Our mythic selves ...

... The Death of King Arthur and Seeing Stars - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Armitage's Arthur arrives not from the version compiled by Sir Thomas Malory in the 15th century, but from an earlier work, an alliterative version of his legend penned by an anonymous scribe. Not that this should be mistaken for a more original version of the myth than Malory's, -- by the time this scribe wrote these words, written myths of King Arthur had been in the British Isles for three hundred years. This poem's language is threaded with French; the quintessentially English tale has already been rewoven in the weft of a romantic tradition.