King Arthur [Paperback]

Norma L. Goodrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 1989

The many readers who are enthralled with the enduring legend of Camelot will be drawn to this fascinating book, which "may become the definitive work in the effort to prove the historical authenticity of King Arthur."--UPI

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Though Goodrich asserts that hers "is the first book to have explored very minutely and in the original languages both the historical and literary material concerning King Arthur," numerous Arthurian scholars have written similarly researched books with similar conclusions. Goodrich assumes ancient authors were accurate, and she has made the following findings: the real Arthur operated "between what is now Scotland and what is now England," rather than in the South; he died near Douglas; and Avalon was St. Patrick's Isle, near Man. Her romantic sensibilities skate over the treacherous evidence and find geographic certainties everywhere. Despite these drawbacks, this is enjoyable reading for the public library patron interested in King Arthur. Don Fry, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Norma Lorre Goodrich, Ph.D., K.C., FSA Scot, has been teaching for forty-five years and is a professor emeritus at the Claremont Colleges. She is the author of King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Heroines, Priestesses, Ancient Myths, and Medieval Myths. She lives in Claremont, California, with her husband.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; First Perennial Library Edition edition (January 4, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060971827
• ISBN-13: 978-0060971823
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,472,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pseudo-academic moonshine., September 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: King Arthur (Paperback)

For years, Norma Lorre Goodrich has tried to fleece an unsuspecting public with her absurd works of Arthurian pseudo-scholarship. Hundreds of books, articles, and conference presentations annually address the question of King Arthur; not all of them are wonderful, but among them are some real gems. However, since they're aimed at a scholarly audience, the public doesn't generally know about them, and Goodrich, realizing she can profit from the gullibility of people curious about King Arthur, comes along with her ersatz academic moonshine and nets lucrative book contracts.

Goodrich's most alarming fault is that she takes literature as history, leading to chapter after chapter of fiction, speculation, and wild conjecture. Goodrich's books are NOT the honest investigations of a scholar, and I urge people interested in King Arthur to talk to their English or history professors and discover books by historians, archaeologists, and literary historians who pursue the truth with objectivity and honesty.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Probably the very worst book available on this subject., October 11, 1998

By 

Nelson R. Willis "Rob Willis" (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: King Arthur (Paperback)

I'm not sure if this book even merits one star, but it was the lowest rating allowed by Amazon's format. Take it from a guy who has been studying this subject for years: this is probably the very worst book you can find on this subject. I am encouraged by the fact that some people recognize this, but I am equally dismayed that many people have been fooled into thinking that this and Goodrich's related books are good scholarship. While Goodrich may be highly intelligent and educated, she appears also to be out of touch with reality. I am not saying this to be mean or spiteful! That is simply my impression from watching her irresponsibly butcher and rewrite history with shameless abandon. There is a tenet which says that the most reliable interpretation of the evidence will almost always be the simplest, and this is the problem I have with Goodrich; her theories (which are really assumptions and presumptions) are so wacky and overly complicated that they appear to be the product of a mind which has blurred the line between history and fiction. She goes on and on and on and on, writing as if in a manic state, giving little clue as to where she's comming from or where she's going with her tedious, blow-by-blow analyses of medieval romances, which she then tries to pass off as scholarly proofs of her rediculous ideas. If that were not enough of a crime against historical scholarship, she then proceeds in her bibliography to viciously slander great scholars (such as Leslie Alcock and Geoffrey Ashe, whose books I've reviewed as well) and their excellent, ground-breaking research. I don't mean to be nasty about this, but as an avid ameteur historian with a passion for distinguishing good scholarship from the bad and the bogus, I feel it is my duty to warn readers and publishers that it is easy to mistake this sort of work as scholarly if you don't already have a good background in this subject. I easily recognized the problems with this book because I've read a heap of books and articles on this subject over the years, but had this been the first book I had ever read on reconstructing a historical Arthur figure, I may have mistaken Gookrich's work as sound. To give an analogy, if you came across a book on American history whose maps portrayed not 13 colonies, but 6 principalities, and which told you that George Washington was not of Anglo stock, but Polish, and that his wife, Martha, was an Algonquin, etc. would you not have to ask yourself where the author came up with such ideas and why he or she is so blatantly contradicting data common to all other books on the subject without even properly explaining why? This is exactly what Goodrich does. She says that Arthur was Gaelic and that Guinevere was a Pict, while all the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Arthur (and Gwenhwyvaer, if she really existed) was (were) Romano-British (i.e. Welsh). Her maps also carve Britain up in ways which are incompatable with what is known of the dark-age kingdoms. Really, there are so very many superior books available on this topic to get you going in the right direction if you are interested in learning about it. If you don't already have a good background in this, a book like this can only serve to mislead and misinform. If it were being marketed as fiction instead of history, there would be no need to criticize it so harshly. I could only recomend it to someone, who already had a strong background in this area, for laughs.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buyer beware!, July 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: King Arthur (Paperback)

The notion that the legends of King Arthur were impacted by history from northern Britain is a completely defensible position with a great deal of research and archaeological evidence to support it. Unfortunately, Dr. Goodrich seems to be oblivious to what Arthurian scholars are doing even though she cites several of their books in her bibliography. The text is riddled with errors, inaccuracies and misrepresentations. In the first few pages Dr. Goodrich claims that she is the first to offer proof of an historical Arthur (She needs to recheck her bibliography.), accepts a twelfth-century forgery as an actual relic (the infamous Excalibur forgery), accepts proof on the basis of etymology alone, decides it's important that we don't know precisely how to spell Guinevere's name (Spelling wasn't standardized until well after the Middle Ages and names continued to vary long after that.), says that Thesus pulled a sword from a stone (He didn't.), ignores the possibility of &! ! quot;Artorius" as an origin for Arthur's name, and claims that Gildas "first testified to the historicity of Arthur" (Gildas's failure to mention Arthur is one of the major arguments against his historicity.). The rest of the book is no better. Educators should be familiar with the text so that they know where students' erroneous ideas about Arthur come from, but the book should definitely be read with the idea that Dr. Goodrich is presenting fiction, not fact.