Грани рыцарства : несколько слов о судьбе артуровских мифов

The article deals with the characters from the Arthurian cycle in the light of some peculiarities of their existence nowadays. These characters have been retaining important significance during many centuries already. The author makes an attempt to trace the reception of the Arthurian characters under the influence of the changes of society's consciousness and then points out a distinguishing feature of their today's depicting, which consists in the parody viewpoint. The main attention is given to the trend of portraying legendary characters in a comic vein. From this point of view the author compares the two examples of such transformations: J. B. Priestley's novel The Thirty-First of June (1961) and its reception in the Russian (Soviet) film with the same title (1978). This trend seems to be ambiguous. On the one hand, it corresponds to the need of humor, irony and satire in literature. On the other hand, this trend can narrow the range of these characters' reception so that their archetypal potential becomes less active and can't be realized in full measure.