Thirteen centuries, twelve hands
Not a timeline of the story — the story has no dates — but of the writing. This is when each of these books was made, and by whom, and it is the single most useful thing to have in your head when the versions start contradicting each other.
Two facts jump out. Almost everything happens in a burst of about eighty years around 1200. And the most famous single scene in the legend, the sword in the stone, is not in the book that invented King Arthur — it arrives three centuries later.
- Geoffreyc. 1100–11551136the founder
- The Chroniclersc. 540 – c. 12001155the pseudo-historical spine
- Chrétienc. 1135–11901180the inventor
- The Mabinogioncollected 12th–14th c., from older matter1200the Celtic root
- Wolframc. 1170–12201205the humanist
- Gottfriedd. c. 12101210the fatalist
- The Grail Romancesc. 1200–12301220the judging Grail and the violent one
- The Vulgatec. 1215–12351225the systematiser
- The Mortesc. 1350–14001375the English route to the fall
- The Gawain Romanceslate 14th–15th c.1390the code on trial in one man
- Maloryc. 1415–14711469the keystone
- Tennyson1809–18921859the reception
The burst around 1200
Between roughly 1155 and 1235 almost every load-bearing element of the legend is invented or fixed. Wace makes the Round Table in 1155. Chrétien invents Arthurian romance, the Lancelot–Guinevere love and the Grail between about 1170 and 1190. Wolfram and Gottfried are writing in German around 1205–1210. The Vulgate cycle is assembled between about 1215 and 1235, and the Queste lands in the middle of it.
Everything before that is chronicle, and everything after it — including Malory, three centuries later, and Tennyson, three centuries after him — is working with material that was settled in those eighty years.
How far the confidence outruns the evidence
Gildas writes within living memory of Badon and names no Arthur. Nennius, three centuries later, credits him with twelve battles and nine hundred and forty men killed by his own hand. Geoffrey, three centuries after that, gives him a genealogy from Troy, a court, a conquest of Europe and a prophet.
The record does not get better as it goes. It gets longer.The silence of Gildas →