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6/21/04

Remember when I was writing my first medieval arc week and wrote here of difficulties I was having with it? Part of the problem, I think today, is that I'd misnamed the arc. I've let the bloody historians distract me.

I don't want to shock anyone, but I didn't create Arthur, King of Time and Space for the purpose of the scientific propagation of history. The people whose interest in the legends is to prove that Arthur really existed are welcome to their passion, but I think at the end of the day they're missing the point (for reasons which I think are obvious but in any case are tangential to the present discussion). If there was a historical Arthur he lived about A.D. 500; whereas the legendary Arthur is pictured by Malory, his immediate predecessors, and (until relatively recently) his successors as a man of the middle ages. I started referring to the baseline arc (see the previous essay for the definition and purpose of the baseline arc) with the word medieval to draw a line between this work and the historians'. But now I think it was goof to choose a term adversarial to Arthurians of the historical school ... that is, a goof to choose a historical term at all. Inadvertently constraining myself to any historical period is at odds to my purpose of retelling a legend that has traveled so much farther than any history that may have given rise to it.

I wrote today's gag after I decided this arc is the fairy tale arc.

Webcomics I read daily: Irregular Comic, Penny Arcade, Loserz, User Friendly,
Real Life, Sinfest, Kevin & Kell, PvP
Webcomics I read weekly: Megatokyo, AppleGeeks, Wapsi Square,
College Roommates from Hell!!!, Boxjam's Doodle, Sluggy Freelance
See also The Belfry Comics Index and Comixpedia.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.