King of the Celts: Arthurian Legends and the Celtic Tradition Book

This is a difficult book to review, for it starts off promisingly with an insightful "cultural studies" angle about the impossibility of objectivity, the fluidity of language, and historical prejudices. Just the introduction alone preps the reader for what promises to be detailed romp through the cultural imprint of the Arthurian legends. Markale maintains that "history is epic presented in a supposedly objective way, while epic is history presented in a subjective way." With succinct lines like this, I was fully onboard, except that Markale will soon overstep responsible scholarship with wistful conclusions, some of it not grounded on anything more than the author's preference to see it so. This is why the humanities are in such trouble.

One notable example is Markale's assumption that Arthur must be the original hero to the story of the loathly lady, because it is Arthur who first undertakes the adventure. What? Where are the sources to indicate such an assumption. Based on such an assumption, I could equally surmise a myriad of substitutions in other tales, and Markale doesn't stop there as Arthur is also substituted as the hero in the tale of the Green Knight. Sidestepping altogether some associations between Gawain=Cuchulain, Arthur is inserted and even the loathly lady who gains her sovereignty becomes Guinevere, and it is here where I feel that Markale is pulling rabbits out of his own imagined Celtic hat. He goes on to strip medieval embellishments by adding his own.

Such wishful and lazy scholarship puts the rest of the book in doubt for me; it is almost as if the brilliant author had been suddenly possessed with the irresponsible syncretism that we often find in New Age books, and suddenly cut loose. This is a real pity since the book does explore some interesting terrain of Celtic conflicts, inner and outer, as well as provide a wonderful summa of the French Vulgate.

I will add this to my Arthurian bookshelf, not without some hesitation.