The Round Table Enters Arthurian Tradition

The Round Table became part of Arthurian tradition through twelfth-century literary development. Wace’s Roman de Brut, written in Anglo-Norman French, helped popularise the image of a circular table around which Arthur’s great knights could sit without a hierarchy of higher and lower places.

The motif became one of the most recognisable symbols of Camelot, although it belongs to a later literary layer than the earliest surviving references to Arthur.

Source trail: Wace, Roman de Brut; British Library and Arthurian literary scholarship.

Related Journal record: Legend of King Arthur.