1. Legends and Heroes
What is your definition of a legend? What examples can you give of a legend?
What is your definition of a hero? Is a hero a real person or a fictional person? What are the traits and qualities of a hero (think hero, not tragic hero).

2. Arthurian Legend

3. Legend (literary definition)
Story based in history
Set in a particular time and place
Focused on people who might have existed
Contain exaggerated, magical, or supernatural elements

4. Arthurian Legend
Some suggest King Arthur would have lived around the 5th-6th centuries
Stories were verbally transmitted
1st datable reference to King Arthur is in the 9th century

5. Arthurian Authors Sir Thomas Malory “Le Morte d’Arthur” - 1470s
MANY authors wrote about Arthur
Sir Thomas Malory
“Le Morte d’Arthur” s
Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Idylls of the King”

6. Chivalry Code of manner, honor, and courtly love
Duties to countrymen, God, and women

7. Duties to Countrymen & Fellow Christians
Virtues such as mercy, courage, valor, fairness
Protection of the weak and the poor
Servant-hood of the knight to his lord
Willing to give one’s life for another’s

8. Duties to God Being faithful to God Being faithful to the church
Protecting the innocent
Being the champion of good against evil
Obeying God above the feudal lord

9. Duties to Women
Courtly love: the idea that the knight is to serve a lady, and after her all other ladies
General gentleness and graciousness to all women