Who was this guy named Arthur?

This is the second part of the blog originally posted on http://saveriomonachino.wordpress.com/ April 22, 2012: 

One more carryover posting and I will have the two sites in sync (yeah)!  So, stay tuned, and read 'em as they come.  Soon I'll dig into the specifics.

Part II:  Who was this guy named Arthur?

“Much of it is simply ridiculous,” Goodrich continued, speaking of the various takes on the legend of King Arthur. “Arthur was not a figure of the Middle Ages or of the Age of Chivalry, when knighthood was in flower.  His 150 or so warriors were not gallant knights gaily bedight.   He was not born at Tintagel Castle, which was not built until the age of stone castles, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.  And the rest of the above-mentioned geography will have to go by the board, including Glastonbury (though it is an ancient and holy site), Bath, Dover, South Cadbury, Winchester, Salisbury, London, York, the Cornwall sites, and Brittany.”

But still finding the truth is difficult because the Arthurian legends are not easy to counter.  They have had centuries to swell and be embellished upon, like in the hands of Sir Thomas Malory, who recounted the collapse of his own fifteenth century under the guise of a rise and fall of King Arthur’s ancient Celtic realm, or Alfred Lord Tennyson who, among others, has swept aloft Arthur’s real life and deeds into high tragedy.  The worst part in any attempt to find out what really happened in that time period was the dearth of written history. 

Romance and modern comedies have served further to obscure the real Arthur from view, that he may have lived on the earth and reigned is, for most people, not even a question.  This is where Dr. Goodrich’s expertise came into play.  She was a professor in French and Comparative literature with a PhD in Romance Philology and had a command of more than 20 ancient and modern languages.  Her studies helped a great deal in opening new avenues of interpretation to the little which is really know of this time.   I do not think this is a cruel fate for someone who was for so long a renowned warrior, a defender of the Celtic realm, the greatest and best of kings.  He was said to have been brave and powerful, valiant and resourceful, honorable and beloved- and ideal, just ruler.  Historians used to think that he once ruled all of Britain.  It is just that now, those referencing Arthur, the Dux Bellorum, will have to be more careful with their superlatives. 

As I wrote above:  Stay tuned for specifics.