Portal:King Arthur/Selected article/3

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Camelot is the most famous fictional castle associated with the legendary King Arthur. Later romance depicts it as the fantastic capital of Arthur's realm, from which he fought many of the battles that made up his life. However, it is absent from the early material, and its location, if it even existed, is unknown. The name's derivation is also unknown, though it is similar enough to other Iron Age and Romano-British place names (such as Camulodunum) to suggest some historicity, though it would have little resemblance to its presentation in later literature.

After an archaeological dig at Windsor Castle in 2005, it was speculated that the large round building that was found could have been Camelot.

The castle is mentioned for the first time in Chrétien de Troyes' poem Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, dating to the 1170s. It is mentioned in passing, and is not described:

Upon a certain Ascension Day King Arthur had come from Caerleon, and had held a very magnificent court at Camelot as was fitting on such a day. (Vv. 31-32.)

Nothing in Chrétien's poem suggests the level of importance Camelot would have in later romances. For Chrétien, Arthur's chief court was in Caerleon in Wales; this was the king's primary base in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and most subsequent literature. It is not until the 13th century French prose romances, including the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, that Camelot began to supersede Caerleon, and even then, many descriptive details applied to Camelot derive from Geoffrey's earlier grand depiction of the Welsh town. In the 15th century Thomas Malory created the image of Camelot most familiar to English speakers in his Le Morte d'Arthur. He firmly identifies Camelot with Winchester, an identification that remained popular over the centuries, though it was rejected by Malory's own editor, William Caxton. Camelot is believed to be at the west coast of Wales. (read more . . . )