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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1197.htm">http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1197.htm</A></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I went on to the Engines website looking for
information on crowns and coronets. That turned up nothing, but I did run
across this. King Arthur. It's something of a decent bet to say the
SCA would not exist without the legends of Arthur. Why is that?
First off because they were period mythic stories in their own right.
Secondly, because Victorian Romanticism and to a great extent, the art images of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are deeply embedded with our
modern culture's beliefs concerning the Middle Ages. They in a real
sense 'created' many of our modern notions concerning the Middle Ages and
defined our conception of the mythic hero that Arthur has become.
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The Middle Ages in reality were brutal and
barbaric, full of death, disease, and filth, but the Victorians
romanticized it all with their literature and art.
Credit them first with the idea of 'the best of the Middle Ages'.
What survives in the collective psyche today is our idea that chivalry
and courtly behavior were gentle arts. In truth, chivalry and
knighthood was little more than a mechanism of sanctioned marshal law and
courtly behavior was what keep your head between your ears*.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Lancelot? Galahad? Guinevere?
Arthur? Nothing you see of them in any movie or book of modern time has
not gone through that Victorian filter. Arthurian legend has
become our idyllic standard of the modern hero myth. He and his knights,
their quests for good against evil, their humilities, and human failings
are woven indelibly into our culture and the SCA culture. Had not
Arthurian legend survived** to Victorian times and been
romanticized and re-revived there, its modern myth would not exist, our
heroes would be of a different sort, our notions of the Middle Ages would likely
be considerably different as well. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Modern SCAers? Who knows? Maybe we'd
be singing the Oodalali war song and riding spotted cows into battle,
their tails duct taped to the top of our head.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>regards,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>dsd</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>*ok, so toss some Shakespeare
and Chaucer, in there, but even they are Romanticizing it all.
Niceness and civil behavior didn't really emerge until the Renaissance when the
middle-class rose as a social force</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>**three sources: Chretien de Troyes (Lancelot
12th C.), Sir Thomas Malory (Le Morte D'arthur, 15th C.), & Geoffrey of
Monmouth (History of the Kindgs of Britain, about 1136) are our oldest
surviving written sources</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>