THE BREAKING OF THE ROUND TABLE, THE END IS NEAR

Today, The Grandma is still ill. She has a terrible cold, and she has continued reading about King Arthur and The Round Table.

The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthur's fabulous retinue. 

The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time; by the close of the 12th century it had come to represent the chivalric order associated with Arthur's court, the Knights of the Round Table.

Though the Round Table itself is not mentioned, the concept of Arthur havinga marvelous court made up of many prominent warriors is much older. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth says that after establishing peace throughout Britain, Arthur increased his personal entourage by inviting very distinguished men from far-distant kingdoms to join it. The code of chivalry so important in later romance figures in as well, as Geoffrey says Arthur established such a code of courtliness in his household that he inspired peoples living far away to imitate him.

Long before Geoffrey, Arthur's court was well known to Welsh storytellers; in the romance Culhwch and Olwen, written around 1100, the protagonist Culhwch invokes the names of 225 individuals affiliated with Arthur

More information: King Arthur's Knights

In fact, the fame of Arthur's entourage became so prominent in Welsh tradition that in the later additions to the Welsh Triads, the formula tying named individuals to Arthur's Court in the triad titles began to supersede the older Island of Britain formula.

Though the code of chivalry crucial to later continental romances dealing with the Round Table is mostly absent from the earlier Welsh material, some passages of Culhwch and Olwen seem to prefigure it, for instance when Arthur explains the ethos of his court, saying [w]e are nobles as long as we are sought out: the greater the bounty we may give, the greater our nobility, fame and honour.

Though no Round Table appears in the early Welsh texts, Arthur is associated with various items of household furniture.

The earliest of these is Saint Carannog's mystical floating altar in that saint's 12th century Vita; in the story Arthur has found the altar and attempts unsuccessfully to use it for a table, and returns it to Carannog in exchange for the saint ridding the land of a meddlesome dragon. Arthur's household furniture figures into local topographical folklore throughout Britain as early as the early 12th century, with various landmarks being named Arthur's Seat, Arthur's Oven, and Arthur's Bed-chamber.

A henge at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, Cumbria is known as King Arthur's Round Table. The still-visible Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon has been associated with the Round Table and has been suggested as a possible source for the legend.

More information: Britannica

Following archaeological discoveries at the Roman ruins in Chester, some writers suggested that the Chester Roman Amphitheatre was the true prototype of the Round Table, but the English Heritage Commission, acting as consultants to a History Channel documentary in which the claim was made, declared that there was no archaeological basis to the story.

The Round Table first appeared in Wace's Roman de Brut, a Norman language adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae finished in 1155. Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others. Layamon added to the story when he adapted Wace's work into the Middle English Brut in the early 13th century, saying that the quarrel between Arthur's vassals led to violence at a Yuletide feast. 

In response a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute. Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table; both he and Layamon credited it instead to the Bretons.

Some scholars have doubted this claim, while others believe it may be true. There is some similarity between the chroniclers' description of the Round Table and a custom recorded in Celtic stories, in which warriors sit in a circle around the king or lead warrior, in some cases feuding over the order of precedence as in Layamon. There is a possibility that Wace, contrary to his own claims, derived Arthur's round table not from any Breton source, but rather from medieval biographies of Charlemagne, notably Einhard's Vita Caroli and Notker the Stammerer's De Carolo Magno, in which the king is said to have possessed a round table decorated with a map of Rome.

More information: Ancient Fortresses

The Round Table takes on new dimensions in the romances of the late 12th and early 13th century, where it becomes a symbol of the famed order of chivalry which flourishes under Arthur. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, written around the 1190s, the wizard Merlin creates the Round Table in imitation of the table of the Last Supper and of Joseph of Arimathea's Holy Grail table.

This table, here made for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon rather than Arthur himself, has twelve seats and one empty place to mark the betrayal of Judas. This seat must remain empty until the coming of the knight who will achieve the Grail.

The Didot Perceval, a prose continuation of Robert's work, takes up the story, and the knight Percival sits in the seat and initiates the Grail quest. The prose cycles of the 13th century, the Lancelot-Grail cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, further adapt the chivalric attributes of the Round Table. Here it is the perfect knight Galahad, rather than Percival, who assumes the empty seat, now called the Siege Perilous.  

Galahad's arrival marks the start of the Grail quest as well as the end of the Arthurian era. In these works the Round Table is kept by King Leodegrance of Cameliard after Uther's death; Arthur inherits it when he marries Leodegrance's daughter Guinevere. Other versions treat the Round Table differently, for instance Arthurian works from Italy often distinguish between the Old Table of Uther's time and Arthur's New Table.

The artifact known as the Winchester Round Table, a large tabletop hanging in Winchester Castle bearing the names of various knights of Arthur's court, was probably created for a Round Table tournament. The current paintwork is late; it was done by order of Henry VIII of England for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's 1522 state visit, and depicts Henry himself sitting in Arthur's seat above a Tudor rose. 

The table itself is considerably older; dendrochronology calculates the date of construction to 1250–1280, during the reign of Edward I, using timber from store felled over a period of years. Edward was an Arthurian enthusiast who attended at least five Round Tables and hosted one himself in 1299, which may have been the occasion for the creation of the Winchester Round Table. Martin Biddle, from an examination of Edward's financial accounts, links it instead with a tournament Edward held near Winchester on April 20, 1290, to mark the betrothal of one of his daughters.

More information: Study

 

 

Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right. 

But the home we seek resides not in some distant land. 

It's in us! And in our actions on this day! 

If this be our destiny, then so be it. 

But let history remember that as free men, 

we chose to make it so. 

King Arthur

THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE, THE LITERARY CRITICISM

Today, The Grandma has been reading about The Algonquin Round Table.  

Yamina Newton explained her the story of this group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits and she has wanted to know more and more about them. 

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. 

Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of The Vicious Circle, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.

Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley.

In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations, both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.

The group that would become the Round Table began meeting in June 1919 as the result of a practical joke carried out by theatrical press agent John Peter Toohey. Toohey, annoyed at The New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients (Eugene O'Neill) in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Instead, Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.

More information: Biography

The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (later called the Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case moved them to the Rose Room and a round table.

Initially the group called itself The Board and the luncheons Board meetings. After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself Luigi Board. Finally, they became The Vicious Circle although The Round Table gained wide currency after a caricature by cartoonist Edmund Duffy of the Brooklyn Eagle portrayed the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.

In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx, and writer Ring Lardner sometimes sitting in.

The group also played charades (which they called simply The Game) and the I can give you a sentence game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.

Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several Algonks -but governed by Woollcott as a benevolent tyrant, as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams charitably put it- located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder, which they called simply Murder, plus croquet.

More information: Factinate

A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott What on earth is wrong with your portrait? until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.

As members of the Round Table moved into ventures outside New York City, inevitably the group drifted apart. 

By the early 1930s The Vicious Circle was broken. Edna Ferber said she realized it when she arrived at the Rose Room for lunch one day in 1932 and found the group's table occupied by a family from Kansas. Frank Case was asked what happened to the group. He shrugged and replied, What became of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street? These things do not last forever.

Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship. Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.

Because a number of the members of the Round Table had regular newspaper columns, the activities and quips of various Round Table members were reported in the national press. This brought Round Tablers widely into the public consciousness as renowned wits.

More information: PBS

 Nothing risque, nothing gained.

Alexander Woollcott

THE BREAKING OF THE ROUND TABLE, THE END IS NEAR

The Grandma in La Rambla, Barcelona

Today, The Grandma has decided to homage Barcelona, her city. Barcelona is a place with centuries of existence built by its people with love, respect, comprehension and tolerance.

The Catalan capital is an open-mind city which welcomes new comers, visitors and tourists and shares with them its amazing architecture and its wonderful people. Because a place is the reflex of its architecture, history and population, you can be sure Barcelona is one of the most beautiful places to live around the world. Nobody will break our lifestyle and nobody will come from other countries to say us how we have to live, how we have to think, how we have to speak, how we have to feel or how we must mourn our dead.

Barcelona is a free city without owners. Barcelona is the result of sharing cultures with respect and tolerance and nobody is going to change this, nobody, even if you are a mercenary or you are a cynic king from a foreign country.

One year later, we remember you and we never forget you because we don't need anything more than our memories and our hearts to keep your memory forever.

Today, The Grandma is resting at home. She's preparing her new activities for next months and it means lots of hours of work. Before organizing her future, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 51).

More information: Story Nory 

The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthur's fabulous retinue. The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time; by the close of the 12th century it had come to represent the chivalric order associated with Arthur's court, the Knights of the Round Table.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

Though the Round Table itself is not mentioned, the concept of Arthur havinga marvelous court made up of many prominent warriors is much older. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth says that after establishing peace throughout Britain, Arthur increased his personal entourage by inviting very distinguished men from far-distant kingdoms to join it. The code of chivalry so important in later romance figures in as well, as Geoffrey says Arthur established such a code of courtliness in his household that he inspired peoples living far away to imitate him.

Long before Geoffrey, Arthur's court was well known to Welsh storytellers; in the romance Culhwch and Olwen, written around 1100, the protagonist Culhwch invokes the names of 225 individuals affiliated with Arthur

More information: King Arthur's Knights

In fact, the fame of Arthur's entourage became so prominent in Welsh tradition that in the later additions to the Welsh Triads, the formula tying named individuals to Arthur's Court in the triad titles began to supersede the older Island of Britain formula.

Though the code of chivalry crucial to later continental romances dealing with the Round Table is mostly absent from the earlier Welsh material, some passages of Culhwch and Olwen seem to prefigure it, for instance when Arthur explains the ethos of his court, saying [w]e are nobles as long as we are sought out: the greater the bounty we may give, the greater our nobility, fame and honour.

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

Though no Round Table appears in the early Welsh texts, Arthur is associated with various items of household furniture.

The earliest of these is Saint Carannog's mystical floating altar in that saint's 12th century Vita; in the story Arthur has found the altar and attempts unsuccessfully to use it for a table, and returns it to Carannog in exchange for the saint ridding the land of a meddlesome dragon. Arthur's household furniture figures into local topographical folklore throughout Britain as early as the early 12th century, with various landmarks being named Arthur's Seat, Arthur's Oven, and Arthur's Bed-chamber.

A henge at Eamont Bridge near Penrith, Cumbria is known as King Arthur's Round Table. The still-visible Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon has been associated with the Round Table and has been suggested as a possible source for the legend.

More information: Britannica

Following archaeological discoveries at the Roman ruins in Chester, some writers suggested that the Chester Roman Amphitheatre was the true prototype of the Round Table, but the English Heritage Commission, acting as consultants to a History Channel documentary in which the claim was made, declared that there was no archaeological basis to the story.

The Round Table first appeared in Wace's Roman de Brut, a Norman language adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae finished in 1155. Wace says Arthur created the Round Table to prevent quarrels among his barons, none of whom would accept a lower place than the others. Layamon added to the story when he adapted Wace's work into the Middle English Brut in the early 13th century, saying that the quarrel between Arthur's vassals led to violence at a Yuletide feast. 

The Knights of the Round Table Tapestry

In response a Cornish carpenter built an enormous but easily transportable Round Table to prevent further dispute. Wace claims he was not the source of the Round Table; both he and Layamon credited it instead to the Bretons.

Some scholars have doubted this claim, while others believe it may be true. There is some similarity between the chroniclers' description of the Round Table and a custom recorded in Celtic stories, in which warriors sit in a circle around the king or lead warrior, in some cases feuding over the order of precedence as in Layamon. There is a possibility that Wace, contrary to his own claims, derived Arthur's round table not from any Breton source, but rather from medieval biographies of Charlemagne, notably Einhard's Vita Caroli and Notker the Stammerer's De Carolo Magno, in which the king is said to have possessed a round table decorated with a map of Rome.

More information: Ancient Fortresses

The Round Table takes on new dimensions in the romances of the late 12th and early 13th century, where it becomes a symbol of the famed order of chivalry which flourishes under Arthur. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, written around the 1190s, the wizard Merlin creates the Round Table in imitation of the table of the Last Supper and of Joseph of Arimathea's Holy Grail table.

This table, here made for Arthur's father Uther Pendragon rather than Arthur himself, has twelve seats and one empty place to mark the betrayal of Judas. This seat must remain empty until the coming of the knight who will achieve the Grail.

The Round Table at Winchester

The Didot Perceval, a prose continuation of Robert's work, takes up the story, and the knight Percival sits in the seat and initiates the Grail quest. The prose cycles of the 13th century, the Lancelot-Grail cycle and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, further adapt the chivalric attributes of the Round Table. Here it is the perfect knight Galahad, rather than Percival, who assumes the empty seat, now called the Siege Perilous.  

Galahad's arrival marks the start of the Grail quest as well as the end of the Arthurian era. In these works the Round Table is kept by King Leodegrance of Cameliard after Uther's death; Arthur inherits it when he marries Leodegrance's daughter Guinevere. Other versions treat the Round Table differently, for instance Arthurian works from Italy often distinguish between the Old Table of Uther's time and Arthur's New Table.

The artifact known as the Winchester Round Table, a large tabletop hanging in Winchester Castle bearing the names of various knights of Arthur's court, was probably created for a Round Table tournament. The current paintwork is late; it was done by order of Henry VIII of England for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's 1522 state visit, and depicts Henry himself sitting in Arthur's seat above a Tudor rose. 

The table itself is considerably older; dendrochronology calculates the date of construction to 1250–1280, during the reign of Edward I, using timber from store felled over a period of years. Edward was an Arthurian enthusiast who attended at least five Round Tables and hosted one himself in 1299, which may have been the occasion for the creation of the Winchester Round Table. Martin Biddle, from an examination of Edward's financial accounts, links it instead with a tournament Edward held near Winchester on April 20, 1290, to mark the betrothal of one of his daughters.

More information: Study

Knights! The gift of freedom is yours by right. 

But the home we seek resides not in some distant land. 

It's in us! And in our actions on this day! 

If this be our destiny, then so be it. 

But let history remember that as free men, we chose to make it so. 

King Arthur