King Arthur: Anglophilia

 

I am not a monarchist. I would like Canada to do away with the expensive traditional customs, Federal Department and Provincial counterparts and instead, put that money towards public education or health care.

I do have a particular fondness for the history of the UK, which has informed so much of early colonial Canadian culture. France too, but being a British Columbian at the warmest westest end of the land called Canada – a villiage – we were for a very long time, a village nation of small towns, our biggest urban centres not making global lists.

Which means forging a more Canada this land identity than hand me downs from Europe. Besides, while America is a melting post of ethnicity which kinda means lowest common denominator, Canada is a mosaic – a quilt – a framework in which cultures are patch-worked into, we are all equality under the law and what makes the Canadian Charter superior to the American Bill of Rights is that not only is Gender included as a prohibited ground of discrimination, our rights are outlined in a manner which puts gender equality above all other guarantees of non-discrimination – ethnicity, belief, inter alia. 

Inter Alia is one of those Magical Latin Phrases that means “among other things”

the important of gender being positioned is that what it means is that someone’s religion does not override a women’s personal sovereignty and in the context of not discriminating, it effectively means: keep your religion to yourself and that you may not use it to reduce the dignity of others.

 

King Arthur is mostly likely a composite character told in stories, which were told, and then the first poem, then a novel Morte D’Arthur and then a Victorian literary and painting tradition about this most English of Kings.

Sorry Harold of Hastings, whom we know was a real dude and while he won the battle against the Danish Vikings, he lost to the French Normans.

King Arthur we know for sure is political propaganda, used by later kings to make them appear more British.

We know there is a poem, but it wasn’t until Le Morte D’Arthur the novel was written at the time of printing presses did it become that King Arthur was a middle ages style king, rather than an at the end of the Roman Era in Britain – after all, they wiped out the Druids… the Merlin origin….. but perhaps, the actual Arthur was from the Bronze age and was a blacksmith who learned to turn rock ore into swords.

French literature adopted Arthur and they position him as a Norman; sorta like Robin Hood’s morphing into Zorro.

 

With the Normans came the Magna Carta and put limits on the powers of the King.

The French revolution of Napoleon and the American Revolution and the Russian revolutions dispensed with Empire Building Monarchies and the European World Wars where largely Royal Family squabbles fought with peasants….

Warlords and Dynasties… peasant revolts and worker revolts… Occupy the King, eh?

 

 

O Canada? can we talk about the Governor-General

We spend a lot of money Federally and Provincially to duplicate  Figurehead Monarch. Who, let’s face it, if we needed her opinion, we could phone.   The GG’s office has failed during the current and previous parliament terms.   Last … Continue reading →

King Arthur of Scotland?

Was King Arthur a Glaswegian from Govan? – The Nationalhttp://www.thenational.scot/…/was-king-arthur-a-glaswegian-from-govan.732 Mar 3, 2015 – In a paper to be read to a congress at Glasgow University next July, Dr Andrew Breeze, a professional philologist and Celticist, argues not … Continue reading →