The pleasures we take in King Arthur-and the popularity of literary renditions of Arthurian tradition-are as visible as they ever were. And yet, the fact that Arthurian texts delight us, whether or not they offer edifying wisdom, the fact, in other words that Arthur's pleasures and our pleasures in Arthur remain on regular display has sometimes seemed to raise problems for those working in the field.1 One need recall only the massive quantities of ink spilled over the Wife of Bath's Arthurian tale as 'wish fulfillment,' the condescension read into Chaucer's painting of tale with teller, to hint at scholarly discomfort with the enjoyment of Arthurian material. Of course, there is a long medieval tradition, dating back at least to William of Malmesbury, of discomfort with the overweening pleasures expressed by Arthur's devotees, and of the 'trifles' and 'ravings' produced about him. Passionately convinced of Arthur's worth as historical figure, Malmesbury nonetheless frets over the misguided, mad, undisciplined manner in which he is remembered. Arthur is 'not to be dreamed in false myths,' nor 'raved' about in 'trifles,' but 'proclaimed in truthfull histories.'2 Malmesbury particular gripe is, of course, with the Welsh Bristons; his critique has his own material history, one that I have discussed elsewhere and is outside the limits of my topic here. Yet I raise it so as to stress the ways in which the specter of mad or trifling pleasures associated with Arthur have long been the focus of anxiety about the propriety, the righteousness, or the moderation of our responses to stories about him. That is, of course, both the blessing and the curse of Arthutrian Studies. I will outline briefly what I take to be the current stakes in this longstanding anxiety, and how it might help to explain the production of 'invisibilities' that are the subject of our current conversation. One problem has of course to do with the capacious quality of Arthurian material, a tradition that is varied, diffuse, and controversial. On the one hand, the diversity of the tradition puts special pressure on questions of audience and scenes of reading; on the other, some uses of things Arthurian continue to be controversial, and are regularly, if at times rightly, critiqued as ideologically suspect. While nearly every Arthurian text has its own array of devoted readers, some are nonetheless ready to run to the barricades over whether Thomas Malory, Geoffery of Monmouth, or Marion Zimmer Bradley misremember Arthur's best attributes, or mistreat the tradition is irritating ways (the elegant poetry of Chretien de Troyes or the sparky prose of T.H. White alone seem able to escape such critique). Furthermore, Arthur's crossover appeal, whether temporal (medieval or postmodern), linguistic (Latin, French, Welsh, Middle English, to name only a few), or cultural (deployed both by sovereign power and in resistance to it) means that the pleasures of tales of Arthur extend beyond a canon that is easily controlled or even managed. To some, it may seem, readers find Arthur and his knights too captivating, too entrancing; we might, that is, be too easily seduced into the apparently light and easy pleasures of Arthurian fantasy. Over thirty years ago, Stephen Knight's fascinating materialist account of Arthurian Romance read the genre's persistent interest in fantasy and magic as ideological, a vehicle for false consciousness, a flight from materialist hard-thinking.3 Approaches like Knight's constitute important ideology critiques, interventions into our understanding of power, class, and history. Yet they nonetheless imply the critical superiority of texts and traditions that do not indulge quite so obviously in such fancies. Nicola MacDonald has recently made a similar point with regard to the scholarly condescension toward popular culture generally: 'The view that popular culture serves as as opiate is widely held by critics who otherwise adhere to divergent theoretical schools. …