Arthurian legends and the Matter of Britain

In the history of English the legacy of King Arthur in literature is of paramount importance. It seems that the folk hero was a king or a Roman general at the beginning of the Middle Ages, after Romans left Britannia there was chaos and Arthur arose to bring order and peace. The legend says that he was born a Roman-Briton in the fifth century, entered the army and fought against the invaders Anglo-Saxons with many victories as narrated firstly by the Welsh cleric Nennius and the "Annales Cambriae", "Historia Britonum" at the beginning of Middle Ages and after the Norman invasion of England in eleventh century of England the monk Geoffrey of Monmouth also wrote about king Arthur in his "History of the English Kings" in Latin, though it is also said that it may a historicised figure from folklore like Hengest & Horsa former horse-gods. As the legend says the king Uther Pendragon was in love with Igraine but she was married and loyal to Duke Gorlois but he used the magician Merlin to look alike the duke and seduce Igraine while the Duke was away from his castle of Tintagel in Cornwall. When the child was born, he was taken by Merlin to be raised by the wizard (mago) along with his half-sister Morgane, but once the king Uther died a sword into a stone was left for everybody try to take it from the rock and it was Arthur the only person to achieve it, so he became king. 

The Matter of Britain are a myriad of works by different anynymous or renown authors related with legends mainly about king Arthur legends based sometimes on Saxon, Celtic, Norman or German folk lore though set in the British Isles or Brittany. It receives this name in comparison with other cycles of stories and legends in works related to continental Europe named the Matter of Rome mainly set in Italy from Classical plays or works from the Greek and Roman civilizations heritage, and the Matter of France which is a cycle of legends related to the ventures of the king Charlemagne and his retinue set mainly in France. There are a lot of legends about King Arthur´s kingdom named Camelot and their fights against dragons, bears, witches, dogheads, giants, boars, the Black knight, etc. and the famous knights of the Round Table. The stories about the knights Sir Beldever, Sir Gawain, Sir Percival were added mainly by the writer Chrètien de Troyes such as Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult, Sir Lancelot and the forbidden love with Guinevere, wife of king Arthur, Sir Galahad the Pure and the Holy Grail. The kingdom was flourishing with wealth, peace and justice but after the queen´s disloyalty everything went worse with the civil war between King Arthur against his son Mordred and half-sister Morgaine where he was hurt and taken to the island of Avalon to be healed (curado) never to appear again, so there are legends that say that king Arthur will revive once Britain needs his help. The legend of king Arthur was very famous in France in the Middle Ages (centuries XII and XIII) with many authors writing legends about the kingdom of Camelot about the bravery, courtesy (cortesía) and chivalry (caballerosidad) of king Arthur and his Twelve knights of the Round Table  with writers such as Layamon, Wace, Thomas of Britain, Marie de France and others appeared in the Vulgate Cycle which are related to the trend of courtly love in French courts. At the end of the Middle Ages the legends of king Arthur were shadowed with the adultery of Guinevere, the fights against his half-sister Morgoise and his son Mordred(nephew according to Geoffrey of Monmouth) and the search of the Holy Grail by the knights Galahad and Perceval and Thomas Malory´s "Le Morte d´Arthur" and new topics entered in the Renaissance and it was forgotten the king Arthur. John Dryden wrote the masque "King Arthur", the gothic genre used again legends of King Arthur and during the Romanticism there was a revival of medieval topics again king Arthur was the protagonist of poems by William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, William Morris because his kingdom Camelot and his values as king were very appreciated during the Victorian era according to the values promoted by Queen Victoria in the 19th century. King Arthur has appeared in comic novels such as Mark Twain´s "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court", Thomas Berger´s "Arthur Rex" and Marion Zimmer Bradley´s "The Mists of Avalon" and in many art forms such as cinema, paintings, comic strips or cartoons and other artistic expressions.