Rise And Fall Of The‘Historical Image’ Arthur In The Middle Ages

King Arthur is one of the most popular and worshiped monarch in Europe. Though he isnowadays considered as a character in the literature, but in the middle ages Arthur was therepresentative of the English nation, the legitimate origin of the royalty, and the symbol ofperfect monarchs with cavalier spirit in the Christian Ages. The period of his monarch wasthought to be a golden time comparable to the Eden time.The character of Arthur appeared in the Welsh poetry for the first time in the six century.Then the Wales monk scholars in the early and central middle ages composed his historicalrecords. After the Norman conquest, the Anglo-Norman historians reedited Arthur’s storiesand made him believed and recognized as a really existed Emperor who has ruled the GreatBritain and even Europe. The historians and literary writers continuously endowed Arthurwith more virtues and glories, and with the growing kingship they finally made a perfectfeudal emperor out of him.Later, with the impact of Renaissance and the republican thoughts, the image of Arthurfor the middle ages was queried by the historians of the new epochs. Along with thedeepening research on the Anglo-Saxon history and the integration of the British nation, theimage of King Arthur created in the middle ages was gradually reversed and turned back to aliterature character.The transform of the image of King Arthur in the middle ages is inseparable with thepolitical activities and the national and cultural changes in the Great Britain and even inEurope, and it is also a epitome of that epoch. A study on the changes of King Arthur’s imagewill be much helpful to understand the influence of the historical development on themedieval Europe, especially on Britain.