History
The three "Matters" were first described in the 12th century by the French poet Jean Bodel, whose epic Chanson de Saisnes contains the line:
- Ne sont que III matières à nul homme atandant,
- De France et de Bretaigne, et de Rome la grant.
- There are but 3 matters that no man should be without,
- That of France, of Britain, and of great Rome.
The name distinguishes and relates the Matter of Britain from the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "Matter of Rome", and the tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constituted the "Matter of France". While Arthur is the chief subject of the Matter of Britain, other lesser-known legendary history of Great Britain, including the stories of Brutus of Britain, King Cole, King Lear, and Gogmagog, is also included in the Matter of Britain: see Legendary kings of the British.
Read more about this topic: Matter Of Britain
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)