, 1996)
• Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, ed. and trans. by William Kibler (London: Penguin, 1991)
• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (London: Harper Press, 2011)
• Wace’s ‘Roman de Brut’ (A History of the British): Text and Translation, ed. and trans. Judith Weiss (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

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

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

Secondary Literature

• Stephanie Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Robert Bartlett, The Middle Ages and the Movies: Eight Key Films (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), pp. 77-104
• Inga Bryden, Reinventing King Arthur: The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)
• Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton, eds, A New Companion to Malory (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2019)
• Jon Sherman, ‘Source, Authority and Authenticity in the BBC’s Merlin’, Arthuriana 25.1 (2015), 82-100
• Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest for the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon, 2006), pp. 143-75
• Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginia Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita, and Peggy McCracken, Thinking Through Chretien de Troyes (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011)

Key words search

King Arthur, medieval, medievalism, romances, legend