Round Table
In the legend of King Arthur, the Round Table was a mythical table in Camelot around which King Arthur and his knights sat to discuss matters crucial to the security of the realm. In some versions, the wizard Merlin also has a seat.
Legends
The Round Table first appears in Wace's Roman de Brut, though the idea of Arthur surrounding himself with the world's finest warriors dates back to Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and the medieval Welsh material such as Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads. The most popular origin story of the table first appears in Robert de Boron's Merlin, and was taken up by the later prose romances. In it, the table was created by Merlin in imitation of Joseph of Arimathea's Grail table; itself an imitation of the table of the Last Supper. In works like the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the Round Table was created for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, and was kept by Uther's vassal Leodegrance after his death. When Arthur becomes king, he receives the table as a gift when he marries Leodegrance's daughter Guinevere.
There is no "head of the table" at a round table, and so no one person is at a privileged position. Thus the knights were all peers and there was no "leader" as there were at so many other medieval tables. There are indications of other circular seating arrangements to avoid conflicts among early Celtic groups. However, one could infer importance on the basis of the number of seats each knight was removed from the king. The siège périlleux ("dangerous chair") was reserved for knights of pure heart.
See also
References
- Roger S. Loomis (1959). Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, chapter 41 "Arthurian Influence on Sport and Spectacle". Oxford, 1959.
- Robert Rouse and Cory Rushton (2005). The Medieval Quest for Arthur. Tempus, Stroud. ISBN 0-7524-3343-1.