Why was the legend of King Arthur most likely written?

Answer 1

The legend of King Arthur was not written by a single person with a single agenda. Like all legends, it grew from telling and retelling. Its origin was in the legendary history of the Welsh and Cornish peoples of Britain as contained in books like the Mabinogion. Like all legendary history, these stories created a background and a national identity for the Celtic peoples of Britain. In the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, they were taken up by a number of writers, primarily French, and served to promote the ideals of chivalry and courtly love which were current at the time. Chrétien de Troyes is a good example of this period. In the hands of Sir Thomas Malory, an English knight writing at the end of the fifteenth century after the disastrous Wars of the Roses, the stories were used to discuss the disintegration of society and the collapse of the knightly ideal. The stories lost popularity for centuries, only to be revived in the nineteenth century by such authors as Tennyson and Scott to embody the Romanticism popular at the time. Over the centuries, the King Arthur stories have been told in different ways for different reasons.

Answer 2

The legend of King Arthur was not written by a single person with a single agenda. Like all legends, it grew from telling and retelling. Its origin was in the legendary history of the Welsh and Cornish peoples of Britain as contained in books like the Mabinogion. Like all legendary history, these stories created a background and a national identity for the Celtic peoples of Britain. In the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, they were taken up by a number of writers, primarily French, and served to promote the ideals of chivalry and courtly love which were current at the time. Chrétien de Troyes is a good example of this period. In the hands of Sir Thomas Malory, an English knight writing at the end of the fifteenth century after the disastrous Wars of the Roses, the stories were used to discuss the disintegration of society and the collapse of the knightly ideal. The stories lost popularity for centuries, only to be revived in the nineteenth century by such authors as Tennyson and Scott to embody the Romanticism popular at the time. Over the centuries, the King Arthur stories have been told in different ways for different reasons.