Norma Lorre Goodrich

Norma Therese Falby (May 10, 1917 – September 19, 2006) — pen name Norma Lorre Goodrich — was an American professor of French, comparative literature and writing who taught in the University of Southern California and Claremont Colleges for 45 years and published several popular books on Arthuriana.

Goodrich was noted for her thesis, first presented in a 1986 book titled King Arthur, that the legendary monarch was not a myth, but a real person, who lived not in England or Wales, as conventionally understood, but in Scotland. In her interpretation, Queen Guinevere was a Pictish queen, and Sir Lancelot a Scottish king. Her methodology involved back-translating Latin place names found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae to what she believed to be their Celtic originals. Her findings have not been accepted by Galfridian scholars.

Discussion of her work In 1986, she held the post professor emerita at the Claremont Colleges and told a Los Angeles Times reporter that she had discovered a void in Arthurian scholarship: “All the books on Arthur have been on the mythology, the legend,” but not the history. (Of course, this was not true; many books had already investigated the “historical Arthur”.) Goodrich traveled extensively in Britain and France and laid claim to having mastered several ancient and modern languages. She claimed that the 12th century pseudo-historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth thought that Arthur had been in Scotland, not England, hiding this by naming Arthur's battles in Latin rather than Scots Gaelic. “When I finally figured out what he was doing, I translated the Latin back into Gaelic,” Goodrich told the Riverside Press-Enterprise in 1994.

Reviewing "Heroines", noting that the book is mainly useful for anyone interested in her views, A. J. Sobczak wrote:

Final years

Her husband John died in February 1995 at the age of 77. Goodrich died on September 19, 2006, of natural causes at her home in Claremont, California. Her obituary in the Los Angeles Times stated that "the fact that her King Arthur findings contradicted those of other scholars did not trouble Goodrich".

Works Myths of the Hero (1960) The Ancient Myths (1960; PB: Mentor, New American Library) Medieval Myths Revised/expanded edition (1977) Le Morte D'Arthur, abridged and introduced by Norma Lorre Goodrich (1963; Washington Square Press) Charles, Duke of Orleans: Poet and Prince (1963; Macmillan Company) The Ways of Love: Eleven Romances of Medieval France (1965; George Allen & Unwin) Charles of Orleans: A Study of His French and His English Poetry (1967; Geneva: Libraire Droz) Giono: Master of Fictional Modes (1973; Princeton University Press) King Arthur (1986) Priestesses (1989) Merlin (1987; PB 1989: HarperPerennial) Guinevere (1992, Franklin Watts; PB: HarperPerennial) The Holy Grail (1992, HarperCollins) Heroines: Demigoddess, Prima Donna, Movie Star (1994) The Doctor and Maria Theresa Charlemagne The Jungle of Academe: The Poetry of Norma Lorre Goodrich (2013; Compiled by Andrew Whitenack)