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King Arthur: The Making of the Legend by Nicholas J. Higham

2020; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.2020.0008

1934-1539

Christopher Berard,

Historical and Archaeological Studies

Reviewed by: King Arthur: The Making of the Legend by Nicholas J. Higham Christopher Michael Berard nicholas j. higham, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. xi, 380. isbn: 978–0–300–21092–7. $32.50. N.J. Higham has long given pride of place to the Historia Brittonum (829–30) as the Ur-text that established Arthur as a pseudo-historical figure. Now, in King Arthur: The Making of the Legend, Higham is pushing this thesis further, arguing that [End Page 141] pseudo-Nennius, the author of the Historia Brittonum, invented Arthur. Higham seeks to persuade us that we have no credible evidence (1) of a brief but glorious ‘Arthurian’ era of post-Roman British resistance to the Anglo-Saxon invasion, (2) of an enduring legend arising from a Roman commander stationed in Britannia by the name of Artorius, and (3) of a folkloric tradition involving Arthur that predates the Historia Brittonum. Higham adopts a two-pronged strategy to convince his readers that pseudo-Nennius created Arthur. One line of argumentation is intratextual and the other is extratextual. The former involves an exploration of pseudo-Nennius’ method of composition. Higham looks for evidence of original invention and ‘alternative facts’—a wanton disregard for the tenor and specifics of his known source material. Of particular interest are the ‘British protector-figures’ analogous to Arthur that appear in the Historia Brittonum, namely Bellinus, Dolabella, Cunedda, and Vortimer. He traces the names of the first three back to antecedent sources but notes that these figures underwent ‘systematic fictionalization’ in the Historia (p. 213). Indeed, pseudo-Nennius seems to have been mining earlier texts for usable names. Higham admits that he is uncertain how or why pseudo-Nennius arrived at the name Arthur but speculates that he might have ‘borrowed’ the name from a late sixth-century Scottish prince from the North Irish Sea area, one that was perhaps the inspiration for the Arthur of the early Welsh poem Y Gododdín (pp. 168–72, 214). By means of his intratextual analysis, Higham does not eliminate the possibility of an antecedent Arthurian tradition, but he does demonstrate that there need not have been one in order for pseudo-Nennius to give us Arthur. The extratextual approach to demonstrating that Arthur is pseudo-Nennius’ brainchild consists of a comprehensive refutation of all known arguments for the existence of the Arthur figure prior to the Historia Brittonum. Indeed, the first five chapters (175 pages) of the book are dedicated to this laborious task. In his earlier scholarly works, Higham allowed for the possibility that a ‘folkloric Arthur’ informed pseudo-Nennius’ historicization of Arthur. He has since changed his stance on this matter, most likely because he is now confident that the tract known as the Mirabilia Britanniae (The Wonders of Britain), which mentions two Arthurian marvels, was not part of the archetype of the Historia Brittonum. Higham holds that it was a later composition (c. 950) that became attached to British Library Harleian MS 3859 (c. 1100), the ‘best and most complete of the early versions’ of the Historia Brittonum (pp. 179, 226). Given that the Historia Brittonum is at the core of his argument, a more thorough discussion of its complicated textual history is a desideratum. As stated above, Higham doubts that there was an ‘Arthurian’ moment of post-Roman British success. The Saxons, he believes, took control of many lowland territories in Britain soon after the battle of Mount Badon (p. 163). His revisionist version of British history is not, in this reader’s opinion, persuasive. Gildas laments how in the four decades that followed the victories of Ambrosius Aurelius the Britons grew forgetful of the virtues of their elders, less vigilant about external threats, and prone to infighting. Gildas’ complaint seems to suggest that the Britons had achieved [End Page 142] a victory on a scale large enough to permit a false sense of security to take hold among his contemporaries. Higham in King Arthur: The Making of Legend succumbs to a characteristically Arthurian ambition: he tries to establish mastery over too much terrain and is overtaken by a quixotic quest—resolving the...