There are professional hazards associated with being a scholar of Arthurian literature. When I tell people that I study fifteenth-century literature, their eyes frost over and they say, “That sounds interesting.” They mean, of course, that any further information on the topic may render them instantly and irretrievably comatose. But if I say instead, “I study King Arthur,” a golden light at once fills the eyes, and the questions come quick and fast. They are usually the same questions, and the first is often, “Was King Arthur real?”
The old axiom that truth is stranger than fiction is generally accurate, especially when one considers the rather exhausted state of modern fiction. But truth wasn’t always stranger than fiction, and that is where King Arthur comes into it: he is the fiction that is stranger than truth, and truer than truth as well. When I say this in response to, “Was King Arthur real?” it will sometimes be enough. I might even wheel out a bit of post-structuralist prestidigitation—“It depends on what you mean by was.”—although this rhetorical parlor trick seems unsporting and Clintonesque: everything depends on what the meaning of “is” is. But when I am really hard put to it by an indefatigable questioner, then, like the counsel of Tolkien’s elves, I answer both no and yes. What do I mean? Well, it has to do with Archbishop Turpin.
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