Most scholars regard it as being entirely fictional, its geography being perfect for romance writers ; Arthurian scholar Norris J.

It has numerous different spellings in medieval French Arthurian romance, including: Camaalot, Camalot, Chamalot, Camehelot ( sometimes read as Camchilot ), Camaaloth, Caamalot, Camahaloth, Camaelot, Kamaalot, Kamaaloth, Kaamalot, Kamahaloth, Kameloth, Kamaelot, Kamelot, Kaamelot, Cameloth, Camelot, Kamelot, Kaamelot, and Gamalaot.

In Arthurian romance, a number of explanations are given for Arthur's possession of Excalibur.

The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature.

While it was by no means the only creative force behind Arthurian romance, many of its elements were borrowed and developed ( e. g., Merlin and the final fate of Arthur ), and it provided the historical framework into which the romancers ' tales of magical and wonderful adventures were inserted.

Chrétien's work even appears to feed back into Welsh Arthurian literature, with the result that the romance Arthur began to replace the heroic, active Arthur in Welsh literary tradition.

Up to c. 1210, continental Arthurian romance was expressed primarily through poetry ; after this date the tales began to be told in prose.

The development of the medieval Arthurian cycle and the character of the " Arthur of romance " culminated in Le Morte d ' Arthur, Thomas Malory's retelling of the entire legend in a single work in English in the late 15th century.

Malory based his book — originally titled The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table — on the various previous romance versions, in particular the Vulgate Cycle, and appears to have aimed at creating a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Arthurian stories.

Similarly, the most popular Arthurian tale throughout this period seems to have been that of Tom Thumb, which was told first through chapbooks and later through the political plays of Henry Fielding ; although the action is clearly set in Arthurian Britain, the treatment is humorous and Arthur appears as a primarily comedic version of his romance character.

Although Arthur himself played a minor role in some of these works, following in the medieval romance tradition, Tennyson's Arthurian work reached its peak of popularity with Idylls of the King, which reworked the entire narrative of Arthur's life for the Victorian era.

The revived Arthurian romance also proved influential in the United States, with such books as Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur ( 1880 ) reaching wide audiences and providing inspiration for Mark Twain's satiric A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ( 1889 ).

Although the " Arthur of romance " was sometimes central to these new Arthurian works ( as he was in Burne-Jones's The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, 1881 – 1898 ), on other occasions he reverted back to his medieval status and is either marginalised or even missing entirely, with Wagner's Arthurian operas providing a notable instance of the latter.

The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth ( but not Arthur ) in his poem The Waste Land, which mentions the Fisher King.

The romance tradition of Arthur is particularly evident and, according to critics, successfully handled in Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac ( 1974 ), Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois ( 1978 ) and perhaps John Boorman's fantasy film Excalibur ( 1981 ); it is also the main source of the material utilised in the Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 ).

There have also been attempts by modern writers to link the Morrígan with the Welsh literary figure Morgan le Fay from Arthurian romance, in whose name ' mor ' may derive from a Welsh word for ' sea ', but the names are derived from different cultures and branches of the Celtic linguistic tree.

A later English Arthurian romance, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell ( c. 1450 ), uses much of the same elements of the Wife of Bath's tale, yet changes the setting to the court of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Although Garner avoided incorporating his story into Arthurian mythology, the benevolent wizard in the novel, Cadellin Silverbrow, does have a link to the Arthurian mythos, in that " Cadellin " is one of the many names by which Culhwch invoked Arthur's aid in the Mediaeval Welsh Arthurian romance about Culhwych and Olwen. Philip 1981. p. 23.

* Palamedes ( romance ), a 13th-century French Arthurian romance named after the knight

* Roman de Fergus, an Arthurian romance probably written at the beginning of the 13th century

These are written in rhyming couplets, and again draw on French models such as Chrétien de Troyes, many of them relating Arthurian material, for example, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach.

The popularity of Geoffrey's Historia and its other derivative works ( such as Wace's Roman de Brut ) is generally agreed to be an important factor in explaining the appearance of significant numbers of new Arthurian works in continental Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in France.

These works were the Estoire del Saint Grail, the Estoire de Merlin, the Lancelot propre ( or Prose Lancelot, which made up half the entire Vulgate Cycle on its own ), the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort Artu, which combine to form the first coherent version of the entire Arthurian legend.

While chivalric romances abound, particularly notable literary portrayals of knighthood include Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, and Miguel de Cervantes ' Don Quixote, as well as Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d ' Arthur and other Arthurian tales ( Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, etc.

Edmund held many tournaments at Kenilworth in the late 13th century, including a huge event in 1279, presided over by the royal favourite Roger de Mortimer, in which a hundred knights competed for three days in the tiltyard in an event called " the Round Table ", in imitation of the popular Arthurian legends.

Some of the earliest mentions of the carol occur in the works of the French poet Chretien de Troyes in his series of Arthurian romances.

It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival ( Percival ) and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes ' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.

It is well known as the site of the Benedictine abbey, Santa Maria de Montserrat, which hosts the Virgin of Montserrat sanctuary and which is identified by some with the location of the Holy Grail in Arthurian myth.

This story first appears in Chrétien de Troyes ' Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and reappears as a common motif in numerous cyclical Arthurian literature, starting with the Lancelot-Grail Cycle of the early 13th century and carrying through the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d ' Arthur.

Roland appears in Entrée d ' Espagne, a 14th century Franco-Venetian chanson de geste ( in which he is transformed into a knight errant, similar to heroes from the Arthurian romances ) and La Spagna, a 14th century Italian epic.

The question of the dates of the tales in the Mabinogion is important, because if they can be shown to have been written before Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes then some of the tales, especially those dealing with Arthur, would provide important evidence for the development of Arthurian legend.

The three tales called The Three Romances ( Y Tair Rhamant ) are Welsh versions of Arthurian tales that also appear in the work of Chrétien de Troyes.

This story was repeated in many retellings of the Arthurian cycle, including Robert de Boron's Merlin and the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, though the narrative greatly contradicts the known history of this period.

Lancelot or Lancelin may have instead been the hero of an independent folk-tale which had contact with and was ultimately absorbed into the Arthurian tradition: the theft of an infant by a water-fairy, the appearance of the hero at a tournament on three consecutive days in three different disguises, and the rescue of a queen or princess from an Other-World prison are all features of a well-known and widespread tale, variants of which are found in almost every land, and numerous examples of which have been collected by Theodore Hersart de la Villemarqué in his Barzaz Breiz, by Emmanuel Cosquin in his Contes Lorrains, and by J. F. Campbell in his Tales of the West Highlands.

* Jean Frappier, " Chrétien de Troyes " in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Roger S. Loomis ( ed .).

* Kennedy, Edward D. " Visions of History: Robert de Boron and English Arthurian Chroniclers.

The first of these, Erec, which may have been written as early as 1191 or 1192, and the last, Iwein, belong to the Arthurian cycle and are based on epics by Chrétien de Troyes ( Erec and Enide and Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, respectively ).

Arthurian romancier Chrétien de Troyes mentions in his poem Cligès that he composed his own account of the story ; however, there are no surviving copies or records of any such text.

* librettos for the operas Maria Seski ( 1799 ), Nephtali, ou les Ammonites by Blangini ( Ballard, Paris 1806 ), and the Arthurian Arthus de Bretagne,

Celtic traditions have survived in the lais of Marie de France, the Mabinogion and the Arthurian cycles.

In Italy, there exists several 14th century texts in verse or prose which recount the feats of Charlemagne in Spain, including a chanson de geste in Franco-Venetian, the Entrée d ' Espagne ( c. 1320 ) ( notable for transforming the character of Roland into a knight errant, similar to heroes from the Arthurian romances ), and a similar Italian epic La Spagna ( 1350-1360 ) in ottava rima.

The Arthurian tale, Geraint son of Erbin, based on Chretien de Troyes's Erec, mentions King Arthur's " chief physician ", Morgan Tud ; it is believed that this character, though considered a male in Gereint, may be derived from Morgan le Fay ( though this has been a matter of debate among Arthurian scholars since the 19th century.