Avalon: Simulacra and Fictional Facts

Abstract

The voyage of the dying Arthur to the Isle of Avalon is perhaps the best illustration of the mutability of a single motif developed continually from the twelfth century into the renaissance and beyond. It was employed by chroniclers, historians, court poets, and writers of popular romances. It found its way into both Latin and the vernacular languages, emerged in both verse and prose, and existed, as there is strong evidence to suggest, in an oral tradition that predated and ran alongside these written texts. The quotation from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie occupies a position of foremost importance not only because it is the first written account of Arthur’s voyage to Avalon, edging the boundary between oral and textual traditions, but more importantly because it proved to be extremely influential on the development of the Avalon motif in the centuries to follow. It is with this description, composed around 1138, that Geoffrey ends the life of Arthur in his narrative of British history from the destruction of Troy to the death of Cadwallader in AD 689. The Historiareaches its apex in its depiction of Arthur’s life, and, perhaps because of this, it emerges as a twelfth-century equivalent of an instant bestseller.KeywordsActual WorldTwelfth CenturyHistorical TextBritish HistoryFictional TextThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.