Name: アーサー王伝説に真実はあるのか？- アラン・ルパック (Is there any truth to the King Arthur legends? - Alan Lupack)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:54:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 43 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

関係詞節（制限と非制限）

“Here lies Arthur,  king who was, and king who will be.”

So reads the inscription  on King Arthur's gravestone

Malory couldn't have known how prophetic this inscription would turn out to be.

King Arthur has risen again  and again in our collective imagination,

But where do these stories come from, and is there any truth to them?

King Arthur as we know him  is a creation of the later Middle Ages,

but his legend actually has its roots  in Celtic poetry from an earlier time:

Saxon invaders from  what's now Germany and Denmark

quickly capitalized on the vulnerability  of the abandoned territory.

The inhabitants of Britain fought  fiercely against the invaders

There are hardly any written records  from this time,

so it's difficult to reconstruct  an accurate history.

However, surviving poetry from the era gives us some clues.

One of the poems, The Gododdin, contains the very first reference to Arthur,

though Arthur himself  doesn't actually appear in it.

It says a different warrior, named Gwawrddur,

was skilled at slaying his enemies,  but was no Arthur.

he must've been  the gold standard of warriors.

Whether he ruled anyone, or even lived  at all is, unfortunately, less clear.

references to Arthur caught  the attention of an aspiring historian

In 1130, Geoffrey of Monmouth  was a lowly cleric with grand ambitions.

he spent years creating  a lengthy chronicle

titled, "The History  of the Kings of Britain."

The centerpiece  of this tome was King Arthur.

History is a generous term  for Geoffrey's account.

Writing six hundred years after  the Saxon invasions,

he cobbled together fragments  of myth and poetry

to compensate for the almost  complete lack of official records.

A few of his sources contained  mentions of Arthur,

and some others were realistic accounts  of battles and places.

But many featured mythic heroes  fighting long odds

with the help of magical swords  and sorcery.

and a Roman fortress called Caerleon  appeared in his source material,

so Geoffrey's Arthur ruled from Caerleon and wielded Caliburnus,

Geoffrey even added a wise counselor named Merlin,

based on the Celtic bard Myrrdin,  to Arthur's story.

If Arthur did live, he would likely  have been a military leader,

but a castle-bound king better fit Geoffrey's regal history.

Geoffrey's chronicle got the attention  he'd hoped for,

and was soon translated from Latin into French

Wace added another centerpiece of Arthurian lore to Geoffrey's sword,

He wrote that Arthur  had the table constructed

so that all guests in his court  would be equally placed,

and none could boast that he had  the highest position at the table.

After reading Wace's translation,  another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes,

wrote a series of romances  that catapulted Arthur's story to fame.

He introduced tales of individual knights  like Lancelot and Gawain,

and mixed elements of romance  in with the adventures.

In addition to interpersonal intrigue, he also introduced the Holy Grail.

Chrétien probably based his Grail's powers on magical objects in Celtic mythology.

and others imposed the preoccupations  of the time on the Grail,

casting it as a powerful relic  from the crucifixion.

Numerous adaptations in French  and other languages

In the course of these retellings, Caerleon became Camelot,

and Caliburnus  was rechristened Excalibur.

Sir Thomas Malory synthesized  these stories in Le Morte D'arthur,

the basis of many modern accounts  of King Arthur.

In the thousand years since Arthur  first appeared in a Celtic poem,

to reflect the concerns of his chroniclers and their audiences.

And we're still rewriting  and adapting the legend today.

it's undeniable that the character  has achieved immortality.