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missfolly:

Lancelot at the Chapel of the Holy Grail, 1896, by Edward Burne-Jones

(via lil-miss-banana)

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The Lady of the Lake

Merlin: Ah, you know, lad… that love business is a powerful thing.

Arthur: Greater than gravity?

Merlin: Well, yes, boy, in its way, I’d, uh- Yes, I’d say it’s the greatest force on Earth.

(via orgyincamelot)

Lady of the Lake

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internationaldateline:

Illustration from the 14th-century British manscript, The Rochefoucauld Grail.  In this image, a suicidal Lancelot is stopped from killing himself by another knight.

Last night while making a grocery run just after midnight, I heard a story on the BBC World news service about the Rochefoucauld Grail, the medieval manuscript which is up for auction at Sotheby’s.  This is one of the oldest accounts of the King Arthur legend, and is a large scale book painted on the skin of two hundred cows.  The pages are full of intricate gold work, and according to the commentator, the completion of this lavish and ornate book must have taken solid months of an entire crew of copists and artists working at full pace. 

The result is an priceless treasure, which the commentator said in its day would certainly be worth more than the two to three million dollars one can expect the piece to fetch.  These photos are from an article about the manuscript at the Mail Online.

Above: King Arthur fighting the Saxons

Below:Two knights fight to the death on horseback
Below: An illustrated page from the manuscript

(via medieval)

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Camelot illustration by Gustave Doré for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, 1868

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Looking for Avalon

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art-history-nerd:

The Meeting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, in “The Romance of Lancelot du Lac”

1370

(via medieval)

orgyincamelot:

Love, betrayal, incest, adultery, idealism, chivalry, sorcerers, knights, Christians, Pagans… it’s all right here. From the very beginning of its creation all the way to a modern feminist retelling, I’ve tried to collect an extensive history of the Arthurian legend. This is in no way a full account but it’s a good start.

De Excidio Brittonum by Gildas (~540) [PDF]

Historia Brittonum by Nennius (~8th Century) [PDF] [ePub]

The Mabinogion (~1100) [PDF] [ePub]

History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth (~1136) [PDF]

Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth (~1150) [PDF]

Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes (~1170)  [PDF] [ePub]

The High History of the Holy Graal (~1200) [PDF] [ePub]

The Romance of Morien (~1250) [PDF] [ePub]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (~1350)

• Translated by Jessie L. Weston [PDF]
• Translated by W. A. Neilson [PDF]

Le Morte Darthur by Thomas Malory (1485)

• Volume One [PDF] [ePub]
• Volume Two [PDF] [ePub]

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1856)  [PDF] [ePub]

The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights by James Knowles (1862) [PDF] [ePub]

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (1889) [PDF] [ePub]

The Tale of Balen by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1896) [PDF] [ePub]

The Story of the Champions of the Round Table by Howard Pyle (1905)  [PDF] [ePub]

The Once and Future King by TH White (1958) [PDF] [ePub]

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (1983) [PDF]

Related anthologies that have Arthurian legends in them:

Song and Legend from the Middle Ages [PDF] [ePub]

Legends of the Middle Ages [PDF] [ePub]

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic [PDF] [ePub]

English Literature for Boys and Girls [PDF] [ePub]

I’m also including The Romance of Tristan and Iseult [PDF] [ePub] While technically not an Arthurian legend, it has many of the same themes and the story of Lancelot and Guinevere has strong roots from this tale.