Whatever Suits Your Fancy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} watersedge1) wrote,@ 2008-12-30 13:02:00 |
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I've been thinking, recently, about some popular myths, epics and legends and how they are actually known to most people (i.e. Americans). By this I mean stories and legends like the Robin Hood stories, King Arthur and the Round Table stories, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and so on and so forth. These three are the most popular and the ones I thought of the most, though.
The actual literary provenance of these stories can be either more or less easy to track-- The Iliad and the Odyssey are of course from Homer. However, the Arthur stories are more complicated. The most popular "layman" variant would be Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, although some of the stock stories associated with Arthur (perhaps unbeknown to the average person) would be from Geoffrey of Monmouth or Chertien du Troyes for example. The Robin Hood stories are the most complex of all, because the legend has been built up from a bewildering array of poems, songs, games, plays and even passing references. There were folk tales of Robin Hood (as there were of all three legends), but there is no one text from which people "got" Robin Hood.
This makes the modern perceptions of these stories quite interesting. There are images and tropes associated with all three. The Trojan Wars have images of the great wooden horse, an invincible Achilles and a face that launched a thousand ships. What always surprises my students is that NONE of these things are mentioned by Homer. At all. Achilles is far from invincible-- he almost drowns in the Skamandros River, for instance-- and why bother with his godly armour if he WERE invincible? The Trojan horse is not mentioned-- even in the Odyssey. From what I can tell, it's first pointed out by a ROMAN, Virgil, in the Aeneid, hundreds of years after Homer wrote his pieces. As for the "face that launched a thousand ships" line which EVERYBODY assumes was part of the legend-- well, Christopher Marlowe wrote it in the 16th century, for a play that had little to do with the Trojan Wars.
The Arthur and Robin Hood stories have their own hoary set of misconceptions as well. Where did all these come from? Well, because legends are like that and accumulate details, changes and meanings as time goes by. It's proof of their strength and also shows why they continuously stay relevant: they're reinvented by every generation. The Anglo-Normans of the 13th century needed to establish an origin story, so Geoffrey of Monmouth created a mythical British past, complete with a "culture king" to rival King Minos or Aeneas or Cyrus the Great. The Victorians needed a romantic, pastoral counterpoint to their straight-laced, industrialized world, so they created a plate-armored romantic Arthur. Many Americans apparently feel the need for some sort of "distressed Briton hopping about in woad" to validate their ludicrous images of pagan England, so you have (retch) books like Mists of Avalon. And so and so forth. The mutation of these myths can be particularly hilarious, given the times. Robin Hood has now become some kind of medieval Che Guevarra, resisting tyrranical Norman rule.
What is additionally fascinating is how people today don't realize that the modern image of legends are really more products of books written in the past two hundred years. Most people don't have the patience to slog through even modern translations of the Iliad or modernized versions of Le Morte. So what people have to say about Greek myth, I have realized most likely comes from Edith Hamilton. That nice lady summarized all of these myths, her book is still a wildly popular paperback and she is often required reading in schools.
What about the Robin Hood stories? Again, most people don't realize it, but their images of Robin Hood are generally from Howard Pyle's children's book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The association of Robin Hood with Richard the Lionheart was further strengthend by-- of all people-- Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe.
The Arthur stories-- my favorite-- most likely are known to people from T.H. White and The Once and Future King. A few might know him from Tennyson's Idylls of the King, but I have found that people's images of Arthur are from White. There are no hints that Merlin ever taught Arthur in any of the medieval stories, but many seem to assume that now and it all comes from White.
We shouldn't ignore movies either. Maid Marian was not always with Robin-- her role was most likely solidified by the need for the Douglas Fairbanks and Kevin Costner movies to have romantic female leads. T.H. White was further made famous by both the musical Camelot and the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. We should also remember the various movies on Arthur. There have been no successful movies of the Trojan War in recent memory, but it is possible that Troy might have some effect on popular consciousness of the Trojan War.
It actually makes perfect sense that people's common views of myths basically originate from books they read as children and of movies they've watched on a Saturday night. I don't see any "shame" in this or think this is any less valid than, say, obsessing over Wolfram von Eschenbach.
This also means to me that there is more than a little self-deceptive irony to the very American obsession with finding the "real" Arthur or Robin Hood. There seems to be an animus to stylized, romanticized heroes, so there is this desperate need and huge industry towards finding some semi-mythical, grubby "Dark Age" Arthur. These "researchers" strip away what they perceive to be the romance and essentially either come up with nothing, or a warlord exactly like other warlords from the era, or some kind of strange anachronism-- they want the "real" Arthur, but given how indistinguishable this "real" Arthur they "find" is, they imbue him with characteristics of the romantic one to try to reconcile the two images. So you have movies like "Arthur" with a pseudo-Dark Age Arthur but his Sarmatian knights have French names. Or you have desperate attempts to find "Camelot" with candidates like the hill fort in Cadbury, and then arguments as to how a Dark Age palisaded enclosure on a mound somehow had qualities that resembled Camelot.
It's all irritating and silly and misunderstands-- in a way-- what legends do. The only reason these people are looking for "the real" legend is because they grew to love the romanticized legend in the first place. Yet I do understand that these new obsessions are just another manifestation of the continuous evolution of legends.
Basically, there is no "real" Arthur or Robin Hood or Achilles. Like all heroes, they're whoever we want them to be. I think this is fantastic.
The actual literary provenance of these stories can be either more or less easy to track-- The Iliad and the Odyssey are of course from Homer. However, the Arthur stories are more complicated. The most popular "layman" variant would be Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, although some of the stock stories associated with Arthur (perhaps unbeknown to the average person) would be from Geoffrey of Monmouth or Chertien du Troyes for example. The Robin Hood stories are the most complex of all, because the legend has been built up from a bewildering array of poems, songs, games, plays and even passing references. There were folk tales of Robin Hood (as there were of all three legends), but there is no one text from which people "got" Robin Hood.
This makes the modern perceptions of these stories quite interesting. There are images and tropes associated with all three. The Trojan Wars have images of the great wooden horse, an invincible Achilles and a face that launched a thousand ships. What always surprises my students is that NONE of these things are mentioned by Homer. At all. Achilles is far from invincible-- he almost drowns in the Skamandros River, for instance-- and why bother with his godly armour if he WERE invincible? The Trojan horse is not mentioned-- even in the Odyssey. From what I can tell, it's first pointed out by a ROMAN, Virgil, in the Aeneid, hundreds of years after Homer wrote his pieces. As for the "face that launched a thousand ships" line which EVERYBODY assumes was part of the legend-- well, Christopher Marlowe wrote it in the 16th century, for a play that had little to do with the Trojan Wars.
The Arthur and Robin Hood stories have their own hoary set of misconceptions as well. Where did all these come from? Well, because legends are like that and accumulate details, changes and meanings as time goes by. It's proof of their strength and also shows why they continuously stay relevant: they're reinvented by every generation. The Anglo-Normans of the 13th century needed to establish an origin story, so Geoffrey of Monmouth created a mythical British past, complete with a "culture king" to rival King Minos or Aeneas or Cyrus the Great. The Victorians needed a romantic, pastoral counterpoint to their straight-laced, industrialized world, so they created a plate-armored romantic Arthur. Many Americans apparently feel the need for some sort of "distressed Briton hopping about in woad" to validate their ludicrous images of pagan England, so you have (retch) books like Mists of Avalon. And so and so forth. The mutation of these myths can be particularly hilarious, given the times. Robin Hood has now become some kind of medieval Che Guevarra, resisting tyrranical Norman rule.
What is additionally fascinating is how people today don't realize that the modern image of legends are really more products of books written in the past two hundred years. Most people don't have the patience to slog through even modern translations of the Iliad or modernized versions of Le Morte. So what people have to say about Greek myth, I have realized most likely comes from Edith Hamilton. That nice lady summarized all of these myths, her book is still a wildly popular paperback and she is often required reading in schools.
What about the Robin Hood stories? Again, most people don't realize it, but their images of Robin Hood are generally from Howard Pyle's children's book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The association of Robin Hood with Richard the Lionheart was further strengthend by-- of all people-- Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe.
The Arthur stories-- my favorite-- most likely are known to people from T.H. White and The Once and Future King. A few might know him from Tennyson's Idylls of the King, but I have found that people's images of Arthur are from White. There are no hints that Merlin ever taught Arthur in any of the medieval stories, but many seem to assume that now and it all comes from White.
We shouldn't ignore movies either. Maid Marian was not always with Robin-- her role was most likely solidified by the need for the Douglas Fairbanks and Kevin Costner movies to have romantic female leads. T.H. White was further made famous by both the musical Camelot and the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. We should also remember the various movies on Arthur. There have been no successful movies of the Trojan War in recent memory, but it is possible that Troy might have some effect on popular consciousness of the Trojan War.
It actually makes perfect sense that people's common views of myths basically originate from books they read as children and of movies they've watched on a Saturday night. I don't see any "shame" in this or think this is any less valid than, say, obsessing over Wolfram von Eschenbach.
This also means to me that there is more than a little self-deceptive irony to the very American obsession with finding the "real" Arthur or Robin Hood. There seems to be an animus to stylized, romanticized heroes, so there is this desperate need and huge industry towards finding some semi-mythical, grubby "Dark Age" Arthur. These "researchers" strip away what they perceive to be the romance and essentially either come up with nothing, or a warlord exactly like other warlords from the era, or some kind of strange anachronism-- they want the "real" Arthur, but given how indistinguishable this "real" Arthur they "find" is, they imbue him with characteristics of the romantic one to try to reconcile the two images. So you have movies like "Arthur" with a pseudo-Dark Age Arthur but his Sarmatian knights have French names. Or you have desperate attempts to find "Camelot" with candidates like the hill fort in Cadbury, and then arguments as to how a Dark Age palisaded enclosure on a mound somehow had qualities that resembled Camelot.
It's all irritating and silly and misunderstands-- in a way-- what legends do. The only reason these people are looking for "the real" legend is because they grew to love the romanticized legend in the first place. Yet I do understand that these new obsessions are just another manifestation of the continuous evolution of legends.
Basically, there is no "real" Arthur or Robin Hood or Achilles. Like all heroes, they're whoever we want them to be. I think this is fantastic.
