Unbreakable Codes

My Thesis

I would just like to make a few comments here. First of all, I hope you find my thesis as interesting as I did. I put a lot of work into it and I hope you get a lot out of it. If you find any errors, they are probably the fault of the RTF to HTML converter I used. Still, I'd like to know about them, so if you find errors or have any questions, comments, or criticisms, all are welcomed; please simply e-mail me at levins@westnet.com.

There are several links, and more may be added to link to the bibliography. However, since the biblio and the footnotes (which are the links already present) are in this document, it may take a while to go to them. I may separate them into separate docs to make the links quicker, but otherwise your best bet (unless your system is caching) would be to wait until the end to read the notes (there are only six of them) and the biblio.

As for the legal stuff, the thesis is copyrighted, so please respect my work. I give permission for anyone to quote parts of the thesis as long as you properly note it using an accepted notation style. You may use an entire copy of it as long as (1) you DO NOT alter this text AT ALL and you include it in its entirety, (2) you give me proper credit for the work, and (3) you do not charge for its distribution in any way. If you have any specific questions about using it or distributing it, I encourage you to e-mail me at levins@westnet.com.

I would like to thank Kaviyd@aol.com for pointing out a small error that wasn't caught by me nor by my two editors (wife and professor). In the section entitled The early works and the history, 22nd paragraph, just after the second footnote, there appears the statement

Gildas wrote around 540, and said that the Battle of Mount Badon occurred 44 years previously, putting the death in 496.

This clearly implies that Arthur died in the Battle of Mount Badon, which of course is not the case, or rather is never implied in any of the works studied for the thesis. Having written it several years ago, I can't honestly remember what I was thinking when I wrote it. Suffice it to say that I apologize for the small error, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the work.

Also, I'd like to recognize Stefanie Piel over in Germany -- she's doing some graduate work and as her project she chose to translate part of this thesis into German. I hope to include her work here with mine when she's finished. Of course, by carefully translating, she's managed to find another mistake. Again in The early works and the history, in the ninth indented quote beginning "Not once but three times...", in the next-to-the-last sentence I make note of the "...report of Modred's reason". That should, of course, read, "...report of Modred's treason...".

Because Stefanie is doing such in-depth work, she's finding a lot of stuff, including places where I could have been more clear. Again in The early works..., paragraph 14, the second sentence should read, "The Welsh material, thought to be an important base for Geoffrey's work, does not account for more than one fifth...".

Another error: thanks to Christopher Webster Peck for finding this one. It's in paragraph 5 of "The middle works...". The word "impressi ve" has an extra space in it.

Thanks,

Adam

King Arthur's Death in Legend, History and Literature

by Adam Levin (c) 1994

A Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Stevens Institute of

Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Bachelor of Arts

_____________________________

Adam Levin, Candidate

_____________________________

Dr. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi

Thesis Advisor

Stevens Institute of Technology

Castle Point on the Hudson, Hoboken, New Jersey

1994

Thesis Abstract:

King Arthur's Death in Legend, History and Literature

Stevens Institute of Technology, Spring, 1994.

Adam Levin,

Thesis Candidate

Dr. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi,

Thesis Advisor

From the very beginning of English Literature there have been legends of great heroes and powerful kings. King Arthur is perhaps the best known and most loved of all of these legendary figures.

This thesis explores one small aspect of the plethora of works about King Arthur and his knights. Specifically, this thesis examines Arthur's death in several different versions of his legend spanning almost ten centuries.

The first section examines the earliest Latin works, starting with the monks Gildas, Bede, and Nennius, writing in A.D. 540, 731 and 800, respectively. Then, the Annales Cambriae of 960 are examined, followed by William of Malmesbury's work in 1125.

The majority of the first section is made up of a discussion of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae written c. 1136. The discussion includes an historical perspective studied in depth by one of Arthuriana's most prolific writers of the twentieth century, Geoffrey Ashe. Ashe explores the possible historicity of his namesake's chief character, attempting to show a correspondence between Arthur's actions and the actions of a fifth century "King of the Britons" named Riothamus.

The later works discussed in this thesis include the English priest Layamon's translation and expansion of the Frenchman Wace's reworking of Geoffrey's Historia. Layamon's work is followed by a discussion of the Vulgate Cycle, also known as the Prose Lancelot for its focus on Sir Lancelot du Lac and because it is written in prose instead of poetry. The last work discussed is the Alliterative Morte Arthure, a Middle English