Arthurian Legend, Medieval History and Gothic Architecture

Or how I came to fall in love with anachronism...

This is in response to Jess, who suggested the topic on the Domesticated Goth Facebook Page.

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I have always had a broad appreciation of history. My father is involved in archaeology as a geophysicist and archaeological surveyor, and I was therefore brought up saturated in local history and British history. This, however, can only partially explain why I like history in general, and not really explain why I have a fascination for the medieval in particular, or how this ties in with my other historical interests (we're heading over to Pre-Raphaelite territory...)

My attempts to be a real-life Pre-Rpahaelite depiction of Morgan LaFey

⚜ Childhood Fascination

It all started with an illustrated book of fairy tales from when I was a very, very small child. In it were children's versions of some Arthurian tales. I really, really wish I still had the book, but sadly it is long gone. I can't even remember what the book was called, but I remember that it had lavish, beautiful illustrations in full colour and great detail. There was this fabulous image of a knight in armour on a horse, with the horse adorned in barding and caparison and the knight with a very sharp and shiny looking sword. Then there was a book ordered from the back of a packet of Weetabix (::this:: book - I'm showing my age! ) which I read avidly and repeatedly and with great enthusiasm. It was the first book on history I ever owned, and my favourite section was that from the Norman Conquest on to Henry VIII - just a bit broader than the time-span  referred to as the 'High Middle Ages' and 'Late Middle Ages'.

This interest was picked up, and I was given a French language (I was brought up bilingual, my first language is actually French) history book with a few transparent pages called ::Le Château Fort:: which just fed this interest. I even got taken on some trips to some real-life castles, such as Rochester Castle in Kent, which probably sealed it for me. 

I can't really place what it is that drew me to these things, but  it was partially a confusion between what was myth and reality (probably on account of being a child with a broad imagination). There was something wonderful and exciting about believing that all these knights and maidens and brave chivalrous warriors and fierce monsters and witches and wizards had been real, just centuries and centuries ago. For some time, as a small child, my career ambitions were "knight"... 

As I read more I quickly learnt that no, dragons were not real (dinosaurs, on the other hand...) and neither was the Green Knight, and that chivalry and courtly love were not as later poets would have us believe. I also learnt, over time, that the "shining armour" of knights was often actually depictions things such as 1480s Gothic plate armour from what is now Germany and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire, that there are an awful lot of types of "pointy arches" buildings, and recorders are fabulous musical instruments with a long, long history. Basically, I learnt that a lot of the things I found really interesting came from between the mid 11thC and very beginning of the 16thC. 

⚜ Art History And Gothic Architecture

The more I got to know of art and architecture from that period, the more I realised that it was rich aesthetics that I adored, and still adore. 

I gained an interest in calligraphy and illuminated manuscripts when I was about 12 or 13, after being introduced to them in an English lesson focused on Arthurian myths. I began my first pseudo-'illuminated' Book of Shadows, the precursor to my current book of Shadows, which is all written in uncial calligraphy, richly decorated with a mixture of foliate, spiral and knot-work designs, a lot of silver and gold embellishments (albeit via more modern techniques) and even has a few illustrations. 

I also fell in love with Gothic architecture (no surprise to my regular readers). I like most styles of highly decorative architecture on grand scales, from the temples at Angkor Wat to Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral, but I have a special fondness for the Gothic and Gothic-Revival. I especially like buildings in the later Gothic styles, especially the Perpendicular Gothic, with their emphasis on verticality and arrays of stained glass windows. I can't explain why I prefer a pointed Gothic arch or fan-vaulted ceiling to a round Romanesque arch or barrel-vaulted ceiling, nor what it is about tracery designs that appeal to me, but that is the way I am, and I could spend all day looking at them. 

It is not enough for me to merely find interest in the appearance of buildings, I am always led to their function, and that then draws me back into the history - old abbeys, cathedrals, grand houses etc. always have rich histories, and it fascinates me how the uses of buildings change over centuries, and boggles me to think of all the thousands of people from so many periods and places that have visited these places and looked at them with their own unique perspectives. 

What also amazes me is the size and complexity of the buildings designed considering the limited understanding of physics and mathematics at the time. People sometimes think that because people in the past were illiterate and superstitious with a limited grasp of science and mathematics that they were stupid but education and intelligence are different things, as can be shown by ::this:: article, where it describes how a string and a weight could show if the vast spire of Salisbury Cathedral was straight or not (it wasn't, it was leaning, and Christopher Wren figured out how to straighten it in 1668) in an age long before optical surveying equipment, let alone laser levels! These cathedrals were built by a largely illiterate work force. People had to be creative and use their initiative to overcome the lack of technology and get things done by other means. 

This does not just apply to great cathedrals across Europe, or even to medieval times alone, of course, but it is one of the things about the medieval period that does intrigue me. 

Also, as an enthusiastic archer, and a person with an interest in historical arms and armour, Medieval European weaponry is very interesting to me, and to understand the weapons, one has to understand the conflicts that were their context, and how they became visual symbols in later periods, which necessitates some understanding of medieval life. 

(Those interested in medieval weaponry may be excited to know that I have asked a friend who is more knowledgeable than me in this area to write a guest post on such things!).

⚜Understanding Where I live
As my readers already know, I live in the UK, currently in Scotland and previously down in the Thames Valley. I am the sort of person that likes to know the history of the places where I live; they make up part of the culture, and inform present day attitudes (like someone I know here, with a tattoo of the Declaration of Arbroath, which was originally made in 1320). The history of the UK stretches back millennia and millennia before the Middle Ages, but much of its best recorded  history is that recorded by the monasteries and onwards, i.e Saxon through to Medieval and onwards. 

Earlier history interest me too, especially the pre-Roman 'Celtic' history of the various Iron Age, Bronze Age and earlier peoples of Britain, but much of these cultures is lost to time, and what we know is pieced together from artefacts and remains, and the writings of later Roman authors writing as outsiders. The very early history is full of mysteries, and these mysteries intrigue me, but they are mysteries, not things we know. 

Medieval history, on the other hand, includes quite a body of knowledge about what life was like then, and is quite accessible - it is not that expensive to go on a tour of Oxford castle and get quite good account of the castle's history, starting with its ecclesiastical history and moving forwards, and I certainly studied the Norman Invasion, the Charter of Liberties, the Magna Carter and the Peasant's Revolt at school, and am sure that various aspects of Medieval history are fairly widespread in history teaching at various levels. I guess it was something I could easily get into, and unlike Roman history, I wasn't faced with my Dad's near-obsession (he spent several years working at a Roman pottery manufacture site with several kilns and a processing works for clay) with the subject. 

⚜The Victorians Have A Lot To Answer for

Another thing my readers may well know is that I have an interest in Victorian things, and as all the Victorian-era Gothic Revival and Scottish Baronial architecture I photograph show, and the subject matter of many Pre-Raphaelite paintings also, there was a definite interest in a fairy-tale and Arthurian Medievalism in that period (as well as an interest in legitimate history). My interests become recursive at this point. To elaborate on the previous examples, I look at a Victorian Gothic Revival buildings, and see in them their stylistic ancestors (and giggle at the Victorian tendency to turn practical medieval things into nonsensical decorative devices.), I look at Pre-Raphaelite depictions of Arthurian legends, and wonder which suits of armour were used as costume references, and how many details are flights of fancy.  

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Hopefully I have managed to detail from where my interest stems in a helpful manner to those curious, and have not been too boring and introspective. Personally, I find the history far more interesting than my appreciation of it! I don't think this explanation is exhaustive, and in racking my brains I wonder if I am overlaying too much of who I am now onto my past self, but hopefully it is at least a bit helpful.