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THOMAS GREEN, Concepts of Arthur. U.K.: Stroud, Glos., 2008. Pp. 282. isbn:13:978- 0752444611. £15.19.
Concepts of Arthur is that rare thing: a book that offers an original and refocused view of the nature of Arthur. Many Arthurian studies are based on the premise of Arthur as an historical figure who becomes increasingly mythologized over the centuries. Green argues the reverse case, that Arthur is originally a mythic personage deeply embedded in British consciousness as protector of the land, one who becomes historicized as early as Historia Brittonnum.
This approach is certainly more fruitful and engaging than the nihilistic refutation of Arthur's existence that has typified Arthurian studies of late. The loss of an historical Arthur may dismay many readers, but Green follows the mythic strands with intelligent and insightful care to reveal a potent figure whose appeal has never waned over the centuries.
He demonstrates that the Arthur-shaped hole that has so bothered Arthurian scholars and students as a bewildering lacuna in history, seems to have been backfilled by a possibly ninth-century conscription of the mythic Arthur to the British cause. By this period, British independence was relegated to the kingdoms of Wales and Strathclyde, circumscribed by the surrounding Saxon kingdoms. Arthur's appeal to the common struggle was orchestrated by a purposeful bardic and political agenda. Green shows that Arthur was not known as a defeater of Saxons within the indigenous Welsh material. Even in the most prophetic Welsh poem, the tenth-century Armes Prydein, in which the heroes of Britain are invoked to fight the English, Arthur is damningly absent. Arthur's appearances before the tenth-century show him as a mythic defeater of monsters and otherworldly invaders, a voyager into otherworldly realms, a killer of giant pigs, not as an historical defender of Britain. Many texts and stories even hint at his gigantesque stature, suggesting that he had more in common with Bran the Blessed from Branwen ferch Llyr. Green bids us see Arthur's Herculean antecedents, both as...