![]() ''I think the medieval person would have said much the same about Arthur`s Britain,'' Ashe says. We know, too, that the legends about them go far beyond the truth, but we don`t much care. So it`s very hard to work back.''īut suppose that people in medieval times regarded their legends much the same as we do those of the American Wild West: We know there was a Calamity Jane, a Wyatt Earp, a Davy Crockett. They updated everything, not just Arthur. In the Middle Ages they weren`t interested in authenticity they put things in terms of their own. Writers of fiction in the Middle Ages had quite a different approach from the modern historical novelists, who seek after authenticity-who try to get it right. In tracing the legend of Arthur, Ashe says, ''we come to a very curious difficulty. ''only six or seven, actually,'' he says in a voice that rises and falls with inflections reminiscent of Rex Harrison. Of his 19 books (including ''The Quest for Arthur`s Britain,'' just reissued as a paperback by Academy Chicago Press), those having to do with Arthur number and taught management studies at the Polytechnic in London. He even served for a time as a consultant to the Ford Motor Co. ![]() ![]() A graduate of the University of British Columbia and of Cambridge (with First Class Honors in English), he never was a full-time academic, and the legend of Arthur is but one of his diverse interests. Geoffrey Ashe himself didn`t much care for many years. ![]()
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