a personifi ed abstraction—is directly addressed. For
example, in the fi rst line of SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’s Sonnet
31 from ASTROPHIL AND STELLA—“With how sad steps,
O Moon, thou climb’st the sky!”—the speaker
addresses the moon as a fellow sufferer.
See also PERSONIFICATION.
ARCADIA Arcadia is an idyllic rural location in
the Peloponnese (southern Greece) known for its
remote, unspoiled location. Used fi rst by the Roman
poet VIRGIL in his adaptation of the Eclogues and subse-
quently by a long line of English writers, the name
Arcadia came to represent a peaceful rural environment
where humans lived in harmony with nature—a haven
from the complexities and corruption of urban life.
Thus, it became the customary setting for PASTORALs, a
rustic paradise governed only by the gods, the seasons,
and the cycles of life. Idealized shepherds and farmers
inhabit it—free from concerns, well-dressed, and well-
fed. Copious amounts of leisure time allow them to
compose music and poetry, debate philosophy, and
engage in lusty pursuits.
See also ECLOGUES; LOCUS AMOENUS; “PASSIONATE
SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE, THE.”
FURTHER READING
Gifford, Terry. Pastoral: The New Idiom. London: Routledge,
1999.
J. A. White
ARTHUR king of Britain King Arthur is widely
known throughout history and literature since many
tales have been written about Arthur and his Knights of
the Round Table—especially those concerning Lancelot
and Gawain; Guinevere; Arthur’s famous sword, Excali-
bur; and his majestic palace, Camelot. These tales, fi lled
with some of the most appealing characters in litera-
ture, have had an enormous impact on Western culture
from the beginnings of Britain to the present day. But
the question over whether Arthur was truly a historical
fi gure remains hotly debated in current scholarship.
Records from the presumed Arthurian period are so
scarce that, like the battle and characters of Troy, it
remains diffi cult to discern whether or not the tales of
ARTHURIAN LITERATURE have any historical validity. At
present, however, critics are divided, and there are gen-
erally two opposing schools of thought concerning the
historical Arthur: those who believe Arthur indeed
existed and those who hold that Arthur serves as some
kind of romantic, national symbolic fi gure.
If Arthur did exist, he lived sometime between the
years of 450 and 550 C.E. The fi rst historical mention
of Arthur appears in Historia Brittonum, around 800
C.E., in which he is depicted as a fi erce warlord. Some
150 years later, there are two mentions of Arthur in
Annales Cambriae (The Annals of Wales), stating that an
Arthur was victorious at the Battle of Badon, where he
carried the cross of Jesus Christ on his shoulders for
three days, and that at the Battle of Camlann, both
Arthur and his son Mordred died. What became of this
Arthur and what other deeds are attributed to him
remain unknown; however, Geoffrey of Monmouth
continued the story of King Arthur in his 1136 work
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Brit-
ain). Geoffrey claims that he discovered an old manu-
script containing citations for his stories, although
critics dismiss this as a literary convention.
Whether Geoffrey created these accounts or wrote
from fact, he certainly cemented Arthur’s place in the
lore of Britain. Arthur became a symbol of national
spirit and a paragon of virtue and justice for medieval
kings and laymen. Other stories of Arthur followed,
most notably ROMAN DE BRUT, the ANGLO-NORMAN poem
by WACE, and Sir Thomas Malory’s Prose work Morte
d’Arthur, both of which were largely based on Geof-
frey’s work. Roman de Brut introduced a new element
in the Arthurian legend that would spawn even more
stories, the Knights of the Round Table, which spurred
the publication of various Welsh ROMANCEs with Arthur
as the main character. These early works in turn infl u-
enced other writers, such as Chrétien de Troyes and
the unknown author of SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN
KNIGHT, to publish longer and more involved romances
concerning Arthur and his knights. Both works intro-
duced a variety of other knights—Chrétien’s Lancelot
and the GAWAIN-POET’s Gawain, to name a few—and
both centered on the ties between chivalric attitudes
and courtly life.
However, it was Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, a combina-
tion of extent tales, which became the major source of28 ARCADIA