{"product_id":"2940012881854","title":"King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table","description":"INTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKing Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table! What magic is in the\u003cbr\u003ewords! How they carry us straight to the days of chivalry, to the\u003cbr\u003ewitchcraft of Merlin, to the wonderful deeds of Lancelot and Perceval\u003cbr\u003eand Galahad, to the Quest for the Holy Grail, to all that \"glorious\u003cbr\u003ecompany, the flower of men,\" as Tennyson has called the king and his\u003cbr\u003ecompanions! Down through the ages the stories have come to us, one of\u003cbr\u003ethe few great romances which, like the tales of Homer, are as fresh and\u003cbr\u003evivid to-day as when men first recited them in court and camp and\u003cbr\u003ecottage. Other great kings and paladins are lost in the dim shadows of\u003cbr\u003elong-past centuries, but Arthur still reigns in Camelot and his knights\u003cbr\u003estill ride forth to seek the Grail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e                        \"No little thing shall be\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The gentle music of the bygone years,\u003cbr\u003e    Long past to us with all their hopes and fears.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo wrote the poet William Morris in _The Earthly Paradise_. And surely\u003cbr\u003eit is no small debt of gratitude we owe the troubadours and chroniclers\u003cbr\u003eand poets who through many centuries have sung of Arthur and his\u003cbr\u003echampions, each adding to the song the gifts of his own imagination, so\u003cbr\u003ebuilding from simple folk-tales one of the most magnificent and moving\u003cbr\u003estories in all literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis debt perhaps we owe in greatest measure to three men; to Chrétien\u003cbr\u003ede Troies, a Frenchman, who in the twelfth century put many of the old\u003cbr\u003eArthurian legends into verse; to Sir Thomas Malory, who first wrote out\u003cbr\u003emost of the stories in English prose, and whose book, the _Morte\u003cbr\u003eDarthur_, was printed by William Caxton, the first English printer, in\u003cbr\u003e1485; and to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in his series of poems entitled\u003cbr\u003ethe _Idylls of the King_ retold the legends in new and beautiful guise\u003cbr\u003ein the nineteenth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe history of Arthur is so shrouded in the mists of early England that\u003cbr\u003eit is difficult to tell exactly who and what he was. There probably was\u003cbr\u003ean actual Arthur, who lived in the island of Britain in the sixth\u003cbr\u003ecentury, but probably he was not a king nor even a prince. It seems most\u003cbr\u003elikely that he was a chieftain who led his countrymen to victory against\u003cbr\u003ethe invading English about the year 500. So proud were his countrymen of\u003cbr\u003ehis victories that they began to invent imaginary stories of his prowess\u003cbr\u003eto add to the fame of their hero, just as among all peoples legends soon\u003cbr\u003espring up about the name of a great leader. As each man told the feats\u003cbr\u003eof Arthur he contributed those details that appealed most to his own\u003cbr\u003efancy and each was apt to think of the hero as a man of his own time,\u003cbr\u003edressing and speaking and living as his own kings and princes did, with\u003cbr\u003ethe result that when we come to the twelfth century we find Geoffrey of\u003cbr\u003eMonmouth, in his _History of the Kings of Britain_, describing Arthur\u003cbr\u003eno longer as a half-barbarous Briton, wearing rude armor, his arms and\u003cbr\u003elegs bare, but instead as a most Christian king, the flower of mediæval\u003cbr\u003echivalry, decked out in all the gorgeous trappings of a knight of the\u003cbr\u003eCrusades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the story of Arthur grew it attracted to itself popular legends of\u003cbr\u003eall kinds. Its roots were in Britain and the chief threads in its fabric\u003cbr\u003eremained British-Celtic. The next most important threads were those that\u003cbr\u003ewere added by the Celtic chroniclers of Ireland. Then stories that were\u003cbr\u003enot Celtic at all were woven into the legend, some from Germanic\u003cbr\u003esources, which the Saxons or the descendants of the Franks may have\u003cbr\u003econtributed, and others that came from the Orient, which may have been\u003cbr\u003ebrought back from the East by men returning from the Crusades. And if it\u003cbr\u003ewas the Celts who gave us the most of the material for the stories of\u003cbr\u003eArthur it was the French poets who first wrote out the stories and gave\u003cbr\u003ethem enduring form.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was the Frenchman, Chrétien de Troies, who lived at the courts of\u003cbr\u003eChampagne and of Flanders, who put the old legends into verse for the\u003cbr\u003epleasure of the noble lords and ladies that were his patrons. He\u003cbr\u003ecomposed six Arthurian poems. The first, which was written about 1160 or\u003cbr\u003eearlier, related the story of Tristram. The next was called _Érec et\u003cbr\u003eÉnide_, and told some of the adventures that were later used by Tennyson\u003cbr\u003ein his _Geraint and Enid_. The third was _Cligès_, a poem that has\u003cbr\u003elittle to do with the stories of Arthur and his knights as we have\u003cbr\u003ethem. Next came the _Conte de la Charrette_, or _Le Chevalier de la\u003cbr\u003eCharrette_, which set forth the love of Lancelot and Guinevere. Then\u003cbr\u003efollowed _Yvain_, or _Le Chevalier au Lion_, and finally came\u003cbr\u003e_Perceval_, or _Le Conte du Graal_, which gives the first account of the\u003cbr\u003eHoly Grail.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47081865412848,"sku":"2940012881854","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012881854_p0.jpg?v=1763573566","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012881854","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}