The Case for King Arthur
Often dismissed as a myth, was there a real man behind the legend of King Arthur?
Most historians would probably say that King Arthur was just a myth. This consensus was established in 1977 in a brilliant paper by David Dumville, in which he argued that the main sources for a historical Arthur – an actual person, rather than a myth – were either written retrospectively, or were pseudohistory, fiction masquerading as fact. He was almost certainly correct, but does that necessarily rule out a historical Arthur behind the later legend?
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