Reviews for The World of King Arthur

The average rating for The World of King Arthur based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-28 00:00:00 Thomas Ernlund This is an introductory text to the myths and legends of King Arthur. British history, mythology, and the literature of Arthurian legend are all presented here. It's well illustrated throughout. This is a good choice to read if you are curious about King Arthur but aren't really interested in reading deeply in medieval literature, which can be a bit bland for many modern readers.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-22 00:00:00 Deidre Ashton Well, this book was perfectly brilliant. The pictures in it were gorgeous, and I was pleasantly surprised at the number of color photos within it. The pages were thick, and the book itself of surprisingly high quality. Along with the photos were a good deal of primary source quotes, sometimes shown in the original language before the translation was provided which was also very gratifying. Some of the photos included were of the actual pages from the annals and lais, which were in such high resolution you could read the documents themselves. How cool is that? The book gave a really good overview of the evolution of the Arthurian legends, while also including a pretty thorough bibliography at the end. While the book is about a decade out of date now, a good deal of the sources referenced (for instance, translations and commentaries on Mallory) are still useful. Recent archaeological discoveries and the question of Arthur's historicity should not be looked for in this volume, as archaeology is constantly changing, but for the cultural importance of the Arthur myths evolution this book is a pretty fantastic starting place.