Course Information

This asynchronous, online course will begin by reviewing the earliest written documents mentioning King Arthur, and we’ll search for the “real” Arthur by examining candidates for the historical figure who likely lay behind the myth. Having traced what can be known about the legend’s origins, we’ll study its literary development in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Famously dubbed by Sir Thomas Malory “rex quondam rexque futurus” (the “once and future king”) Arthur simply won’t die, and we don’t desire him to do so. He lives even today because we need to know that once, in a distant and calamitous past, a committed leader carved a hope-filled kingdom out of chaos for a time, and we desire deeply to know the turmoil of our world too can be put to rights when Arthur finally and triumphantly returns. All texts available in modern English translation.