Arthur's Knights Research Articles

Petrine Failings and Broken Pentangles: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ’s Chivalric Felix Culpa

Abstract In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, supernatural testers disrupt both Arthur’s court and the interlocked perfections of the Pentangle, weighing Gawain and finding him wanting. Gawain’s failure, moreover, foregrounds the human need for grace and forgiveness, demonstrating both the impossibility of human perfection and the humanity of imperfections redeemed. This essay explores the semi-typological relationship between Gawain and St Peter, arguing that the likenesses between the Arthurian knight and Christ’s disciple effectively reinforce the poem’s message that failings are inevitable in a post-lapsarian world, but that those errors can yet be mercifully and graciously redeemed. Gawain’s fairy-wrought ‘fall’ from excellence is, it turns out, a happy one – a chivalric felix culpa that makes room for the forgiveness and recovery of knightly failings.

The Transmedial Knights of the Round Table: Character-Based Worldbuilding in the Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes

Abstract The five Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes were hugely influential in establishing King Arthur’s world as one that could easily expand to include the adventures of a seemingly endless group of chivalric heroes. Chrétien’s use of character details to connect his romances and suggest a shared fictional world inspired other romance writers as well as medieval translators, illustrators, and manuscript copyists and compilers. The result was a multimedia Arthurian universe akin to the modern narratological concept of the transmedial storyworld. This storyworld relied on the recognisability of the Arthurian knights as characters and existed in many different forms across written and visual media, including the unique combinations of text and image that appear in different manuscript witnesses of Chrétien’s romances. Emphasising the utility of both individual manuscripts and modern narratology, this article investigates three manuscripts that contain romances by Chrétien: Paris, BNF fr. 1450, Paris, BNF fr. 1433, and Montpellier, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire, H 249. Through examining the distinct arrangement, editing, and decorative choices in these manuscripts, I argue that they illustrate the potential of character as a means of worldbuilding, not only for medieval authors but also for other creators and audiences.

Who is Asking?: Afro-Arthurian Legend-making in N.K. Jemisin's Far Sector

Abstract: Whether an Arthurian knight, a Green Lantern, or a Legendborn, one cannot have a legacy without first becoming a legend. In N.K. Jemisin's graphic novel Far Sector (2020) Sojourner 'Jo' Muellein's story as both community activist and guardian echoes, reinvents, and reimagines Arthurian romances through the lens of Afrofuturism; further, this fantastical remix challenges white supremacist modes of oppressive comic tradition by foregrounding racial and gendered identities. Making a legend is not about whom society has agreed to be the answer. Instead, such ideals lie with whoever asks the question. (DCN)

Gawain, Race, and the Borders in The Turke and Sir Gawain 1

ABSTRACT This essay works through ideas of settler colonialism, displacement, and border-crossings in order to investigate the character of Gawain. The Middle English Romance, The Turke and Sir Gawain (TG), seems to follow Gawain as he learns to be a better knight and to uphold ideologies of inclusivity, courtesy, and virtue which appear to invite and accept difference. Nevertheless, Gawain’s attributes are also embedded in a borderland system in which Gawain, as a white borderland character, reinforces the status quo of the text in which Arthurian knights are the best knights and the Arthurian kingdom is expanded. The relation between and among “Gawain,” the “Turke,” and the “heathen soldan,” for example, serves to construct, deconstruct, and expand the borders of Arthur’s kingdom by racializing, erasing, and violently destroying both the “Turke” and “Soldan.” The Turke in particular is reborn as the Christian knight Sir Gromer.

Re-writing Old Testament legends in La Queste del Saint Graal

In this paper, I intend to present the way in which the Biblical stories and medieval legends are re-written in the episode of the Miraculous Ship in La Queste del Saint Graal, and to identify several characteristics of this vessel, considered ideal for the questers’ preparation for the ecstatic life in the presence of the Grail. The multi-layered symbolism of this miraculous self-moving ship is constantly enriched with new connotations, and from being a sacred place that offers the successful knights the opportunity to meditate on their spiritual life before reaching Sarras and the Holy Grail, it may also be regarded as a connector between the Old-Testament legends, Christian traditions and Arthurian lore. In addition, the focus of the story shifts from Arthurian adventures to the creation of a story of origin and Galahad is presented not only as the quintessential Arthurian knight, but also the rightful heir of mythical ancestors. More importantly, analysing the way in which some medieval texts are recycled in this fragment, the reader is astonished to find a very progressive re-writing of the well-known literary tradition, as it reveals a very appreciative portrayal of women’s agency and a tolerant attitude towards Jews (represented by Solomon). Both these aspects differ not only from the biblical perspective or dogmatic theories, but also from other 13th-century legends. Moreover, this inclusive approach to non-Christians is unique in the economy of La Queste.

Transformation in Chaucer’s the ‘Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), the Wife of Bath appears “as a woman of very strong opinions who believes firmly in marriage” and as well “in the need to manage husbands strictly” (Thornley & Gwyneth 1993, p.16), and hence her story is about an Arthurian knight who rapes a maiden and has to face the consequences of his deed. The pilgrims of Chaucer’s masterpiece undergo transformations, which are chronicled in this literary text. These transformations occur in a variety of forms and take different shapes. The Wife of Bath is one of these travellers. In the following discussion, I'll look at how the ‘Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale’ handles metamorphosis. By reading this article, readers will realize that transformation is not limited to the one of the hag that occurs at the end of the tale.

An Arthurian Knight in Ivory and Ink

Manuscript Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 12577 and ivory casket Musée du Louvre, OA 122, and are two of three extant fourteenth-century visualizations of Chrétien’s Le Conte du Graal, produced in Paris circa 1310-1330. Although the objects’ shared era of production suggests similarities of iconography, artistic influences, and production methods, little research has been conducted regarding visual and cultural connections between MS fr. 12577 and OA 122. Through iconographic and stylistic analysis of the scenes each artisan depicted within his respective medium, I elucidate how the casket and manuscript’s imagery personifies Perceval’s dual nature, a young knight symbolic of the secular and sacred. As visualizations of Chrétien’s most religiously-minded legend, MS fr. 12577 and OA 122 exemplify the intertwining of the sacred and secular within fourteenth-century French romantic art, specifically within illuminated manuscripts and carved ivory, materials that through their refinement, rarity, and expense, signified leisure, luxury, and nobility. By examining these two opulent objects, I provide insights into their purpose and significance in late medieval France, especially cultural crossover between the porous realms of sacred and secular medieval life.

Das Erbe des Lazarus

Abstract Following the resurrection of the Arthurian knight Erec at the castle of Limors, this article attempts to review the question of the religious ties of the courtly romance by investigating figurations of re-entering life. These typological ties, when considered in detail, turn out to be ambivalent precisely when the religious horizon appears particularly affirmative, as in the case of Limors. This gets especially palpable in connection with returnees who, like Lazarus and Erec, become ambiguous between religious wonder and judicial discussion. The article explores their interferences in a 13th-century Latin debate poem as well as in a key scene of the first vernacular Arthurian romance, which both equally glorify and disempower their heroes.

Castles and Space in Malory's Morte Darthur by Molly A. Martin

Reviewed by: Castles and Space in Malory's Morte Darthur by Molly A. Martin Marisa Mills Molly A. Martin, Castles and Space in Malory's Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer 2019) 305 pp., 8 ills. Centuries after its first printing, Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur continues to be a text of monumental influence, both upon Arthurian creators and scholars. T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958) and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon (1983) both draw influence from Malory's text, as did the muchlauded film Excalibur (1981). Even contemporary Arthurian re-imaginings such as Kiersten White's The Guinevere Deception (2019) still turn to Malory specifically for influence. Malory's text also proves still popular with Arthurian scholars, and despite a significant amount of criticism, Molly A. Martin's Castles and Space in Malory's Morte Darthur finds an unexplored avenue through which to view Malory's text. Martin's Castles and Space is the first monograph to examine Malory's work through the spatial framework of the castles that populate Morte's landscape. Martin's foreword begins with a concise introduction of castle studies and how academics—such as R. Allen Brown and P. A. Faulkner—contribute to a "shift away from the earlier school of castle studies" which primarily considers castles through their "military capabilities of various architectural features" (12). The shift Martin mentions opens discussions of castles as something more than a physical edifice in which one could live and be protected during times of war. Instead, Martin argues that castles serve a variety of functions beyond the concrete, and, in Malory's text, castles embody "a physical, a symbolic, and a social space" which "inflects the behaviors and identities that [the castle] frames" (11). The following chapters in Castles and Space examine how castles play a role in identity and analyze some of the castle's inherent contradictions within Malory's text. The first chapter, "Castles as Political Centers," analyzes how castles work to cement political identity. More specifically, this chapter examines how ownership—or lack thereof—of a castle relates to one's power. The bulk of the chapter focuses on King Arthur's early reign and his establishment of Camelot as his center of power. Arthur's castle "becomes a particularly powerful manifestation of authority as he builds, cements, and expands his empire and his ideological reach" (29). Arthur's castle serves both as a physical place to build his empire from and also as a foundation for a "more community-focused identity" that exhibits the values Arthur wishes for his kingdom and his knighthood to uphold (54). While most of Martin's first chapter examines Arthur's castle, she also considers the significance of other Malorian episodes, such as Uther Pendragon's sneaking into Tyntagil Castle and what this—and his rape of Igrayne—indicate about castles and power. Martin's second chapter, "Castles and Community Identity," explores how spaces within the castle create identity for the community. She examines the Round Table, both as an object given to Arthur as a wedding present from Lodegreauns, Gwenyver's father, and as symbolic of Arthur's knights. Here, the castle's interior serves as the "conjunction of space and communal identity" (63). Camelot is here specifically a space in which community exists. Martin also explores episodes wherein characters—such as Balyn, Gareth, and Launcelot—leave the communal center and venture elsewhere and examines the significance of community existing outside of communal spaces. [End Page 286] "Castles and Ritual," the third chapter, examines the castle as an "intersection of the secular and the sacred" (116). Christian holidays, especially Pentecost, play an integral role in Arthurian literature. It is famously Arthur's custom not to feast on Pentecost until he has witnessed a marvel, and, in Malory specifically, Pentecost is the holiday upon which Arthur's knights make the somewhat obviously named Pentecostal oath, which reiterates the values Arthur's knights are sworn to uphold. A good portion of Martin's third chapter focuses on Pentecost and the events that occur around this holiday, including Arthur's final pulling of the sword from the stone and subsequent acknowledgement of...

From Camelot to China, or, 'A History or Moral Tale about a Young Sir Gabein's Marvelous Adventures Illustrating Divine Providence'

This article offers the first English-language translation of Gabein, a hitherto unknown eighteenth-century Yiddish tale about Sir Gawain, in which the Arthurian knight becomes the Emperor of China. The accompanying scholarly introduction places the text into its larger context within Judaic culture, and European, Germanic, and Yiddish Arthuriana. (AO)

A Franconian Knight at King Arthur's Court: Regional Identity and Medieval Iconography in Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Glücksritters Wigalois (2011)

Wigalois, son of Gawein, is perhaps not the most famous of King Arthur's knights, but his story has been retold many times, in German and Yiddish, in medieval manuscript and modern forms. Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Glücksritters Wigalois () offers an adaptation of the Middle High German Wigalois (1210/20) as a graphic novel that provides a powerful example of reworking medieval texts for a younger and broader audience, both increasing the interest in medieval narratives and in the manuscripts as material objects. The theoretical framework of Adaptation Studies allows for a critical analysis of the text that does not assume the medieval Wigalois as original, best version of the text. The exploration of this graphic novel will also show, however, that its creators focus more on references to the Middle Ages than on the potential a new adaption offers and, in consequence, present their readers with a white‐washed version of the Middle Ages.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road As Apocalyptic Grail Narrative

I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing. --Cormac McCarthy, Whales and Men The Holy is a standard symbol the English language for an object of search far-off, mysterious, out of reach. --Dhira B. Mahoney, The Grail: A Casebook Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), with its ashen, post-apocalyptic landscape, seems a striking departure from the realism of earlier novels. Inspired part by grim images of wanderers biohazard suits or wearing masks and goggles like ruined aviators (The Road 51, 24), many critics identify the unnamed catastrophe that precipitates the novel as a nuclear holocaust (see e.g., Christman). McCarthy himself imagines the disaster to be a meteor strike, although he claims that his money is on humans destroying each other before an environmental catastrophe sets in (Kushner). Yet few critics have explored just how unusual the fantastic and futuristic landscape of The Road is. In an interview regarding the Coen brothers' film of 2005 novel No Country for Old Men, McCarthy claims that he prefers literary realism over more magical genres. [I]t's hard enough to get people to believe what you're trying to tell them without making it impossible, he says. You have to make it vaguely plausible (Grossman 63). While The Road does bear McCarthy's typical attention to accuracy all the minutiae of descriptions, the excesses of carnage and apocalyptic horror its pages may stretch the limits of credulity. In fact, one critic finds the world of the novel so sublimely damaged that it must have a cause, and he therefore concludes that The Road is a retelling of the Book of Revelation (Grindley 12). The fantastic elements the novel, however, are not supernatural allegory, but mythological motif. The novel's title an early draft was The Grail, (1) a title illustrative of the narrative arc which a dying father embarks on a quest to preserve son, whom he imagines as a chalice (McCarthy, The Road 64), the symbolic vessel of divine healing a realm blighted by some catastrophic disease. The motifs of the Waste Land, the dying Fisher King, and the potentially unattainable healing balm the cup of Christ provide particularly apt metaphors through which The Road examines pervasive apocalyptic fears order to explore if and how the human project may be preserved. It may be useful first to establish common grail motifs before investigating their application The Road. The principal early Grail texts fall into two general categories: chivalric romances about King Arthur's knights encountering the grail and histories of the grail from the time of Christ to its removal to Britain. The first category has been the most influential terms of those stories' impact upon subsequent literature. This category includes Chretien de Troyes' Conte del Graal, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, and the Queste del Saint Graal (Loomis 1). (See Loomis 2-4 and Weston 12-15.) The first two of these texts particular have as the quest hero the Arthurian knight Perceval, as well as the most common and consistent narrative tropes (Weston 15). In this storyline, Perceval is a young boy raised the wilderness by mother after knight-father's death battle. The wild, untrained boy one day sees some of Arthur's knights riding the woods. Captivated by the sight, he follows them to Arthur's court, leaving mother grief-stricken; she later dies of her grief. During journey, Perceval finds two men fishing a boat. One of the men is the Fisher King, who offers the boy hospitality for the night. At the Fisher King's castle, Perceval sees an older king dying of a grievous wound. Perceval fails to ask the right (a question relating either to what ails the older man, who is usually the Fisher King's father, or whom the grail serves). …

John David Rhodes. Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 288 pp.

Previous article No AccessThe CI ReviewJohn David Rhodes. Spectacle of Property: The House in American Film. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 288 pp.Pamela Robertson WojcikPamela Robertson Wojcik Search for more articles by this author Pamela Robertson Wojcik is professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. She is author of Fantasies of Neglect: Imaging the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction (2016), The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (2010), and Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (1996). She is editor of the Screening Spaces series at Palgrave, New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s (2011), Movie Acting: The Film Reader (2004), and, with Arthur Knight, Soundtrack Available: Essays on Film and Popular Music (2001).PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Critical Inquiry Volume 45, Number 1Autumn 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/699590 Views: 109Total views on this site © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Magic, Chivalry, and the Court

마법의 정체를 말하기는 어렵다. 그러나 중세 문헌을 살펴보면 마법에 대한 여러 신학적 염려에도 불구하고 마법의 힘을 지속적으로 믿어왔음을 보게 된다. 사실 마법은 정체와 본질을 정의하기 어려운데 이러한 애매성을 잘 활용하는 장르가 중세 로맨스라 할 수 있다. 중세 로맨스에서 마법은 가장 자주 등장하는 모티프 중 하나다. 중세 작가들은 마법의 애매성을 활용하여 당대 기사도와 궁정에 대한 자신들의 의견을 표출하고 기사 계급과 궁정의 주된 정치적, 문화적 관심사를 보여주는 계기로 삼는다. 본 논문에서는 특히 공식적인 재판에서 마법과 관련된 사건들이 자주 등장하던 14세기의 로맨스 중 『거웨인 경과 녹색 기사』와 가우어의 『연인의 고백』에 수록된 “플로 렌트 이야기”에 나타나는 마법의 요소들을 주로 검토한다. 두 작품에서는 서로 다른 방식으로 마법이 활용된다. 전자에서는 정치적 변동에 따라 기사들의 신분 이동이 이루어지던 당대의 역사적 상황을 암시하면서 당대 기사들의 지향점을 녹색 기사를 통 해 드러낸다. 또한 마법의 녹색 기사는 전복적 세력을 가시화하는 장치일 뿐이며 녹색 거들은 관계의 성격에 따라 새로운 의미를 갖게 된다는 의미의 유동성을 가장 잘 드러내는 장치이다. 후자에서는 리차드 2세 치하의 복잡한 정치적 변동 상황에서 기사 들이 해야 할 바가 무엇인가에 대한 가우어의 고민을 보여준다. 노파로 상징되는 마법의 타자성, 통제 불가능성은 철저하게 순치되고 기사도에서 가장 중요한 덕목은 용맹성이 아니라 순종으로 치환된다. 기사도 이념에 관해서는 두 작품 모두 전통적 이상과는 달라졌음을 암시한다. 표면적으로는 기사 계급이 계급으로서의 연대성을 지니고 있을지 모르지만 기사도 이념은 이제 당대의 정치적, 경제적 현실에 따라 새롭게 정의되고 기대되고 있음이 암시된다. 마법을 대면하여 처리하는 두 주인공 기사들의 모습은 전통적 이상과는 달라진 새롭게 정의된 기사도를 지향하는 궁정의 모습을 보여준다.This paper aims to examine the function of magic, which is one of the most distinguishing features of the romance genre. People in the Middle Ages believed in the efficacy of magic in their daily lives. Using familiar motifs of magic or supernatural elements, romance writers explore cultural and political concerns of the members of the contemporary court or the knightly class. The inscrutability, uncontrollability, unexpectedness, and otherworldliness inherent in magic give flexibility and hermeneutic freedom to romance writers. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and “The Tale of Florent” are good examples which use magical elements for different purposes. The response of the Arthurian knights to the Green Knight s entry and challenge is a good index to their valorization of the chivalrous ideal. The poet of the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows that chivalry in Gawain s court is a veneer and that the main concern of the knights is not honor earned in battles but title and endowment. In “The Tale of Florent” Gower incorporates the loathly lady motif in his exemplum originally intended as a work belonging to the “mirror for prince” genre. In the moment of the wish-fulfillment of the eponymous hero, magic whose embodiment is the loathly lady, for its uncontrollability, is suppressed, contained, and silenced to serve Gower s purpose. Romance is converted to an exemplum and the most important feature of a worthy knight is re-defined as obedience. These two works demonstrate that the concept of chivalry is changing in response to the concerns of the contemporary court.

RKO's Studio Archive: The Golden Years

RKO’s Studio ArchiveThe Golden Years Anthony Slide (bio), Richard Jewell (bio), and Robert Carringer (bio) What we consider to be the golden years at the RKO Studio Archive ran from 1960 to 1985. After the studio became inactive, the records were heaped together and deposited in an unused company property in West Hollywood. An unwavering dedication on the part of a veteran employee was largely responsible for the reconstruction of the archive. It was opened to general access in 1976. Scholarly research was fostered. As part of a general expansion into Hollywood product, Turner Broadcasting acquired major rights to the RKO film library in 1987 and split the archive into two parts, with the more substantial material moved to Atlanta and what remained donated to UCLA. ANTHONY SLIDE In the early 1970s, I worked at the American Film Institute (AFI) as associate film archivist, and once or twice a year I was sent out from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles to discuss film preservation topics with various individuals. Among the most helpful was Vernon Harbin (1909–88), one of the few surviving employees of RKO, who presided over a warehouse containing the studio’s archives at RKO General’s radio station, KHJ, at 141 S. Vermont Avenue. Each visit was both awe inspiring and frustrating, as Vernon showed off one treasure after another, none of which could be borrowed or copied. The location was nothing more than a huge warehouse space, with no modern library shelving and, of course, no computerized cataloging. Yet it all seemed neat and well arranged, demonstrative of the orderly mind of the man who had single-handedly undertaken its storage and arrangement. Vernon knew where to locate any item, however obscure, without the aid of a card index and could answer just about any question that might be asked on RKO history I once commented that the AFI wondered what had happened to a package of independently produced films that RKO had released and that seemed to have disappeared. Vernon took me over to a corner of the warehouse, pointed to various boxes sitting on the floor labeled “negative,” “master positive,” or “print,” and announced, “Here they are.” Vernon won the job because, when Howard Hughes began firing most of RKO’s personnel, he let go of the person responsible for renewing the studio’s copyrights. It was Vernon who had the audacity to point out how foolish this was. Thus, from a lowly position in the early 1930s signing Richard Dix’s name to fan photographs, he ended up as studio archivist. And he was a perfect archivist, as he was to prove later, when RKO laid him off as well and he joined the archival staff of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. He was always immensely helpful in identifying still photographs, a hard task when there is no indication as to either film title or player. Most importantly, Vernon was there to sort through the Paramount Script Collection, to put it into order ready for inventorying, and to remove duplicate scripts. It was a task that required a calm and ordered mind and the ability to work at a slow but steady pace. Vernon loved to talk about Hollywood from firsthand knowledge, and his stories often surprised, such as the time when he and his wife shared a lunch table at the Farmers Market with Vilma Bánky. They had casually bumped into the reclusive star, and Vernon deduced from her comments that she had been a secretary at Goldwyn. His kindness won many friends, including Ginger Rogers, who visited the archive regularly to consult her records and appreciated his cordial manner and deferential attention. She said at his memorial service, [End Page 75] “Vernon Harbin deserves his own Academy Award for keeping movie history alive.” It was claimed that KHJ’s call letters stood for Kindness, Happiness, and Joy. These are words that come to mind when remembering Vernon Harbin. RICHARD JEWELL I first became interested in the history of RKO as a graduate student at the USC Film School. My advisor, Arthur Knight, told me about Vernon Harbin, who had become custodian of the company’s records...

The Servants of Chivalry?: Dwarves and Porters in Malory and the Middle English Gawain Romances

This article explores the ways in which dwarves and porters are sources of information, and often, more specifically, of ethical advice and/or judgment. As masculine, non-chivalric servants, dwarves and porters are important to Arthurian epistemology—to what and how Arthurian knights, and readers of Arthurian romances, know—though not always in a comfortable way.

The Middle English Sir Degrevant and the Scottish Border

This article recovers the Scottish context of the Middle English Sir Degrevant, reading the main conflict of the poem against the backdrop of the Scottish Wars of Independence, which dominated life in the northern counties throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the poem was written. It explores the Scottish cultural identities of all three of the main characters of the poem, Degrevant, the earl, and Melidor through the material culture and custom of the poem, and reads the central conflict of the poem in light of the border raids. It argues that Degrevant is a latter-day incarnation of the Arthurian knight Agravain, a Scottish knight fighting for the English crown, while the earl is a Scottish border lord. Melidor’s own Scottish identity finds expression in her name as well as in her adherence to Scottish social custom.

The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest ed. by Kevin J. Harty (review)

KEVIN J. HARTY, ed., The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., Publishers, 2015. Pp. ix, 245. isbn: 978-0-7864-2 (pbk); 978-1-4766-2053-4 (ebook). $45; $29.99This book, rather like life, as defined in the memorable words of the forgettable Forrest Gump, is 'a box of chocolates,' because 'you never know what you are going to get.' Like that confection, this box of chocolates is varied, tasty, and full of surprises. If some of the treats are crunchier, some chewier than others (and some, perhaps, not quite everybody's favorite) that is simply to be expected in a sampler confected by such a variety of confiseurs.The essays consider films that date from the invention of film (Kevin J. Harty's 'Holy Grail, Silent Grail') to the first decade of the twenty-first century (The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice from 2008, discussed in David Marshall's 'Holy Grail, Schlocky Grail,' seems to be the most recent film considered in the volume). Thus, from Thomas Edison's 1904 attempt to film the Met's 1903 production of Parzifal to the films discussed in Marshall's essay, the volume covers over a century of cinematic Grails. The Grails are found in films of high art (Bresson's Lancelot) and low (Sandler's Waterboy), religious (The Silver Chalice) and secular (Monty Python and the Holy Grail), good and bad (you choose), and sometimes a Grail is found where there is scarcely a Grail to be seen (see Paul Sturtevant's ingenious essay, 'A Grail or a Mirage? Searching the Wasteland of The Road Warrior').The films in which an actual Grail is present are discussed by Kevin J. Harty, Kevin Whetter ('The Silver Chalice: The Once and Future Grail'), Raeleen Chai-Escholz and Jean-Marc Elscholz ('John Boorman's Excalibur and the Irrigating Light of the Grail'), and Joseph M. Sullivan ('A Son, His Father, Some Nazis and the Grail: Lucas and Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'). Harty provides an invaluable introduction to the earliest years of the Grail on film and the unsettling intrusion (covert and not) of Nazi ideology in some of these early films. Kevin Whetter introduces us to the first really bad blockbuster discussed in this collection, a film disowned by its own star, Paul Newman. Whetter also gives us the history of the first (and only) 'real Grail' discussed in the collection (although Harty's introduction discusses one of the other 'real Grails,' Valencia's prized 'santo caliz'), the Antioch Chalice, the discovery of which inspired Costain's novel, the film's source. The Elscholz and Elscholz essay provides a beautiful and illuminating discussion of the flowing, liquid light of the Grail, while Sullivan discusses a film in which the Grail intriguingly holds a position as a 'MacGuffin,' Hitchcock's infinitely malleable object. This MacGuffiny function raises the question of whether a grail needs to be sought, or even to exist, for a film to be considered a Grail film.Two essays in the collection address those Grail-less films in dramatically different ways. Joan Grimbert's elegant essay ('Lancelot du Lac: Robert Bresson's Arthurian Realism') considers a film in which the Grail is both absent and everywhere present, a Grail, in a sense, sous rature, in the phrase popularized by Heidegger and Derrida. In the Wasteland of Bresson's film, the Grail underlies the inexplicable loss experienced by Arthur's knights, who have not achieved the object of their quest, but seem unable to recall the notion of a Grail or even a quest. Viewed in this way, Bresson's Grail leads directly to his presentation of Lancelot as the knight. In a dramatically different way, Paul Sturtevant's essay ('A Grail or a Mirage? Searching the Wasteland of The Road Warrior') addresses a film with an unbearably present Wasteland that is as empty of anything Grail-like as it is of anything like a Grail hero. It, indeed, has Mel Gibson in impressive leather, but if he seeks for anything it is oil to fuel the film's remarkable vehicles; the medieval equivalent would have been, it would seem, the quest for hay. …

Paternal Instincts

Paternal Instincts

Gawain’s Girdle and Joseph’s Garment: Tokens of ‘Vntrawþe’

Abstract: Considering the correlation between the attempted seduction of Gawain by Lady Bertilak and the attempted seduction of Joseph of Egypt by Potiphar’s wife, there is a surprising void in scholarly analysis linking the Arthurian and biblical men who are each celebrated for virtue. With the exception of a footnote in 1961, this significant connection has been completely overlooked. This article identifies the similarities between the temptation stories of Gawain and Joseph, explores evidence of medieval knowledge about Joseph’s temptation, and suggests what conclusions might be drawn from this connection. The Gawain-poet was familiar with Joseph’s temptation story and, while omitting any direct references to Joseph of Egypt, the Gawain-poet associates Gawain’s temptation with Joseph’s. It is the exchange of the girdle that alerts readers to the fascinating connection to Joseph’s garment which changes hands when Joseph is tempted by Potiphar’s wife. The girdle is the key by which the Gawain-poet invites readers to recognize the similarities between the two virtuous men, as well as the differences, thus opening the way to an intriguing comparison and conclusion that the celebrated Arthurian knight falls short of the virtue exemplified by the righteous biblical Joseph.