King Arthur

Camelot tetralogy

by Norma Lorre Goodrich

The many readers who are enthralled with the enduring legend of Camelot will be drawn to this fascinating book, which "may become the definitive work in the effort to prove the historical authenticity of King Arthur."-- UPI

Genres: History, Arthurian, Nonfiction, Mythology, Classics, Medieval, Historical

416 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1986

About the author

Norma Lorre Goodrich, a prolific author, was an Arthurian scholar known for her unconventional theory that King Arthur was Scottish -not English or Welsh. She was a professor of comparative literature and writing for many years at the University of Southern California and the Claremont Colleges.

Reviews

[Arieltsmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Norma Lorre Goodrich’s main pursuit in “King Arthur” is to uphold the historicity of Arthur the man, as well as to identify the true localities of his kingdom. Traditionally, Arthur’s seat has been placed in southern England, but Goodrich builds an extremely compelling case for putting Arthur’s realm in southern Scotland and North Umbria. If you find ancient British place names magical, as I do, much of the drama of this book will come from Goodrich’s efforts to unlock the landscape of the King Arthur legends by combing through the medieval and renaissance iterations of these stories. Goodrich academically teases apart the extant King Arthur manuscripts to build her case, and just when things begin to become just a little too dry, she injects a whiff of Arthurian enchantment into her analyses. Examples of some of the details I found particularly exciting included:

• Lancelot’s name is most likely a frenchified phonetic translation of Anguselus, who was a Scottish king and blood relative of Arthur
• Guinevere is the ancient version of Jennifer, and Guinevere was probably actually named Guinhumara and was a fiercely bellicose Pictish queen with her own standing army separate from Arthur’s

This book is for you if you enjoy an Arthurian cocktail of academic sleuthery, etymology, and legend-cum-history.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, I'll believe that.

[Francis Wiget ii · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ignorant, arrogant folly.
This person writes about authenticating sites and people _who were not part of the Arthurian legend_ to prove that Arthur existed.
The Round Table? Added by Wace or Layamon, centuries after Geoffrey of Monmouth or the Triads.
Lancelot? Created out of whole cloth by Chretiens de Troyes.
Incompetent researcher ignored the oldest stories, Nennius, the Triads, Aneirin, Taliesin and only wrote about the high medieval stories.
_Ignorant_ and a waste of paper and time.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book started my quest for the Holy Grail.

[Alexandra Knight · Rating 2 out of 5]

King Arthur died in front of the stranger, The stranger ran off toward the woods. For the past 2 days, the village was getting worried about their king. The Knights at the round table went searching for King. But in the 20 minute mark, Bors found King Arthur soulless on the ground,and they rushed toward him. They were checking if he just passed out... Then they finally thought that he's dead. They slept that night waiting to tell everyone the news in the morning. The Knights woke up before everyone, so they waited for everyone to wake up. The Knights went to every house in the kingdom to tell the household to gather to the main part of the kingdom. Everyone felt like everything was going in slow motion. Things were running through everyone's head. Something bad happened to the King? Someone's gonna attack us? They were so scared because they don't know what they are going to say! They all arrived to the Main.
Sir Bors shouted everyone to be silent now. No one calmed down. Sir Bors shot a gun in the air to quiet everyone. Everyone calmed down. Sir Galahad told everyone the news about the king. Some people left to cry in their house, right when Galahad said his last word in his sentence. Bors shouted that everyone can leave now. Everyone cried all the way toward their houses. The rest of the day was all sadness. The Queen heard everything that the knights said, she's all alone. She cried every single day and night.
The Knights want to host a funeral for The King. They put up posters saying 'RIP King Arthur, a funeral for the loyalty King Arthur. In the Main room in the castle at 12:00 PM on the 29th. The King will be there in spirit'. One thirds of the castle saw the poster about the funeral, and tons of them agreed to support the King. Today was the 28th, so many of them got prepared for tomorrow. The Queen wrote a poem for the King to put in his coffin. They all slept peacefully, but some didn't because of their loss.
Today is the 29th, the day of the funeral. Everyone got dressed in black. The Queen grabbed the poem. They all walked to the funeral with sadness, even though some didn't want to be sad. Everyone at the funeral, cried, chat, and read books that was important towards the King. There was food out for anyone, but hardly no one ate. The knights guarded the doors of the castle. Several hours past during the funeral. When they were ready to buried King Arthur's coffin. The Queen put the poem under King Arthur's hand. Bors closed the coffin's doors, and then all the Knights carried the coffin towards the middle of the castle. They lay the coffin 6 feet under the ground, and then pour the dirt back on top of the coffin with King Arthur in.
The Queen stayed single for the rest of her life with the villagers. The castle stayed in the same place as when Arthur was alive. One hundred years had past until there was left nothing in or by the castle. The poem that the Queen wrote was unknown forever, but King Arthur is the only one that knows.
I'd give this book only ⅖ stars because it's so unreal and unfair. Nothing makes real sense and just isn't his story. Take this book off the shelf or too many bad reviews! I honestly wish I didn't read this to waste my time. This would be the only time I'd make a bad review, unlike I'd actually would. Why does this book exist?!

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no prior experience of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin or the Round Table. Truly there is a part that still seems so far away, fairy tale in a way which I know is the wrong word for it, as truly gruesome things happened.

King Arthur came from mixed blood, being royal or noble Roman on his father's side and royal of noble of British on his mother's side. King Arthur married Queen Guinevere and they had one known son Lohot, possible another son named Amhar and a third although little information is given. King Arthur died at the Battle of Camlan along with his elite guards and members of the round table. He died alone with no one to safeguard him, everything was destroyed. When he died, he basically vanished from the face of the Earth. He owned no land, in ancient days Kings were to remain without land to not be tempted by greed. No member of his retinue would have survived his death, that being the natural law and established custom of the day. His death is still felt in the land today that folklore and local history attest to a site where his body was once laid.
There was a mention of the famous round table, per Queen Morgan who is King Arthur's sister said there were 12 spots at the round table. The table was round so no person took precedence over the other - which didn't quite work out. There is still a lot of mystery surrounding this table and probably could have its own book, which I'm sure it does.

Queen Guineve' name had many different spellings to it, and most likely for the longest time passed down by word of mouth. Her name when translated into Welsh means "white goddess." She was a dangerous woman who had large territories of her very own. Queen Guineve had a hobby of collecting human heads, whose in life were her bitter enemies. She had them embalmed and would gaze on them often. Queen Guineve died before both King Arthur and Lancelot. She was buried in Avalon, for Lancelot visited.

Lancelot is descended from Saint Joseph of Arimathea. He grew up not knowing his name, as the names of the Kings were tabooed until the third generation. The saint is said to have lived in Britain in the first century. He was a fury in combat, taking unnerving aim, often leaping from horseback onto his intended targets crushing their helmets and skulls.
King Arthur relied on Lancelot, he was seen as his right hand man and was equal to elevation to the King. He clearly had kingly duties, he fought judiciary conducts, settled open issues of land and rule, buried the dead and honored their graves. He led armies and fought wars and was admired for his physical beauty. Lancelot was into painting, and would paint murals of his life. King Arthur admired his paintings.


(The name Arthur became popular after the year of 542, among youths of nobles and young royals. The name Arthur is most likely derived from the lost king of the Dark Ages (Interesting because my Grandpa's name is Arthur and thats my son's middle name))

[Nettie Vaughan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very intense and comprehensive study. Norma L. Goodrich was a master of assimilating information and translating languages. A solid work that aims in proving the existence of King Arthur. Though the book was around 400 pages, the font was at a 9 pt., at least in this 1986 issue. I'd place it at over 800 pages in a normal font and worth the read. She also wrote Merlin (which should be read first as a precursor)--an equally fascinating book that gives the reader a back story to Arthur's younger days.

[Carol Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author looked at various histories of King Arthur, with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s being the gold standard, to assemble a picture of the historical King Arthur. She has him not in Wales or Cornwall, but in the border area between England and Scotland. She puts forth that he was born at his mother’s castle at Caerlaverock, not Tintagel. After the Battle of Camlan, his body was taken to the Grail Castle which this author places on St. Patrick’s Isle off the west coast of the Isle of Man, not Glastonbury.

This was an interesting read, but a rather dry one.

[Jose Vidal · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst pieces of arthuriana I've ever read, a a hodgepodge of poorly constructed sentences, bad etymology and erratic reasoning. Her theory in the end is based on a totally idiosyncratic reading of Geoffrey of Monmouth and those texts that she can force to fit with her theories, ignoring or despising or ignoring as "wrong" those that do not . When she wants, she eliminates an element of a tale because it is "pure folkloric non sense" but when he is interested she uses those clearly folkloric elements, out of context, as an argument for her theory.

[Kevin Duncan]

Dr. Goodrich presents a plausible theory, but I'm not really convinced. It isn't the evidence she shows, but the fact that she simply discounts ideas that don't support her theory. She accepts the characters and incidents that she wants. Nevertheless, an interesting read and I'll probably tackle MERLIN and GUINEVERE, too.

[Naliza Fahro-Rozi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The many readers who are enthralled with the enduring legend of Camelot will be drawn to this fascinating book, which "may become the definitive work in the effort to prove the historical authenticity of King Arthur."--UPI

[K.C. Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing and well researched. Sometimes she makes insinuations rather than giving facts, probably because the facts aren't there to be found.

[Flint Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Norma Lorre Goodrich was not an historian! Unfortunately, she wrote like she was. Her reaches into a realm of which she had no real knowledge are painful to me now as a Ph.D. She misused historical sources, she uncritically used fiction as historical sources, and as many have note, she did it with the confidence of a seasoned expert.

The truth is that she was an expert in comparative literatures. As far as word alterations and language changing, she is an expert I used often. In making connections between versions of an Arthurian story she is extremely knowledgable. In tracing the history of a book and of the corpus itself she is in some ways a worthy successor to Roger Sherman Loomis. Just don't read her over Rachel Bromwich, David Dumville, Nicholas Higham, or even myself in the theater of Arthur's historicity and location.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sorry but I have to give up. I really tried. I hate to leave a book unfinished, but there's just too much wrong with this one. Clearly the author has a lot of personal feeling invested in her theory and it's resulted in some terribly sloppy arguments. It's always "we know Lancelot went here", "we know Arthur was raised in this castle"... Except no, we don't know any of that. She argues that Geoffrey of Monmouth left the abduction of Guinevere out of his otherwise historical account because he just had too much reverence for ancient British queens and couldn't handle including a sad story about one?? That's quite an assumption to make. And if it were true, wouldn't it call into question the integrity of everything else he wrote on the subject? Too many unanswered questions, too many wild assumptions.... I'm out.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was daunting, but I loved it- fascinating to see her language-based approach to the historical Arthur. Filled with one revelation after another and I was convinced by most of them. I could also see why the historical "establishment" had a hard time with her conclusions. It's not written like a history book, which makes sense since her emphasis is language and literature. She's willing to find a breakthrough and accepts it wholeheartedly. Historians tend to waffle more when it comes to conclusions, especially with so little physical evidence. But I'm a believer!

[Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the subject matter; the idea of Arthur as a real king is fascinating. However, I couldn't give this book more than three stars because of how much supposing goes on. The author clearly knows what she is talking about - almost too much. I understand that all the characters go together to make the whole story, but I cared far less about Lancelot and Perceval than Arthur. I skimmed some if those passages honestly, as they were not nearly as interesting to me. Even so, this topic will still hold my attention, though we will likely never really know the truth.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about this book when Norma L. Goodrich died and it was said that she was the foremost researcher about King Arthur, Merlin, Camelot etc... She is most definitely biased towards him being real.

[Robert Risher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great history lessons mixed with complete eisogetical conjecture, hence the 3 stars. I enjoyed the factual parts of the book that Goodrich could prove, as well as her extensive lessons on the development of language, but much like in her previous book, Merlin, she supposes too much.

[Randal · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author makes a pretty good case for situating Arthur as a real king in the borderlands between Scotland and England c. 500 AD. Sadly, the illiterate chieftain of a band of oatmeal savages isn't the most enthralling subject ever.
A slow, pseudoacademic read.

[Gloria]

nbvhfhgfhgf

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was really good
:):):):)

[Tome Addiction · Rating 4 out of 5]

A historical book on placing the myth clearly in historical prospective.

[Kathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing book, I completely agree with her theory. A scholarly book on her research into the Arthurian/Merlin history.

[Dakota · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very in depth and comprehensive view of the fact and fiction of Arthur. Reads more as a graduate thesis than a nonfiction book, however.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little on the dense side. But awesome.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real history of King Arthur by a historian. Not for the faint hearted.

[Danae Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

the application is very bad that I can not read