“By reason of Arthur's position as its climax as well as of the long line of other traditional heroes, events and associations, and of its breadth of treatment, simplicity, intensity, enthusiasm, accord with the supernatural, vitality of imagination, elevation and sometimes nobility and religious feeling, the poem is the nearest thing we have to a traditional racial epic.”

—  Layamon

J. S. P. Tatlock The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950) p. 485.
Criticism

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