I'm not in the mood for talking much today... I just want to listen to what some other people think.
Some of you may be familiar with Norma Goodrich's work. I am not, but I did read her book King Arthur wherein she essentially claims that linguistic work will lead you to the conclusion that Geoffery of Monmouth's documents are pretty much historical and that much of "Arthurian Legend" is, in fact, early British history.
I gather from Wikipedia that her work was not well received by scholars, but not why. I am curious as to whether anyone here has thoughts on this. My onw opinion is that, whatever else, she has definitely pegged the origin of Lancelot.
Lancelot first appears in French versions of the story, supposedly. Goodrich, however, maintains that Geoffery of Monmouth's King Anguselus is Lancelot. King Anguselus is identified as being over lands to the North. Now, Scots designate their clan chieftans by calling them "The 'whatever'" (as in "Robert, The Bruce"). Now "Angus" is a Scot clan that would be Romanized as "Anguselus"... and King Anguselus would therefore be "The Angus".
Now, when moved to French, Latin words, Goodrich maintains, drop the hard "g" syllables and (IIRC) sometimes replace "us" with "o". Thus King Anguselus becomes King Anselus or King Anselo. Then if we use the Scot form of his title he becomes Le Anselo or "L'ancelot".
So, anyhow. Dicuss... particularly if you have knowledge of why Goodrich's work is generally dissed, because, to a layman, while she wanders a lot and is a very difficult read because of it, her work makes a lot of sense-- assuming, of course, that her linguistic knowledge is solid.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
*crickets*
Well I found it interesting, anyhow. I can't really "recommend" the reading because it's very poorly organized and can be quite confusing at times, but her case seems to make very good sense to me, once I've sorted out exactly what she's trying to say.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Mmm. It seems to me that if you are allowed to play this amount of linguistic games, you could make almost any name come out as Lancelot, or indeed Hitler, much like numerologists like to make 666 out of random people's names.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
And, by the way, she appears to be projecting a habit of Scots in a way later era onto people who were not yet Scottish in the 600s. Since the invasions from Ireland that eventually became the modern ethnic group and kingdom of Scotland didn't actually take place until roughly the 800s, she is in fact projecting it onto a completely different language group, which is reported to us through the linguistic lenses of yet a third language! By the time you're done with all that, you could quite easily make out all of Arthur to be talking about the settlement of Iceland!
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
Well, she actually maintains that the people in the area at the time were the ones who are now the Welsh... and she had reasons for that. I think her suggestion was also that the habit of referring to him that way might well have been added on by the French writers who were familiar with the Scot method, more than that he was actually titled that way and then improperly labeled "king" by Geoffery.
I'm doing a lot poorer method of describing it here... she actually makes a pretty good case.
But thanks... I'm glad to see where some weak points in her case may lie.
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
"The Angus?" Must've been a cattle man.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:I think her suggestion was also that the habit of referring to him that way might well have been added on by the French writers who were familiar with the Scot method, more than that he was actually titled that way and then improperly labeled "king" by Geoffery.
Adding yet a fourth language to the reconstruction! Sheesh.