King Arthur’s Round Table

Author: Traditional

Time Period: 1001 CE–1500 CE

Country or Culture: England

Genre: Legend

PLOT SUMMARY

Folklorist Andrew Lang’s “How the Round Table Began” provides a brief history of King Arthur’s center of political and military power. This portion of Arthur’s legend begins with his marriage to Guinevere (Guenevere or Guenever), a princess of Cameliard, where her father, Leodegrance, is king. Arthur’s advisers have been urging him to marry, but he wants the magician Merlin’s input. When Merlin asks Arthur whether he has a favorite, Arthur claims Guinevere owns his heart. The magician cautions him about the “goodness” of the princess but acknowledges that the heart cannot be changed (25). Despite his poor opinion of the girl, Merlin goes to Guinevere’s father for consent. Her father is so pleased with the offer that he gives Arthur “the Round Table which Uther Pendragon gave me, where a hundred and fifty Knights can sit at one time” as a dowry. He also notes that he does not have enough knights to fill the table anyway.

King Arthur is thrilled with the combination of his queen and the Round Table, so he sends his trusted knight Lancelot to greet and retrieve his bride. It quickly becomes apparent that the Round Table holds 150 knights and that Arthur needs bodies to fill the spots, so he sends Merlin out to find “fifty of the bravest and most famous Knights that can be found throughout the land” (26). Fulfilling this quest is harder than expected, and Merlin returns with only twenty-eight. After being blessed by the bishop of Canterbury, the knights pledge Arthur their loyalty, and their names are carved into their chairs in gold to mark their places at the table.

The table begins to fill as additional men come to Arthur asking to become part of his entourage. His nephew Gawain (Gawaine) is the first, asking to be made a knight on Arthur’s wedding day. After Gawain, a poor cowherd asks a boon of Arthur. His son, Tor, wants to become a knight, and the poor man reminds the king that he has made a promise “that at the time of your marriage you would give any man the gift he should ask for” (27). Arthur immediately knights the boy, so with the addition of Gawain the day after, he has thirty knights. The founding of the Round Table ends with this addition to Arthur’s followers.

SIGNIFICANCE

The legend of King Arthur’s Round Table changes in minor ways depending on the version of the story; however, its symbolism remains consistent throughout the literature, and this version includes important irony and foreshadowing for the rest of the king’s story.

The Round Table is mentioned first in the version of Arthur’s story relayed by the Norman poet Wace in the early to middle part of the twelfth century. In Wace’s tale, Arthur’s warrior skills and his chivalrous qualities are clearly established before the creation of the Round Table, drawing knights. As scholar Alan Lupack contends, Wace brings the Round Table in to illustrate Arthur’s desire to provide his companions with a sense of equality. Wace’s version of the table’s origin, which claims that Arthur had the table made, contradicts the origin presented in many other forms of the tale, in which Merlin originally creates the table for Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, who then passes the table to Guinevere’s father, and Leodegrance gives it to Arthur as Guinevere’s dowry.

There is also some discrepancy regarding how many knights the table holds. One idea is that the Round Table reflects Joseph of Arimathea’s Grail table and the one used for the Last Supper, which creates a direct tie to the quest for the Holy Grail. In the variants based on this concept, the table holds fifty or fifty-two, including a spare seat either for the Grail winner or to represent the one occupied by the traitorous disciple Judas. Later tales increase the number of knights at the table, ranging from 140 knights up to 250. Regardless, the larger the number, the more difficult the table is to fill. Merlin’s ability to find only twenty-eight worthy men in this account is a clear illustration of the problem.

Regardless of its origins or how many knights it holds, the Round Table is particularly important in Arthurian legend for the wide range of symbolic meanings that it represents. The chivalry of the knights is the most obvious ideal symbolized by the Round Table. The group of men associated with Arthur as seen as “uncorrupted and incorruptible” (Finke and Shichtman 179). A second meaning assigned to the Round Table is the political symbol of a developing kingdom with a reach to the world, as seen in the circular shape being representative of the earth. A more specific connection is imputed to Galahad in John Hardyng’s version. In the book King Arthur and the Myth of History, Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman suggest that the Round Table is “the material embodiment of the principles of genealogy” that then sets up Galahad’s worth as a knight (155).

The story of the Round Table told in this version also provides irony and foreshadowing. First, there is the question of the table’s connection to Guinevere. When Arthur tells Merlin whom he wants to marry, Merlin indicates that he would prefer to find a better woman. Her own father even comments that he is surprised that a man of such lofty position would be interested in his daughter. These foreshadowing clues provide a hint about Guinevere’s later indiscretions. In addition, Leodegrance’s comment in this story that he does not have enough knights to fill the table anyway is further evidence of irony, suggesting that the table, a bride gift, is another undesirable burden that he will gladly unload on his unsuspecting son-in-law. Next, Arthur’s early trust in Lancelot is also ironic, considering he sends the knight who will eventually betray him to escort his future wife. Finally, Arthur sends Merlin out to find fifty knights, but the magician is only able to find twenty-eight. Despite Arthur’s request for “the bravest and most famous Knights,” he ends up initiating Tor, the unknown son of a “poor man.”

The story of King Arthur’s Round Table is just one small piece of the whole legend, but it is important in the way it establishes the reputation of Arthur’s knights, in its introduction to Arthur’s queen, and in its ironic foreshadowing of events that occur later in the literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Finke, Laurie A., and Martin B. Shichtman. King Arthur and the Myth of History. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2004. Print.

Kennedy, Edward Donald, ed. King Arthur: A Casebook. New York: Garland, 1996. Print.

Lacy, Norris J., Geoffrey Ashe, and Debra N. Mancoff. The Arthurian Handbook. 2nd ed. New York: Garland, 1997. Print.

Lang, Andrew, ed. “How the Round Table Began.” King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table. London: Longmans, 1902. 25–28. Print.

Lupack, Alan. The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

White, Richard, ed. King Arthur in Legend and History. New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.