The concepts of “cruelty” and “mercy” in the transformation of King Arthur’s image

Legends and myths about King Arthur have always been relevant research objects from the point of view of mythology, literature and cultural processes.

According to A. A. Sharapkova, King Arthur - the hero of numerous fairy tales, legends, stories, embodied in chronicles, novels and films – is a crucial phenomenon for the Anglo-Saxon linguoculture. His personality – the core of a mythological complex, originated in Celtic mythology and enriched with German ideas - exists today in a new socio-cultural environment. His image is a single multi-level mythologically structured artistic and non-artistic reality, thanks to which he functions in human society, each time anew in a new era [3, p. 5]. The figure of Arthur has a general and structured set of characteristics that are either permanent or added in later texts. New characteristic features influenced the reader's perception of ''the once and future king''. The significance of King Arthur's myth for the English-speaking linguoculture can be demonstrated by the Anglo-Saxon fairy discourse diagram where legends about King Arthur take the first place [1, p. 39].

Fig. The fairy discourse of Anglo-Saxon linguoculture

The concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy", having their own trends and forms of existence in long-term evolution based on linguistic data, have not been considered previously as characteristic features of King Arthur's image. "Mercy" and "cruelty" are semantically conjugated constants of a person's inner world, conceptualized from the position of an English-speaking person. According to Kulikova L.V., in the English-speaking consciousness, they represent value and anti-value, corresponding to the moral and spiritual state of a person and his/her subjective social attitude and behavior, changing their roles depending on the era and surrounding circumstances [2, p. 5]. The basic concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy" recreating a fragment of the English-language world's picture associated with the idea of the inner world of a person.

The aim of this article is to show the results of the study devoted to the concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy" in the linguocultural, socio-cultural and artistic-literary discourse through the transformation of the image of Arthur. The analyzed literary works belong to different eras. The most archaic King Arthur's image presented "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("The History of the Kings of Britain"), written by Geoffrey of Monmouth [4], which is a significant work of medieval literature and contains the first consistent story about Arthur's life. No less significant work for world culture is "Le Morte d'Arthur" ("The Death of Arthur") - the final work of Arthurian cycle, the collection of chivalrous novels compiled and processed with the introduction of some fictional episodes in the second third of the 15th century, written in late Middle English By Thomas Malory [5], and published by William Caxton in 1845. As one of the later works about Arthur used "The Candle in the Wind" from tetralogy of Terence White "The Once and Future King" [6], which is a paraphrase of "Le Morte d'Arthur", an interpretation of legends.

The study was based on the theoretical works of Sharapkova A.A., and Simon Young [7]- British expert on the History of Celtic folklore. The appealing to the theories of several human studies' areas, such as philology, cognitive linguistics, philosophy and psychology, allowed to expand the methodological framework of the research and to write the evolution of myth into the context of human consciousness' development, the intertextuality theory's development, the history of language and culturally significant concepts. At the same time, the main categorical research's terms were the concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy", and a combination of a comprehensive philological analysis of artistic works and a conceptual analysis has served as the methodological basis. While considering the concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy", special attention was paid to the situations in which these concepts were implemented.

Comprehensive philological and conceptual analysis of the texts about the legendary King involved the following tasks:

• determination of these concepts' features in literature, their interaction with the human creative consciousness, language and discourse;
• consideration of the concepts' development in the literary works about King Arthur of different genres: legend, historical chronicles, novel, etc.;
• consideration of the "cruelty" and "mercy" 's concepts' linguistic features in all analyzed texts, taking into account the linguistic and stylistic features of the linguistic units, their functioning within the framework of art's entire work, noting the historical, social and cultural processes affecting them;
• highlighting the situations that serve as an example of the studied concepts and the verbalizing these concepts linguistic units' implementation;
• comparison of the data on the "cruelty" and "mercy"'s concepts' structure and their modification, formulating the general features of the concepts' evolution in English culture and history.

Based on the results obtained, the following conclusions were drawn:

1. The evolution of the concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy" of such a complex and multifaceted image as King Arthur undergoes certain stages:

• the formation of a common field - the image (to this one can include historical evidence about Arthur, the folklore that precedes "The History of the Kings of Britain");
• primary structured concepts ("The History of the Kings of Britain");
• developed concepts, sometimes complementing each other (the novels of T. Malory and T. White).

2. The research identified three reasons for the functioning of the concept of "cruelty" by King Arthur:

• military actions (Saxons [4, p. 232-233], Rome and its allies [4, p. 266]);
• penalty for treason (Guinevere, Lancelot [6]);
• forced necessity (ship with children [6, p. 340]).

And three reasons for the functioning of the concept of "mercy":

• a) mercy to the enemies (Roman Duchess and her city [5, p. 110], Picts and Scots [4, p. 236]);
• b) forgiveness of traitors (Accolon [5, p. 83]);
• c) the feeling of guilt (Mordred [6, p. 341]).

3. According to Young S., for British culture, Arthur has the same meaning as the Messiah for Christian Europe in cultural and literary terms [7, p. 212-216]. But for the British Celts at that time, he was definitely not the kind and merciful ruler that modern mass media and traditional cult works about King Arthur show us. The kings of the same V-VI centuries lived in a very cruel and bloody time, so the Celts expected that Arthur would come to unite Britain and strike at the foreign invaders. The role of the Savior in their understanding is strength, determination, the ability to inspire fear and respect – mercy to his people and cruelty to strangers.

4. "Cruelty" and "mercy" in the image of Arthur are interrelated. Mercy and forgiveness replace cruelty and severe punishment, and vice versa, depending on the circumstances. Despite the obvious opposition of these concepts, the mutual intersection allows them to come closer, as a result of which their rigid opposition is erased in the image of the legendary King.

The significance of the study lies in the fact that it offers a refined structure of the concepts of "cruelty" and "mercy" in relation to their synchronous state and evolution, and we believe that this topic contributes to the theory of linguoculturology and has prospects for development in this area.

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