Imaginary Worlds - Camelot Forever

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

The myth of Camelot runs deep in our culture. For over a thousand years, storytellers have felt compelled to tell the tale of King Arthur and add their own spin on the mythical legend. But we live in pretty cynical times where the idea of a wise and noble king feels like just as much of a fantasy as a boy pulling a magical sword from a stone. So why does the character of Arthur still endure? I talk with Arthurian scholars Martha Bayless, Elizabeth Archibald and Ingrid Nelson about why we can never forget that for one brief shining moment, there was a Camelot – even if there probably never was a Camelot. Today's episode is brought to you by Faraway Stories from Amazon, and BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. When the lockdown began last March, I was desperate to delve into the most pleasant escapist fantasy world that I could think of. And I found that place in Camelot. You probably know the story or elements of it. As a boy, Arthur is tutored by the wizard

Merlin, and then Arthur pulls a sword out of a stone, which proves that he is going to be king. At Camelot, Arthur creates a round table of knights, including Lancelot, who has an affair with the queen, Guinevere, and the knights go on a quest to find the Holy Grail. It's all very glorious. Until the end. And I hadn't actually read any Arthurian tales since I was a kid. But I did grow up in Massachusetts, where the myth of the Kennedy administration as Camelot is still alive and well. In fact, I was surprised to learn recently that the word Camelot is still alive and well. In fact, I was surprised to learn recently that the word Camelot was not associated with JFK in his lifetime. It was actually something that Jackie said to a reporter after her husband had died, because Kennedy loved the musical Camelot.

Natalie Portman actually played out that scene in the movie Jackie. And that last song, that last side of Camelot is all that keeps running through my mind. Don't let it be forgot that for one brief shining moment, there was a Camelot. Ingrid Nelson teaches Arthurian literature at Amherst College. She says Kennedy was not the first leader who was tied to Camelot. In fact, almost 700 years ago, Edward III did everything he could to associate himself with King Arthur. In the 14th century, Edward III actually claims to find Arthur's lost castle. And he's instrumental in creating a culture in his court that is very much modeled on Arthurianism. He revives or revives slash creates a knightly order called the Order of the Garter, in which his courtiers are

encouraged to do certain kinds of chivalric acts. They take up jousting. He stages jousts. I've been thinking about the nostalgic myth of Camelot because we're about to start a new administration in the United States. I don't think anyone's imagining we're about to create a new Camelot, although some people did think that when Obama was inaugurated in 2009. But with the vaccine coming,

there is a new sense of hope for this year. And where I live in New York, we're actually going to choose a new mayor. The local economy has cratered during the pandemic, but there is hope that we can start to rebuild this year and maybe even reimagine parts of the city without making the same mistakes of the past. Which has made me wonder, why does Camelot always fall? Why does a kingdom built on high hopes and ideals always end in tragedy? And why does

every generation feel the need to reinvent the myth of Camelot? As I talked with Arthurian scholars, I discovered that the answer to those questions lie in the character of Arthur and why he has endured for so long. You always hear people saying, did Arthur really exist? But nobody says, did Lancelot really exist or did Guinevere really exist? Martha Bayliss teaches medieval studies at the University of Oregon. And of course, the standard scholarly response to was Arthur real is, I'm sorry, but, you know, he's just a legend.

And if he was real, the real Arthur was so different from the Arthur from our stories that it's really not the same person. are stories that it's really not the same person. The amazing thing about the Arthurian legends is that there is no one single author. Over the centuries, each writer who retold the tale added something new. And if that new element was popular, it just became part of the story. In the earliest folktales from over a thousand years ago, Arthur was the first leader to emerge after the Roman Empire had collapsed. He fought off the Saxon invaders and united Britain. In some stories, Arthur actually turned it around and conquered Europe. The wise and noble King

Arthur that we're used to came about in the 12th century, when there was more of a focus on chivalry over conquest. Again, Ingrid Nelson. There is a deep struggle with ethical behavior in the Arthurian tradition. And that's something actually that medieval literature does very well, is ask questions about ethics. They've really set a template for that because it was so central

to Western European culture in the Middle Ages, where those questions of ethics, now they were often framed in a Christian context. Martha says Arthur became the embodiment of those values. He just sort of leads because he's imbued with certain qualities that people always look up to. And it's sort of a fantasy leader, I think, a leader who we know we can trust. Nothing's going to come up in his past about like, did he vote weirdly on a bill or did he do something weird in college that's going to turn out to be scandalous or something. You mean like having sex with his half-sister? Well, I mean, he was tricked into that. I mean, I don't think we can blame that on him.

If you're not familiar with the legend, in many versions of the story, Arthur's half-sister, the evil witch Morgan Le Fay, uses magic to trick him into fathering their illegitimate child, Mordred, who grows up to eventually take down his father-slash-uncle. But why is magic part of the story anyway? I mean, you could easily tell the tale of Arthur in a more realistic setting. Elizabeth Archibald is an Arthurian scholar at the University of Durham in the UK, and she says the early folktales about Arthur were even more fantastical than the ones we're

familiar with. He's more of a kind of legendary hero who does things like going to the underworld with a boat full of warriors to rescue someone from a glass tower. He has those sorts of adventures which are more like folklore or more like classical hero stories. In fact, the character of Merlin had already been established in other legends around the same time, and medieval readers loved the fact that Arthur and Merlin's storylines eventually crossed over into a single narrative. And this is a time when the British monarchy was first being solidified, and the establishment needed a reason to explain why one person should be king. Adding a character like Merlin helped to seal the deal. The good side of being associated with a magician is it's glamorous. It marks you out as a special kind of king. You've got these

magical powers on your side, helping you, bringing you into birth in the case of Arthur, your side, helping you, bringing you into birth in the case of Arthur and supporting you in various ways. So that is prestigious in one sense. You just can't allow it to be too overshadowing that you go through your whole reign and your whole career always leaning on a magician who makes everything come right. I think you do need to get rid of him at a certain point so that the king can make his own mistakes or have his own triumphs, be his own person, and not be succeeding entirely through magic, which obviously has both a good and a bad side. It could be interpreted as slightly worrying in an age when magic has an ambiguous status. What do you mean by that, that magic has an ambiguous status? You mean back in the Middle

Ages? Well, in a Christian world, magic is obviously problematic. Ah, right. So, you know, having the greatest Christian king succeeding in certain respects through the magic of a wizard is problematic. As I mentioned in my 2018 episode about fairy folklore, it took a while for the British Isles to be fully Christianized, and pagan beliefs held on for a long time. And that's where some writers used Morgan Le Fay to show that pagan magic is a double-edged sword. It can be used for good or evil, unlike the divine power of God.

Another reason why the Arthurian legends have been so popular and so durable is because they are what we would call today an expanded universe. You can have an Avenger-style story with all the big heroes or tell a story about two knights from the round table and Arthur just makes a cameo.

The wild thing is it's been that way for 1,400 years. Again, Martha Bayliss. Even in the very early centuries, if you had a hero, you would put him at Arthur's court. I mean, he might have started out in a completely different story, but people would say,

how big a hero can he be if he's not, if he wasn't at Arthur's court? So Arthur's court kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger in the stories. And then you'd have spinoff stories and spinoffs of the spinoffs. And, you know, everybody would be stories and spinoffs of the spinoffs. And, you know, everybody would be tangentially connected to Arthur in some way.

Elizabeth agrees. It's very much the same as some modern series, like, for instance, Star Trek, where people's long lost fathers or brothers can turn up from some other planet. There's another interesting parallel with Star Trek, which I used to talk about to my students when I was teaching in Canada and at a phase when I was watching a lot of Star Trek in the Patrick Stewart era, that whereas Captain Kirk in the early series was the hero and used to go off on the expeditions, go to other planets, battle monsters, possibly have love entanglements, Captain Picard much more stays on the ship. And that's rather like the way that the Arthurian legend changes, so that although the captain or the king is still central and important, he's not necessarily having the adventures himself.

I had a whole series of theories in which Q was Morgan Le Fay, and one could make various other parallels. Riker was a sort of slightly feeble Lancelot. It all worked very neatly. Now, Arthur was not consistently popular in every century. In fact, he spent a long time in the cultural wilderness during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, when a lot of people saw Camelot as a simplistic fairy tale from olden days. And Elizabeth says that Arthur did not really make a comeback until the mid-19th century with the poet Alfred Tennyson.

Who is very much thinking about the British Empire and the way it operates and presents his Arthur as having a sort of grand design. But I wouldn't say that in many versions till probably the 19th and 20th century, we get much evidence on actually how he runs the kingdom. That's not really what it's about. The world of chivalry isn't practical in that sense, although justice certainly, generally speaking, is an idea, but justice for the rich, not justice for peasants. We don't hear about ordinary people in Arthur's kingdom. We hear about knights. And certainly, as I say, Tennyson, because he's interested in the empire, because he dedicates his great Arthurian poem to the memory of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's recently dead husband. That's much more linking it to how people might actually rule in the present day. Each of these Arthurian writers inspire the next generation, until you

had T.H. White's book, The Once and Future King, which was the basis of the Broadway musical Camelot that became associated with the Kennedy administration. Now, by the mid-20th century, the British empire was fading, but this was a time when American historians came up with a term, the imperial presidency, to describe the growing power around the executive branch. So in America, the myth of a leader who is incorruptible, combining absolute power with absolute goodness, was very appealing. Camelot is often presented as a perfectly designed system of government, according to the values of whatever time the story is told. And whenever I read a very compelling version of King Arthur, I have the same experience as when I watch a great

production of Romeo and Juliet. I'm so caught up in the story that a part of me is actually wishing, irrationally, that maybe this time they'll figure it out. Maybe this version will somehow have a happy ending. But there's something so human about the way that it all goes wrong, unpredictably, because of people's loves and hates and relationships and family bonds and jealousies. It's tremendously human that these aspirations to an idealized world just don't work out in the end for all kinds of reasons to do with human nature. And I think that's still a hugely appealing concept. do with human nature. And I think that's still a hugely appealing concept. The version that I'm most fond of, which is Mallory, the late medieval English version, which has been hugely influential on the Anglo-Saxon tradition, makes it very clear that there's a multiplicity of possible causes of the collapse. So in Mallory's version, and in some of the French versions, there's a moment when Arthur and Mordred are on the battlefield, and they discuss a truce, and they arrange it. And then suddenly, a soldier sees, just an ordinary soldier, unnamed, sees a snake on the battlefield and draws his sword to kill it. And everybody else thinks this is the beginning of an attack, and they all start

fighting, and that's the final battle. That's so interesting. I love that detail about the snake. It just, it feels strangely realistic. It feels strangely, I don't know, it just adds to the tragedy of it all, the randomness of it all. Yes. And the sense that it could perhaps have been avoided, even though, given that when Mordred is conceived, Merlin says to Arthur, you've done a terrible thing and this child is going to destroy you and your kingdom. And this is probably an interesting reflection of the medieval interest in free will and providence. So from one point of view, God knows everything. He knows what's going to happen. But from another point of view, you make the decision that makes it happen. So he's not controlling your decision. He simply knows how it's going to turn out. And in a way, that's what we see, I think, in many versions of the Arthurian legend. The end is inevitable, but the question is, how exactly does it come about? And which

characters does the writer make more responsible for what happens? I asked Martha Bayliss, if Arthur has a fatal flaw, what would that be? I asked Martha Bayliss if Arthur has a fatal flaw, what would that be? Well, it's interesting that he's not conquered by someone from abroad. It's always someone that he trusts, someone that he should be able to trust, an intimate associate. And it's interesting to think about why that is. It's almost as if he's too good to be suspicious of what might be going on in his kingdom. I mean, it's not a fatal flaw because I think being excessively good isn't something that we have to worry about much in the real world. But if he has sort of Achilles heel, it's trusting

everyone around him. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. In a way, that's the saddest part of Arthur is that as much as we fantasize about having a leader that good, you's a really interesting point. In a way, that's the saddest part of Arthur is that, you know, as much as we fantasize about having a leader that good, you need a little bit of that darkness to survive. Another problem is that he doesn't have an heir. It's one of the, you know, there was some people earlier in the 20th century who made up a sort of list of heroic attributes that occur again and again in stories of great heroes. One of them is that they don't have an obvious heir. But you think that that's actually part of what makes him a legendary figure, a mysterious figure, is that he doesn't have an heir, that that's actually not a,

that's a feature, not a bug? It's a feature as far as making him illustrious, because if he had, you know, an obvious heir, then it sort of takes away from him being in the limelight like well what about his son what did his son do was his son good you know but we don't think about any of those things it's like it's just on Arthur and then it stops it's usually implied at the end of the story that England falls back into the dark ages because there's no one left to carry on Arthur's vision. But Elizabeth says a big part of Arthur's appeal is the belief that he will rise again. In some versions of the story, after his final defeat in battle,

he is whisked away to Avalon, where he might be revived with magic. So we know, for instance, that in the 11th century, some Frenchmen were visiting Cornwall and they apparently said rather loudly and publicly that they didn't think Arthur was going to come back. And there was a riot and people were killed. And the notion of Arthur, I was very struck by the final lines of the poem, where the one surviving knight watches the ship carrying Arthur to be healed, disappearing over the horizon to who knows where. And it's actually very reminiscent of the end of Tolkien, the last ship sailing from the Grey Havens. You can see that Tolkien probably took from Tennyson that notion of the ship sailing off to someone hopes other better world where people will be healed who've been damaged in some way. Up in the north of England where I live there is that the wall that the Romans built, Hadrian's

Wall, and one of the many places that Arthur is supposed to be asleep is in a cave under Hadrian's Wall where it is said that a shepherd came across him and his knights a hundred years ago and was too scared to wake them up and went away. But the theory is that they're waiting till England needs them and then they'll come back. I rather feel that might be now, but he hasn't come back yet. So where does Arthur fit in the 21st century? We'll go on a quest to find that grail after the break. Like a lot of kids, my first introduction to the character of Arthur was the Disney cartoon The Sword in the Stone. And over the last 100 years, there have been more movies and TV shows

about Arthur than I could possibly count. But they've had very mixed success. Martha has a theory why. One of the problems is that you can't copyright him. And so no big, you know, entertainment conglomerate is eager to kind of make a big splash with Arthur because somebody else could do the same thing. You know, they want to invent things that they can kind of have the monopoly on. And how to do it in a new way that's not too much of a departure is a big question. You know, about every 10 years, somebody comes out with an Arthur movie and they're generally pretty terrible. It's amazing that no single actor has been able to define the role. I mean, think of Robin Hood. The first thing that pops into my mind is Errol Flynn, and every other Robin Hood was compared to him. No actor has been able to really define Arthur. Strangely enough, the most iconic cinematic version of him was a farce.

We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. What, ridden on a horse? Yes. You're using coconuts. What? You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're banging them together. In talking with all these Arthurian scholars, I was very surprised to learn that they all love Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Oh, it has enormous respect. I mean, for one thing, they did an immense amount of research. And I talked to Eric Idle once, and he told me how much research they had done. And of course, Terry Jones, who was one of the pythons, was kind of a medievalist in his spare time and gave medieval talks and wrote a book on Chaucer and everything. So they were very serious about it. And the jokes go all the way down. I didn't realize that.

There are what we call Easter eggs in there for Arthurian scholars. Right. I mean, a lot of Arthurian scholars can basically repeat all the dialogue by heart. And that includes Ingrid Nelson, who teaches the movie in her college courses. She says it is no coincidence that Monty Python and the Holy Grail came out in 1975, the same year that Margaret Thatcher became the head of the Conservative Party and was queued up to be the next prime minister. In a time when Britain seems to be coalescing around a new system of government, but it's also one that's leaving people out. And so Arthur offers a way to express that, a form of commentary.

But what's so fascinating about it is that it's quite nihilistic about all forms of government. So on the one hand, while you have Arthur, this sort of glorious central monarch, you also have the famous scene with Dennis the Peasant, who is part of an autonomous collective. I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. Yes. But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at

a special bi-weekly meeting. Yes, I see. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs. Be quiet. But by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major... Be quiet. I order you to be quiet. Order? Who does he think he is? I'm your king. Well, I didn't vote for you. You don't vote for kings. Well, how do you become king, then?

The lady of the lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering semite, held a loft excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I'm your king. Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. But we're not necessarily thinking that the peasants in their proto-communist society have a more ideal system of government. Every system of government in that movie is made laughable. Arthur and his knights arrive at Camelot, actually in the early part of the movie.

Camelot! And you cut away to this musical scene in Camelot where the knights are all dancing on the tables. On second thoughts, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place. So Camelot itself, which is supposed to be this glorious center of culture, is just, you know, a bunch of sort of idiotic, you know, dancing men. These days, I think the most interesting Arthurian legends are coming from writers

who want to go around Arthur and explore the side characters. The Merlin TV show is pretty popular, and many novelists have been inspired by Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1983 book, The Myths of Avalon, which presented Morgan Le Fay as a misunderstood antihero. And when Arthur does come up in these novels, his portrayal is sometimes even more damning than Monty Python. Ingrid was fascinated by a 2015 novel called The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro, which takes place after the fall of Arthur. The peasants seem to remember Arthur as a great hero, but we learn that a spell has been cast on them so that everyone has forgotten the war crimes that Arthur committed. And in that novel, Arthur

is actually a figure who started a genocide. It emerges in the novel that that was how Arthur subdued the Saxons. On a lighter note, Elizabeth Archibald likes to teach a 2007 novel called Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reif. In which Arthur is a deeply unpleasant, thuggish, minor warlord. And Merlin is an amazing spin doctor. And he takes rather banal things that Arthur does and spins them into the stories we know from the Middle Ages and says, that's what people want to hear. And you rather wonder, is that really how the story began? It's a very clever take on the whole legend.

Clearly, we live in cynical times when the idea of a wise and noble king feels like a fantasy that's too good to be true. But Martha thinks the longevity of Arthur never really had much to do with him as a character. It was more about us and our deepest desires for a leader to believe in. Yeah, that sort of do we dare to hope feeling that it is very inspiring. And I've been around some politicians, you know, when you see some politicians speak, you can see how they galvanize people like that, where when they're speaking, you're like, yes, it is possible. We can do it. Oh, great. And then you go home and you're like, oh, yeah, what is it likely,

and do it. Oh, great. And then you go home and you're like, oh, yeah, but is it likely? But at the time, you just feel so great. You feel like those things are possible that we really want. I mean, no wonder that's an appealing emotion. I think Arthur will rise again as a popular hero in some form or another, because after a thousand years of Arthurian legends, it's clearly human nature for people to believe in him. Voltaire once famously said, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. And I think the same could be said about Arthur. Each evening from December to December, before you drift to sleep upon your cot Think back on all the tales that you remember

of Camelot Ask every person if he's heard the story and Tell it strong and clear if he has not. That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory called Camelot. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Elizabeth Archibald, Ingrid Nelson, and Martha Bayliss, who says, there is a secret among Arthurian scholars. Some of them believe that they are the reincarnation of Arthur. Like, for real. You know, it's pretty clear

if you quote somebody or other, somebody will say, well, you know, he actually thinks he's Arthur. And you say, no. And they say well you know he actually thinks he's Arthur and you say no and he say yeah he's another one these people who give talks and you ask them you know what's your evidence for this and he says well I just know it from experience you're like oh okay I got it you know so it is a thing that happens. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman.

And obviously there are five bazillion versions of Arthur that I didn't mention. Tell me what are some of your favorites. On the show's Facebook page, I tweet at Emalinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. If you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or do a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover imaginary worlds. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you'd get either free imaginary world stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has a full length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can learn more at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.