Britain under the Shadow of Arthur : The Arthurian Myth as a Political Theory of Empire (1461–1612)

Few myths are as famous as Arthur’s, and few empires rival the reach of the British Empire. Yet the two share a history: from the Wars of the Roses to the consolidation of James I’s rule, the idea of a British Empire developed in conversation with the Arthurian myth.

Few myths are as famous as Arthur’s, and few empires rival the reach of the British Empire. Yet the two share a history: from the Wars of the Roses to the consolidation of James I’s rule, the idea of a British Empire developed in conversation with the Arthurian myth. The vision of a British imperial future was once inseparable from Arthur—until it was not. Britain under the Shadow of Arthur argues that the Arthurian myth functioned as a form of political theory for both the imagined unification of Britain and the expansion of its empire. Rather than merely tracing references to Arthur, this book shows how the myth structured ideas about what Britain was, how it should be governed, and its imperial potential. Across a century and a half, writers, courtiers, and political thinkers mobilized the Arthurian tradition to articulate competing visions of British unity and imperial destiny. Yet as the empire acquired institutional reality—through colonies and legal structures, whose origins were traced to Arthurian precedents—the myth itself lost conceptual force. The British Empire came to be imagined as the future of the English Crown, while Arthur was increasingly relegated to an immemorial past. Scholars across disciplines will find this volume valuable. Literary scholars will encounter the first comprehensive structuralist analysis of the Arthurian myth. Intellectual historians will find the most extensive study of Arthur in British political thought. Imperial historians must confront that the earliest imperial legal framework drew on the Arthurian myth.