Arthurian Story Research Articles

Le cri de la bête et la chute du géant : sons et mise à mort de l’adversaire dans l’aventure merveilleuse arthurienne

Cet article étudie la présence et le traitement du son dans la mise à mort de l’adversaire dans le roman arthurien. L’autrice établit tout d’abord une définition du topos, appuyée sur un large relevé d’occurrences, qui la conduit à voir dans la sonorisation de la mort de l’ennemi une variation d’un motif plus large et plus répandu. Elle étudie ensuite l’évolution de ce topos depuis les textes épiques jusqu’aux derniers romans. Elle remarque enfin la prégnance de ces sons dans une famille de récits dont les auteurs semblent chercher à perpétuer les premières formes du récit arthurien.

The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal and Antigone Regina

With The Lord’s Goodbye / Bertilak’s Ghazal, I wanted to give myself the challenge of incorporating the Arthurian legend into the Medieval Persian ghazal form. The ghazal’s stylistic characteristics are incredibly fascinating and unique compared to traditional Western forms, especially the rhyming patterns. I realised I also found this stylistic distinctiveness in Medieval poems, notably ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, with its unique alliterative form. This poem draws similarities between the themes generally explored in a ghazal (abandonment, love, and religious imagery) and the story of Sir Gawain. I created a deliberate ambiguity between the two female characters, respectively described as her and Her (the capitalisation reinforcing the religious aspects of the Virgin Mary, who has a major role in the poem). The erotic connotations of Gawain’s relationship with Bertilak also helped with adapting the ghazal to the Arthurian genre. Through this poem, I hope to illustrate the malleability of the myth; a modern Arthurian retelling could deal with queer themes and interpretations, for example, or explore its influence outside of the Western psyche from a non-European perspective. I wrote Antigone Regina to experiment with the triolet form and to expand on the father-daughter relationship in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. My favourite aspect of this form is the opportunity to make the same line take different meanings through the poem. The line ‘Oedipus’ grave and weeping blood’ plays on the word ‘grave’, hence the comma that appears in the last line. I also wanted to draw on the relationship that various retellings of the myth placed between humans and gods, as well as the role of ancestry and inheritance – not as a curse, but a fundamental part of human experience on both the individual and the societal level. Although this poem does not explicitly deal with the Arthurian story, it therefore still speaks of the role of poems as important reinterpretations of a myth.

Romantic Women Writers and Arthurian Legend: The Quest for Knowledge by Katie Garner

Reviewed by: Romantic Women Writers and Arthurian Legend: The Quest for Knowledge by Katie Garner Roger Simpson katie garner, Romantic Women Writers and Arthurian Legend: The Quest for Knowledge. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 311, 3 b/w illus. isbn: 978–1–137–59711–3 (cloth), isbn: 978–1–137–59712–0 (eBook). $119.99 (cloth), $89 (eBook). Katie Garner’s Romantic Women Writers and Arthurian Legend is a meticulous study of the subject between 1770 and 1850 in Britain. It builds soundly on findings by previous bibliographers, and it incorporates a great range of research from the last thirty years [End Page 93] covering the Arthurian Revival, antiquarianism, the Gothic Revival, romanticism, readership, travel writing, Welsh studies, gender studies and women’s writing. The introductory chapter outlines the background. As this period witnessed ‘an unprecedented number’ (pp. 1–2) of women entering print, and as many of them wrote about Arthurian subjects, Garner focuses on the ways in which women accessed the Arthurian legend. The Arthurian Revival in the late eighteenth century had required a wider and more coherent knowledge of the Arthurian story than was current. As manuscripts of medieval literature were virtually unknown, and as Malory had been out of print since 1634, the Revival depended on research by modern antiquarians. These were men, who moved in male cultural circles, and their findings were often published by antiquarian book clubs which denied membership to women. Even though the British Library was open to women, few made use of it, presumably because of social constraints. Moreover, Arthurian material was widely considered ‘immoral’ and unsuitable for female readers. Despite, or because of, these obstacles, women found other ways of becoming familiar with the Arthurian story and created a ‘distinct form’ (p. 10) of female Arthuriana. Garner’s five chapters make an intricate analysis and balanced appraisal of these issues. Her second chapter (‘Arthuriana for the “Fair Sex”’) highlights the bowdlerization of reading matter for women, and their wish not to appear overly emotional, hence their shift to ‘history’ rather than ‘romance.’ Male scholarly domination was partially offset by three female historians. Radagunda Roberts, for example, contributed a series of articles about Queen Consorts in the The Lady’s Magazine (1775) and included Guinevere among their number. Although Roberts’ source was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (a key text at this time), she re-assesses Guinevere’s role in a far better light. Susannah Dobson’s Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry (1784) drew on untapped medieval French sources, especially the Vulgate. And Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance (1785) influenced surveys by Walter Scott, John Moore, and Anna Barbauld. Undoubtedly many women were heavily indebted to Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which included six Arthurian poems and an essay on metrical romances, but his three-volume edition was expensive. An anonymous lady’s solution was Ancient Ballads (1807), which was cheaper but simpler (by omitting Percy’s footnotes) and also more ‘moral’—it was meant for ‘young ladies’ (p. 50)—by censoring ‘The Legend of King Arthur’ and omitting ‘The Boy and the Mantle.’ However, this edition was read profitably by Louisa Stuart Costello, prompting her poem ‘A Dream,’ a visionary glimpse of King Arthur, and thereby ‘highly symbolic of women’s compromised proximity to medieval texts’ (p. 53). But a key text, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, would become cheaply available in two editions in 1816 (with a dearer one in 1817), and a close knowledge of Malory was revealed by Costello, Caroline Norton, and Charlotte M. Yonge. Yet Malory remained unread by most women, perhaps because it was considered ‘a re-assertion of masculinity’ (p. 56). Their Arthurian focus would lie instead in Gothic verse, travel narratives, and literary annuals. Chapter Three (‘Women’s Gothic Verse and King Arthur’) points to the connection between medieval and modern romance, citing Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson’s ‘Gothic [End Page 94] trash’ (p. 73) chapbook tale, Sorcerer’s Palace, whose hero, Sir Lybius, is a reworking of the medieval Libeaus Desconnus, which Wilkinson had taken from Percy’s ‘Essay on Metrical Romance.’ A male antiquarian inspiration for women’s verse was Thomas Warton’s...

Reading the Adulterous/Treasonous Queen in Early Modern England: Malory’s Guinevere and Anne Boleyn

The condemnation of Guinevere in the Morte Darthur may have shocked contemporary readers because no medieval queen was ever tried or punished with death for treason or adultery. In the early sixteenth century, by contrast, Queen Anne Boleyn was executed for crimes that enmeshed treason with adultery. Thus, the conceptual groundwork for killing a queen through an accusation of treasonous adultery likely lay not in legal or historical precedent, but in habits of reading inculcated by late medieval and early modern romance, particularly Malory’s popular Arthurian story. The fictionalized history of Guinevere’s condemnation to the stake may have enabled early witnesses of Anne’s death to make ideological sense of this break from the past.

Kaamelott ’s Global Fifth Century

Despite its fifth-century setting, the wildly popular French television series Kaamelott presents spectators with a court that seems familiar and accessible. By lessening the distance between his version of the Arthurian world and his twenty-first-century audience, series creator Alexandre Astier invites viewers to reflect on their own society. (TF)

An Introduction to British Arthurian Narrative by Susan Aronstein (review)

Susan aronstein, An Introduction to British Arthurian Narrative. New Perspectives on Medieval Literature: Authors and Traditions. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012. pp. xvi, 189. isbn: 0-8130-4189-9. $69.95This new series from the University Press of Florida offers introductory surveys aimed at undergraduate students, graduate students, and general readers. To create a 'compact' survey of so sprawling a subject as the British Arthurian tradition is a particular challenge, and in many ways Susan Aronstein's engaging book succeeds admirably. The author's careful historical contextualizing of her many texts (starting with a helpful Chronology at the beginning of the book) creates a persuasive thread of continuity from pre-Conquest Arthurian 'history' through to Thomas Malory's late-medieval summa Arthurianica. There are times when the detail is subject to challenge or correction, but a reader new to this literary tradition is certain to enjoy, and learn much from, Susan Aronstein's overview.After a brief introduction that demonstrates both the persistence of the tradition and the nostalgia that has always characterized it, the first section of the book is devoted to 'the circumstances that made the legend particularly appealing to writers and their audiences' (p. 13). These circumstances are, Aronstein argues, a British history of crises of legitimacy, warfare, and persistent appropriations of useful stories from the past. A survey of some 500 or so years of this history forms a bracing prelude to the meat of the chapter, a discussion of the English chronicle tradition. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laaeamon all code the Arthurian story as history, though for somewhat different ends; but the themes of conquest, imperialism, and confrontation/ control of various 'others' are common throughout the discussion. Next are two poems focusing on the death of Arthur, the Alliterative Morte Arthure and the Stanzaic Morte Arthure. While the first starts with a vision of Arthurian plenitude, the second is already marked by a wistful sense of days gone by, and Aronstein's evocation of the atmosphere of 'transience and loss' (p. 54) is telling and moving.Chapter Two, 'British Arthurian Romance,' deals with works concentrating on the 'golden age of Arthurian plenitude' (p. 55). In contrast to the relentless forward motion of the historically-inflected chronicle texts, the romances in this chapter pause to focus on the individual. Aronstein begins with Welsh texts, moving through Culhwch ac Olwen's nostalgia for the good old days of the Welsh warrior nobility to the reflection of Welsh politics in the Welsh Arthurian romances. A section on popular Arthurian romances follows; the texts are presented 'as both fantasy and critique' (p. 80), speaking to and of the fractured social landscape in the wake of the Black Death. By organizing these texts around the themes of War and Conquest, Chivalric Adventures, Chivalric Identities, and Otherworldly Encounters, Aronstein weaves the many works into a coherent presentation. Particularly striking is how her concentration on the Gawain romances allows her to present Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as part of a unified, often popular, tradition. It is potentially misleading to argue that the importance of Arthurian popular romances is suggested in part by their being 'among the first printed books at both London and Edinburgh' (p. …

A Bibliography of Modern Arthuriana (1500-2000) ed. by Ann F. Howey and Stephen R. Reimer (review)

96ARTHURIANA Roman War' to end instead with the long-deferred consequences ofthe LauncelotGwenyvere threat. And Crofts surely is correct to stress that Malory wants 'Arthur to have been cognizant of the ongoing betrayal.' Crofts further maintains that Arthur and Malory are concerned with English and Arthurian knighthood; this is revealed in part through a particularly fine account ofthe Battle ofSalisbury Plain. In light of this it is regrettable that the Index gives no listing for the various Malorian episodes or characters discussed by Crofts. Also, some ofthe notes contain recent publications not found in the bibliography. Nevertheless, Crofts writes clearly, and he is well read and up-to-date. The discussion ofthe manuscript in ChapterThree is particularly cogent, and the accompanying color plates are marvelous. Publication ofMalory s ContemporaryAudience was abetted by the Vinaver Trust: on the whole, Crofts is a worthy recipient ofVinaver's aegis. K. S. WHETTER Acadia University ANN F. HOWEY and Stephen R Reimer, compilers, A Bibliography ofModern Arthuriana fijoo—2000). Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2006. Pp. xxix, 774. isbn: 1843840688. $190. £125. Hot on the heels of TheArthurianAnnals by Dan Nastali and Philip Boardman (see Arthuriana 15.2 [2005]: 77-78) comes a second compilation ofArthuriana, further evidence, if any were needed, of the continued vigor ofArthurian tradition and of the many ways in which ir has been adapted over the centuries. Like theAnnah, the Bibliographydeals with the work ofEnglish-language authors and artists. After an Introduction outlining the criteria for the selection ofmaterial and a list of Sources Used in Compiling the Bibliography, the bibliography itself is divided into six sections: Literature (the largest); Comic Books and Graphic Novels; Film, Television, and Radio; Music; Games; Fine Art and Graphic Design. These are followed by a General Index and an index of Arthurian Characters and Themes. Within each section, the material is listed alphabetically by author's last name (or by title if anonymous), totalling 4542 entries. Each entry lists the first appearance in print or in book form and 'major reprints,' though this is usually confined to revised editions or to inclusion, in part or whole, in a separate collection or anthology. Alphabetical organization dictates that books in a series are listed out ofchronological order. The annotations focus upon the use ofArthurian tradition, and their length reflects the need to explain its significance. This means that works in which the Arthurian story is centtal (but straightforward) often receive less space than those in which it is marginal (but complicated). Thus Donald Barthelme's TheKingis briefly summarized as ? novel, in which Arthur and his court are active in England during World War ?G (21), whereas the annotation for Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden extends to eleven lines before concluding that 'there seems to be an Arthurian connection,... though it is a rather tenuous one' (167). This emphasis is valuable to the scholar wondering whether the few Arthurian references make it worth while reading a long book: the twenty-one lines devoted to A.S. Byatt's Possession, for example, helpfully reviews97 trace the various Arthurian references and thematic parallels. Occasionally, familiar works, like Catherine Christian's 7Ai Sword and the Flame ('primarily a historical reconstruction of Malory's tales, narrated by Bedivere,' 72) and Godfrey Turton's The Emperor Arthur ('"Historical" novel, presenting Arthur as "dux bellorum,"' 436), are paid scant attention. Conversely, those that have been overlooked by other researchers are given generous space: the annotation for Nicholas Gray's Sir Gawain andthe GreenKnight:A Play, which mingles traditional and original material, occupies twenty-seven lines. Where the compilers have not examined awork in the Literature section, as is the case of Edward Frankland's The Bear ofBritain, they provide only a very briefannotation or none at all; in other sections, they often list the secondary source for information on works not seen. Inevitably, a few items have been missed or excluded. One wonders why the 1991 edition of The NewArthurian Encyclopedia appears among rhe Sources Used, rather than the Updated 1996 edition which includes a supplement ofmaterial published from 1990-95; and why the next supplement (2001) is not mentioned, particularly since both compilers contributed to it. In these theywould have...

Writing the Future: Lazamon's Prophetic History by Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley Merlin: A Casebook by Peter H. Goodrich , Raymond H. Thompson (review)

1082 Reviews with a conflation of betrayals at the level of the narrative, that of 'individual personal intimacy' and the 'collective failure to preserve the documentation of a manuscript culture' (p. xv). Several areas of investigation are announced, among which are his? tory,nationhood, masculine heroic identity,gender, and social order and interaction. Batt's analysis covers the traditional background of French and English chronicle and romance narratives and their adaptation fora late medieval English audience, fol? lowing the changes taking place during this process, including texts such as Arthour and Merlin, Kyng Alysaunder, and Malory's sources, La Mort le roi Artu and the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur. By comparison with a similar compilation of Arthurian material, that of Micheau Gonot, who in 1470 also produced an Arthuriad, forJacques d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, Malory's enterprise leaves more room forthe reader's intervention in the text. His 'emotional' engagement with the narrative is present from Tale 1, where the historical dimension ofthe Arthurian story is apparent, mediated through Merlin, whose non-standard presentation (his name is sometimes abbreviated in the Winchester manuscript, sometimes not) 'reflects an uncertainty about his status in a text that signals but does not investigate [his] distict nature', since his ad? vice is not always taken (p. 53). A large part ofthe analysis focuses on violence against the body, either prompted by desire (Uther's desire for Igrayne gives the tone for all subsequent acts of rape) or by transgression and punishment, as in the case of Balin. In an investigation of the following three tales, Batt narrows the focus on the topos of heroism, examined in the episode of Arthur's war with Lucius and in the narra? tives of Lancelot and Gareth. The story of Tristram is given the function of 'setting limits', both in terms of the elite it addresses and in the descriptions of madness as a way of alienation followed by a recovery of identity. In Malory's version of the Holy Grail quest Batt reads the involvement of the community, while drawing attention to the 'more immediate and inclusive [. . .] political, religious and historical relevance' of his narrative to a fifteenth-centuryaudience, as compared with his French source (p- 137)- In the last chapter Batt turns to the issues of displacement and commemora? tion, emphasizing two ends of the love process, fromthe May passage to the end of the love affairbetween Lancelot and Guenevere. At this stage what seems to be important is Malory's 'engagement with memory, rather than with relic', which brings to the Morte an 'awareness ofthe fifteenth-centuryfashionings of death' (p. 181). Batt's study is persuasive in its effortless,intellectually stimulating interpretation of symbols and themes; commentaries on sources, manuscripts, and material culture are combined with modern views ofthe human body, violence, and narrative techniques. This challenging work addresses a specialized audience, and its discourse extends beyond traditional approaches of Malory's text. A new interpretation of the Morte emerges, one that inscribes the modern response into the fifteenth-centurytext. This short review does little justice to either Kato's or Batt's studies; both remain, how? ever, as two analyses of the Morte which will change our view of Malory's work for some time. University of Wales, Bangor Raluca L. Radulescu WritingtheFuture: La^amon's Prophetic History. By Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 2002. x+182 pp. ?37.50. ISBN 0-70831714 -6. Merlin: A Casebook. Ed. by Peter H. Goodrich and Raymond H. Thompson. (Arthurian Characters and Themes) New York and London: Routledge. 2003. viii + 443pp. ?75. ISBN 0-8153-0658-x. These two Arthurian studies show more contrasts than parallels. Writing theFuture, based on a Cornell dissertation, is its author's firstbook; Merlin: A Casebook as- MLR, 100.4, 2005 1083 sembles seventeen critical essays (plus introduction) by twentieth-century European and North American scholars. Each book offerssomething, but the second more than the first. Wickham-Crowley's study, with some reason, bypasses historical philology, the main concern of earlier work on La3amon. It fails into three parts, dealing in turn with language as history; the potential of writing and community; and history, prophecy, and possibility...

The Return of King Arthur: Finishing the Quest for Wholeness, Inner Strength, and Self-Knowledge by Diana Durham (review)

82ARTHURIANA reasons, but one would be loathe to dismiss entirely the pattern of72 so beautifully reconstructed by Sulpiz Boisserreé and nicely reproduced on p. 88. Krista Sue-Lo Twu initiates the essays on English literature which occupy just over half of the volume, a generous proportion that gratifies this reviewer. Her essay, ' The Awntyrs ofArthure at the Terne Wathelyne: Reliquary for Romance' may well be the most careful and subtle reading ofthe romance in print. Although I am not quite convinced that the author of Awntyrs was the consummate artist Twu postulates, nor that the quest to find (or impose) unity in the text is a particularly useful or necessary task, the arguments presented are subtle and scrupulous and must be considered seriously by any future student of the romance. Dinah Hazell in 'The Blinding of Guenevere: Thomas Chester as Social Critic' also carefully reconsiders a romance that tends to be given short shrift in the scholarly literature. The shortness ofthe shrift may indeed be the appropriate length, but Hazell presents impressive arguments for the seriousness of Chester, and both scholars seem to signal a welcome turn to a reconsideration of these neglected works. In 'Malory's Morte Darthur. a Politically Neutral Adaptation of the Arthurian Story,' Edward Donald Kennedy does exactly what the title says he will do. With his usual scholarly scrupulosity, he reexamines possible political references in the text (including the few remaining after P.J.C. Field's ruthless pruning) and finds precisely zero undoubted political references with the inevitable conclusion that there is no clue however subtle in the text to Malory's own politics. It is to his credit that Kennedy is even willing to reject his own earlier contribution to the literatute arguing for the intrusion ofcontemporary affairs into the text ofthe Morte. Kennedy's conclusions are compelling, but sadly make it more difficult than ever to discern anything of the author in the opacity of the text. In 'King, Crusader, Knight: the Composite Arthur of the Middle English Prose Brut,' Tamar Drukker reviews the text to discern a pattern ofpromoting Arthur as the ideal Crusader-King with little concern for the actuality of kingship in action. Finally, Janina P. Traxler makes the leap into the twentieth century in 'Pendragon, Merlin and Logos: the Undoing of Babel in ThatHideous Strength.' While Lewis's novel cannot be considered a neglected text, Traxler's discussion ofit serves as a lively conclusion to the volume and indicates the continuing centrality ofArthur and Arthurian issues in modern literatute. Anthologies are always uneven affairs, but Arthurian scholars in French, German, and English will find something ofvalue in this collection. It should be read by all interested in Arthur, but, as is becoming a fairly consistent caveat, possessed only by those wealthy enough to invest in the Brewer catalogue. DONALD L. HOFFMAN Chicago, Illinois diana Durham, The Return ofKingArthur: Finishing the Questfor Wholeness, Inner Strength, and Self-Knowledge. New York: Jeremy P. Tarchcr/Penguin, 2004. Pp. x, 316. isbn: 1-58542-297-5. $25.95. As the title suggests, this book belongs in the genre of self-improvement manual rather than academic criticism. Like many recent books employing the Arthurian REVIEWS83 and Holy Grail legends for popular purposes, it allegorizes selected aspects of the legends as signs ofpsychic, social, and environmental health. While billed asJungian, it uses that mode ofanalysis no more exclusively than Arthurian legend, but combines it with other shafts to the author's the bow ofthought such as the Bible, the Kabala, Joseph Campbell, and the writings of assorted mystics and New Age philosophers. Although its goals are laudable, as an interpretation ofArthurian 'myth it must be treated with sceptisicm. Ironically for a book about empowering self and society from within, Durham's analysis does not illuminate the legends ofArthur and the Grail by closely analyzing specific texts from medieval cultural perspectives, but imposes New Age psychological commonplaces upon the texts from without. In the process, it often honors longstanding interpretations ofArthurian characters and symbols, but sometimes strains or even falsifies them. For example, Durham rightly (if somewhat reductively) observes that Merlin represents the workings of the subconscious mind and King Arthur the charismatic, enlightened leader...

An Interview with David Franzoni

THE ROUND TABLE115 making an entertainment rather than a documentary. The story also ends before the whole tale is told, so I hope for a sequel to round out the whole. However, one thing above all others I believe to be true: this version of the Arthurian story will make everyone who sees it think. It will, I hope, encourage people to reconsider the Sarmatian theory, as it certainly has in my case. Whatever we may think in the end, the film cannot fail to excite and impress us with the energy with which the actors and the director were driven to produce such a powerful statement. By no means everything of the original Arthurian stories has gone. No story of Arthur would be complete without Excalibur, and having long since decided that there would be a Round Table at which the knights would meet, we were delighted to find that the Sarmatians liked to eat—and dance upon—circular tables. The great love story ofLancelot, Arthur, and Guinevere is also present, though in more low-key form than in the later medieval versions. There is little time for love in the harsh and uncompromising times in which these people lived. Yet even here, in the midst ofbattle and warfare, respect gives way to tenderer feelings, and one can see clearly enough how the story might have begun. Everywhere in the movie there are echoes of the original Arthurian legends, and it is certainly not hard to see how Dark Age reality became medieval fantasy. It is this reality, dark and brutal, that makes this new account of the legend so powerful. I remain convinced that Arthur and his knights were real people, and that something not unlike the struggle portrayed in the film really took place. Working on it, seeing it brought to birth, was an extraordinary experience. It hass changed me, and every word I write about the Arthurian story from now on will be touched by memories of my involvement in the making ofthis remarkable movie. OXFORD An Interview with David Franzoni JOHN MATTHEWS David Franzoni, a successful screenwriter, is responsible for the films Ghdiatorand Amista among others. KingArthur is his latest project and while filming he and I spent time talking about myth and the Arthurian stories. He has much to say on the subject, and his approach to the myth ofArthur is refreshingly original. When the opportunity arose recently for us to sit down and have a conversation about the background to the writing of the screenplay, 1 jumped at the chance. Here was an opportunity for the writer ofthe film to put his own case directly to the Arthurian community and to explain the thinking behind some of the decisions that went into the finished work. The following is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation. JM: Where did your association with the Arthurian legends begin? DF: When I first came to Los Angeles as a struggling screenwriter, I was living in North Ridge and used to go to the California State Library there because I couldn't Il6ARTHURIANA buy many books at the time. I came across a student's dissertation, which proposed— not necessarily for the first time—that Lucius Artorius Castus might have been the seed for the Arthurian myth. At the time I just filed this away. Then when I was in Rome working on Ghdiator, I began to do some research. Not so much going back to the original sources or reading Lucius Artorius Castus's diary [laughter] but following up on that one little hint. Ofcourse I came across From Scythia to Camelot by C. Scott Littleton and Linda Malcor, and that was the first time that I realized it wasn't just about Lucius Artorius Castus but the whole Sarmatian thing as well. That's what was most compelling to me, that this might be the foundation for the whole Arthurian legend. Ofcourse I learned that other scholars, having gotten up before I did, realized this a long time ago, but until fairly recently they hadn't been able to figure out just how they were connected. Now of course we know about Marcus Aurelius defeating the...

Return with New Complexities: Robert Coover's Briar Rose

Postmodernist fiction usually addresses certain semiotic concerns about the relationship between language and things, between word and world. Its literary techniques cast doubt on what we tend to call real: the world in its social-if not material-manifestation, the subject as an entity, historical facts and grand narratives as global, totalizing explanations for society and the human condition. The world is experienced and conveyed through language, and the charges against those truths range from seeing them as tainted by the medium to assuming they are entirely created by it. The world itself is radically called into question, and the status of reality and our place in it are unclear. Postmodernism creates ontological uncertainties where modernism posed mainly epistemological ones (McHale 6-11). Art has not been considered to be a reliable mirror of reality since the onset of modernism in art about a hundred years ago. By now it is not even believed to provide a source of meaning or order in the face of general chaos. The resulting literary practice involves techniques that reveal both the processes through which fiction produces meaning and the artificial status of fictional constructs. This can be achieved through implicit or explicit reflection on construction and product: metafiction. Also, traditional forms of narrative logic are broken and a radical destabilization of the fictional world and its principles results. One way of contemplating the fictional construction of meaning is conscious intertextuality. The idea of the author as original creator has long been challenged, and a number of theories regard all texts as intertextual, as they may all just be networks of quotations and incorporations of existing texts.1 Postmodern texts, however, often directly address this problem by referring, in one way or another, to specific texts or genres. The results have been called parodies by Linda Hutcheon (22), pastiches by Fredric Jameson (72), or palimpsests by Gerard Genette (532). In order to understand them, the reader needs to have internalized a set of rules and conventions of the parodied works or genres, that is, possess a specific competence (which may well be unconscious). Only then can readers understand and judge a particular performance.2 One of the genres used by postmodernist writers is the classical fairy tale, and their stories demand to be read in relation to fairy-tale traditions. Judgments about these stories use our competence, which determines our expectations of them. These expectations are indirectly or directly addressed, and we are therefore forced to question our understanding of those tales. In using formula fiction to create pastiche, palimpsest, or parody, artists expose the mechanisms that make up our competence in understanding them. Formulaic fiction-and fairy tales can be counted as an example of this-emphasizes the logic and dynamic of certain forms of plot and is rule-driven. Postmodernist writers use it parodically to show how worlds are constructed through narrative. The stylized characteristics of a genre, consciously, that is, metafictionally, applied, present stories as organized art, as games with certain rules. Briar Rose Dornroschen is one of the best-known tales from the Grimms' collection, but like most of them has predecessors in other European countries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Neapolitan writer Giambattista Basile collected fifty stories in his Pentamerone, which originate from the oral tradition but were written down in baroque style. His Sun, Moon, and Talia resembles the later Dornroschen. The French writer Charles Perrault closed his 1697 collection of tales with La belle au bois dormant. But even much earlier, the basic elements of the Aarne-Thompson type 410 tale can be found in an episode of the fourteenth-century French Arthurian story Perceforest (Thompson 97). In the famous and still the most widely known version by the brothers Grimm (adapted by Disney for their animated film), the royal couple celebrates the birth of their long-wanted child. …

Once and Future Saxons: Nazis and Other Dark Forces in the Modern Arthurian Story

Modern Arthurian literature, especially realistic fiction and fantasy or science fiction, recycles the interpersonal conflicts and insecurities typical of older Arthurian literature and also treats the particularly modern anxiety about our ability to master the consequences of our technology.

Tennyson's King Arthur and the Violence of Manliness

WITH TENNYSON' S CONTEMPORARIES, ONE OF THE TARGETS FOR lostile criticism of Idylls of the King was his adaptation of the warriorking protagonist portrayed in Malory's Le Darthur. Swinburne mockingly referred to the Morte d' Albert, or Idylls of the Prince Consort and proclaimed that Tennyson had lowered the note and deformed the outline of the Arthurian story, by reducing Arthur to the level of a wittol, Guenevere to the level of a woman of intrigue, and Launcelot to the level of a 'corespondent.' Henry Crabb Robinson thought Tennyson's Arthur was unfit to be an epic-hero and Henry James called him a prig. T. S. Eliot asserted that Tennyson had adapted this great British epic material in Malory's handling hearty, outspoken and magnificent to suitable reading for a girls' school.1 Clearly the gender issue is central to all these comments contemporary readers were dissatisfied with the way Tennyson portrayed Arthur's manhood, a problem of which Tennyson was well aware, and many modern readers either voice concerns similar to those of Swinburne and T. S. Eliot or offer readings of the Idylls which in my view seriously distort Tennyson's attempt to explore gender issues. Tennyson's modern editor and interpreter Christopher Ricks makes no serious attempt to defend Tennyson against the traditional critics who ridicule the Poet Laureate for making Arthur a wimp, something less than a real man.2 On the other hand, more politically attuned critics taking a feminist or gender studies approach either ignore or deal inadequately with the question of Arthur's masculinity.3 After offering a preliminary argument for the appropriateness and value of a masculist approach to Victorian literature in general, I will discuss the issue of Arthur's masculinity and explain why I believe it is central to the meaning of Tennyson's Idylls. In particular, I will focus on the problem of male violence, which in various manifestations dominates the narrative from beginning to end.

King Arthur at the Punch Round Table, 1859-1914

Parodying Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Punch cartoons and verse presented British parliamentary politics as ironic commentary on the 'coming,' 'morte,' and 'return' of Arthurian story.

A Knight in Camelot (review)

REVIEWS167 ornithopter. The knights appear, smiling in silent celebration as the awkward but determined little contraption makes its way into the sky. Lacking sex, violence, and profanity, The Mighty may not become a popular film. It is, however, a wonderful one for family viewing. BERT OLTON Palmyra, New York A Knight in Camelot, roger young, dir., Disney Television, 1998. Network premiere date: November 8, 1998. Among the most popular American Arthurian films are those based on the most American retelling of Arthurian material: the Connecticut Yankee transported to King Arthur's court, where he (and, more recently, she) must employ a remarkable degree of inventiveness to survive the adventure. Drawing, often very loosely, on Mark Twain's classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), cinematic versions (discussed in greater detail in Kevin J. Harty's excellent on-line bibliography of Arthurian film at http:www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/harty.htm) have included the popular silent film, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (Fox, 1920); the sound picture, A Connecticut Yankee (Fox, 1931), starring Will Rogers; and the 1949 musical remake, A Connecticut Yankee in KingArthur's Court (Paramount), with Bing Crosby. Just as numerous have been the television interpretations, from Westinghouse Studio One's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1952) and Kraft Theatre's A Connecticut Yankee (ABC-TV, 1954) to A Connecticut Yankee (NBCTV , 1955), a restaging of Rodgers and Flart's 1927 musical, and Tennessee Ernie Ford Meets King Arthur (i960). Recent Yankees have included former Cosby-kid Keshia Knight Pulliam, transformed—in a 1989 made-for-television Christmas special— into a saccharine and precocious Connecticut kid, Karen Jones. Knocked off her horse during an after-school equitation class (this is, after all, Connecticut) and revived in Camelot, she uses a Polaroid camera, a Walkman, a tape recorder, and the other contents of her backpack to save the kingdom from the machinations of Merlin and the evil Mordred (bowdlerized for a younger audience into Arthur's nephew) before returning home via a hot air balloon that her friend Clarence has copied from one of her textbooks. More than any other srudio, Walt Disney Productions has turned to Arthurian themes, particularly the theme ofthe return to Camelot. In UnidentifiedFlying Oddball (1979), released in Britain as The Spaceman and King Arthur, for instance, a NASA malfunction sends robotics engineerTomTrimble (Russ Mayberry) to Arthur's court, where he uses his 'magic' (including a flame-retardant space suit, a lookalike robot named FIermes, and the thrusters and magnetic fields of his spacecraft) to win a seat at the Round Table and to facilitate his return to the present. A much younger traveler makes a similar journey in another Disney production, A Kid in KingArthur's Court (1995). Thirteen-year-old Calvin Fuller (Thomas Ian Nicholas) falls through an earthquake crack during a Little League game and ends up in Camelot, where Merlin l68ARTHURIANA has need of a 'Knight' (the name of Calvin's team) to defeat the evil Belasco and to restore Camelot to its former glory. (The Arthurian story, however, is far better told in another 1995 Disney film, Four Diamonds, a made-for-television cable release about Chris Millard, a young boy whose story about a squire in Arthut's coutt parallels his own life; using, as Kevin Harty noted in a review of the film in this journal, 'one of the key tropes ofthe Arthurian legend, the return to Camelot—a return, in this case, for healing,' the film follows Chris's attempts to earn the four diamonds ofthe knight— courage, wisdom, honesty, and strength.) In the most recent version ofTwain's novel,/! Knight in Camelot (DisneyTelevision, 1998), the Yankee is Dr. Vivien Morgan (Whoopi Goldberg), a dreadlocked, fasttalking physicist from West Cornwall, Connecticut. When an experiment with gravitational particles sends her back to Camelot, she is captured by Sir Sagramour (Robert Addie); brought before the king (Michael York); and thrust into adventures both familiar (a sentence to burn at the stake—averted, in this case, by reference to the 'Scientific Fiistory/Natural Disasters' file on her laptop computer) and original (the tortures proposed by a jealous Guinevere [Amanda...

Can we talk about 'Multiple Versions Versions of the Same Thing' in a meaningful way?

TEACHING THE STORY OF ARTHUR14I Vivien's power seems feeble indeed. Her only real accomplishment was imprisoning an already old man in a death-like trance, though not actual death itself, within a tree. If we look at the final stanza from the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll, perhaps we can discover more than one meaning: Then crying ? have made his glory mine,' and shrieking out ? fool!' the harlot leapt Adown the forest, and the thicket closed Behind her, and the forest echo'd 'fool.' (969-72) The last word we hear echoing through this idyll is apparently directed towards Merlin, who let himselfbe Overtalk'd and overworn' by the harlot, Vivien. But perhaps the fool is Vivien, who believed so strongly in the power of her words. We never see Vivien again within the idylls, and her absence makes her power seem defunct (and foolish) by the end of The Idylb ofthe King. Or perhaps Tennyson himself is the fool for making Vivien an analog for himselfas a story-(re)teller. How powerful have his words been? Is Prince Albert the new model for chivalry? No other (re)tellers of the Arthur story seem to have picked up that stolen pearl. To conclude, I would like to return briefly to the challenges of teaching a comparativist course. While Tennyson's text is easy to discuss in relation to its historical background, that is, as a piece of Victorian literature—especially when one reads such Victorianisms as, 'Too much I trusted when I told you that,/ And stirred this vice in you which ruin'd man/ Thro' woman the first hour,' and while Tennyson's text is also easy to discuss purely in relation to other Arthurian texts, the challenge comes when one tries to move beyond the comparativist confines. There is more to say about the text than its relation to history and other texts. Tennyson's self-conscious handling of story-(re)tclling in the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll allows one to discuss both historical and literary connections, but it also allows one to engage the text more deeply. Problems of story-(re)telling are as relevant to the twentieth-century American student as they were to Tennyson. An analysis ofTennyson's self-conscious handling ofstory-(re)telling in the 'Merlin and Vivien' idyll serves as a good example of how the Arthurian story can stay interesting even at the mid-semester! AYANNA T. THOMPSON Harvard University CAN WE TALK ABOUT 'MULTIPLE VERSIONS VERSIONS OF THE SAME THING' IN A MEANINGFUL WAY? In the spring term of 1998, I taught two sections of Professor Derek Pearsall's Story of Arthur. In this fast-moving, chronologically-oriented teaching environment, it was often more productive to focus on the smaller, week-by-wcek textual questions than the larger Story ofArthur framework and the implications of Arthur's popularity, though these matters were discussed and, inevitably, never resolved. Hindsight has left me with a more acute sense ofthe difficulties ofapproaching nuanced comparative 142ARTHURIANA work in a large lecture format than I had during the term. Looking back on the course, I feel as though I have seen in action something that has become a truism of pedagogical criticism: that the language used in a syllabus, and the contents of a syllabus, and the conceptual organization ofa course, strongly precondition students and teaching staffalike to approach the class in particular ways. One ofmy retroactive impressions of the class is that Arthur's coherence over time—his existence as a great king and a great literary entity with almost transcendent qualities, such that everyone is always trying to penetrate his one irrecoverable true nature—was implicit in the organization of the class and in the teaching formats of my own sections, and, I speculate, the sections of all the teaching fellows. In class discussions and in exams and papers throughout the term, there was a sense that the earliest texts hinted at, and the later texts realized, different versions of one great Arthur. It was sometimes an almost subliminal assumption, and at other times would be uttered in such a way that it could be questioned, deconstructed, and examined—only to arise again in...

Fantasy, Fiction and Welsh Myth: Tales of Belonging Kath Filmer-Davies (review)

Il8ARTHURIANA it is good to have some classic scenes from medieval romances represented, such as Lancelot Riding in the Cart and the first kiss between Lancelot and Guinevere. Likewise, some classics ofmodern illustration, Aubrey Beardsley's depiction ofTristram drinking the love potion and Crane's representation of Galahad being presented to Arthur, for example, have also been added to the second edition. Ofcourse, everyone will be able to name illustrators or artists or individual works that are not represented— Howard PyIe, N. C. Wyeth, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, and George FrederickWatts's Sir Galahadspring to mind. There will necessarily be omissions in a handbook: it is the nature of the beast. Selection—or rather omission—is one of the most difficult tasks the authors ofsuch a work face; and although everyone will have some favorite that has been omitted, the authors ofthis book have selected judiciously and presented many of the images one would like to see in such a volume. Other enhancements to the volume are as welcome as the additional illustrations. Particularly useful for students will be the genealogies. Providing Arthur's genealogy according to three different sources—Geoffrey ofMonmouth, Malory, and the French Vulgate Merlin—helps to underscore the variety of versions of the Arthurian story and is a useful reminder to students seeking the one true account ofArthur's life that there is no such thing. Also of use to the student are some of the 'boxes and sidebars' (a distinction that is not entirely clear) that the editors have added to the text. It is helpful to have brief summary definitions of terms like chivalry and courtly love, though one would like to have seen mote of topics such as these and less ofthe brief comments on incidents from the legend such as Arthur's departure for Avalon or his pulling of the sword from the stone. More interesting than these briefsummaries of one version of the story is the long box on the Grail. Running for three and a half pages, it gives briefquotations from eleven different sources and demonstrates a wide variety of approaches from Chrétien to Monty Python. One other feature of the second edition that is worth noting is the updating and expansion of the bibliography. There are important additions to every subcategory; and while the bibliography is still highly selective, it, like the text and illustrations, has been improved in this version. Compiling a handbook on a topic as vast and multi-faceted as the Arthurian legends is a task as difficult as those given to Culhwch by Ysbaddaden. Lacy, Ashe, and Mancoffhave managed the task and made it look easier than it is. In revising the original edition, the authors have wisely chosen to enhance rather than change. The result is that it is even more useful, especially for students, than the first edition. ALAN LUPACK University of Rochester ?at? filmer-davies, Fantasy, Fiction and Wehh Myth: Tales ofBelonging. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Pp. 177, notes and index, isbn: 0-312-15927-7. $49.95 (cloth). In a recent essay in Medievalism, The Year's Workfor 1991 (ed. Michael Rewa, 1996), Frank Doden recounts a conversation with a critic 'who suggested that there are two kinds ofmedievalists: christians who endeavor to show that medieval English literature reveals christian "truths," that Christianity ennobled the pagan populace and its arts; REVIEWS119 and atheists, who strive to show that Christianity ravaged pagan culture and literature...' (p. 112). In the chapters likely to be of greatest interest to readers of Arthuriana, Arthurian Novels and the Spirit ofWelsh Place,' and 'The Film Hero and Welsh Mythology,' Professor Filmer-Davies reveals herself to be a medievalist of the former sort. At the end of the chapter on Arthurian novels, for instance, she argues that Welsh hiraeth (the intense longing to return to the ancestral homeland— the primary 'belonging' of the book's subtitle) has a universal, mythic significance: Perhaps we can call it Wales, but it is a spirituai Wales: perhaps it is Avalon or even heaven. But when we sec it, we will probably give it names ofour own; because it will be for us all we have wanted it to...

Commentary: A Response to the A RTHURIANA Issue on Adultery

Iwelcome the chance Bonnie Wheeler has offered me to comment on the articles in this Issue on Adultery. My chief concern about its contents is that the passionate defense of their position(s) has led some of the contributors to overstate their case(s) and, regrettably, to ignore evidence in texts themselves as well as in other sources and contexts that do not bear the weight of their claims. David Scott Wilson-Okamura, for instance, makes sweeping allegations about the primacy of adultery over incest in the post-Vulgate version of Arthur's unhappy mating with Morgause, 'its basic structure and its prevailing ethos' modeled, he claims, not upon tragedy but upon biblical history, especially the story of King David (18). But?as Helen Adolph points out in a seminal article he cites but does not thoroughly use?incest is a cipher' for original sin etymologically from the Latin 'in castus' or 'unchaste' and epitomized by St. Augustine's coinage of the word 'Cupiditas' from Cupid's incest with his mother Venus (in opposition to St. Paul's 'caritas'). It is, additionally, a staple ingredient in Arthurian story from Geoffrey of Monmouth on; his use of the incest of Modred (Guinevere is, after all, his uncle's wife) marks the tragic turning point in Arthur's career, which he is the first to detail fully, and an event about which he then 'prefers to say nothing' (Thorpe 257). Not surprising, since incest is an almost universal taboo as a crime against family as well as nature and, in this original Arthurian context, feudal loyalty as well. It must have seemed, to Geoffrey, literally unspeakable, and certainly far worse than (may I say mere?) adultery. Its intended thematic force is apparent from its repetition in Arthur's sin with his half-sister, earlier chronologically but later in narrative development (Morgause is, by the way, not 'the daughter of Uther Pendragon' as Wilson Okamura has it [24] but of Ygerne's first husband, Gorlois). As L?vi-Strauss,

Medieval Arthurian Literature: A Guide to Recent Research ed. by Norris J. Lacy (review)

14°ARTHURIANA of her essay. The reader wants more analysis of Cameron's artistic response to Tennyson's interpretation ofthe Arthurian story than this thin essay delivers. A substantial failing of this book (and not of its editor or contributors) is the skimpiness of the format Garland has provided. Larger type-face, margins and in general a more amply-sized volume seems in order for a collection ofthis sort. When I opened it I was unpleasantly reminded ofthe compact edition ofthe OxfordEnglish Dictionary, but—alas—no magnifyingglasswas included. As a bookno doubt destined to be put on library reserve and read and photocopied bygraduate students (at $35.00 one would not order this as a class text), the meagerness of its physical layout is disappointing and downright difficult to use and detracts from the vitality of its contents. CHRISTINE M. ROSE Portland State University norris J. lacy, ed., MedievalArthurian Literature:A Guide to RecentResearch. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 1955. New York and London: Garland, 1996. Pp. xii, 471. isbn: 0-8153-2160-0. $73. As the annual volumes of the Bibliographical Bulletin ofthe InternationalArthurian Society are dangerously close to demanding a two-tome edition, periodical critical surveys ofrecent scholarship have become essential for individual scholars who can no longer possibly keep up to date with the developments in the complex world of Arthuriana. Aware of the possible pitfalls of attempting inclusiveness, Norris Lacy has wisely limited his volume's focus to the medieval vernacular literature ofwestern Europe and assembled an impressive list of specialists (James P. Carley: England; Marianne E. Kalinke: Scandinavia; Keith Busby and Karen A. Grossweiner: France; Bart Besamusca: Low Countries; JohnT. Koch: Celtic Lands; Christopher Kleinhenz: Italy; William C. McDonald: Germany; Harvey L. Sharrer: Spain and Portugal) to provide reviews ofessential trends for the major national/linguistic traditions within the last 15 to 30 years. Each of these critical discussions is accompanied by a bibliography including articles, books, editions, or translations 'that ought to be known by anyone' (p. xi) dealing with the texts in question. As might be expected, what 'ought to be known by anyone' is very much subject to the respective authors' choices. In general, the organization of the volume into national/linguistic traditions works well, especially when Besamusca's essay identifies how much Dutch and Belgian Arthurian scholars can gain from exchanging information about Middle Dutch litetature with colleagues who speak and write in other languages (an insight which will soon result in an exciting collection of comparative articles by a Romanist [Lacy], a Germanist [Haug], and an Anglicist [Riddy] on the Walewein in the ^dschrifi voor Nederlandse tall- en letterkunde). Similarly, Kleinhenzfootnotes pertinent dissertationson ItalianArthuriana both from the United States and Italy, and the bibliographies of all non-English traditions demonstrate the decidedly transdisciplinary and international spirit of Arthurian REVIEWS141 studies. In Carley's 'England' bibliography, however, foreign-language tidesfrom nonEnglish speaking countries—with the exception of two famous names (Crépin; Fichte)—are conspicuously absent. This tendency is even more palpable in the realm ofdoctoral dissertations, where only English titles from English-speaking countries have been included while not a single one of the numerous deserving dissertations written in other European languages made the cut. A controversial topic is taken up in Lacy's own concise section on 'Arthurian Translation.' Like McDonald, who reports a serious decline of training in Middle High German on both sides of the Adantic, Lacy pronounces a universal negative verdict about current medievalists' capabilities in dealing with sources in Latin and one or two more early languages with comparative ease' (p. 451). Although he expresses his regrets about this weakening ofphilological rigor, he appears to have given up on the possibility that this tendency can be mended. His reaction is to ask the rhetorical question whether it is better to make texts known through translation or simply leave them unread' (p. 452), to happily announce that the trend toward translations 'has made larger numbers of medieval texts accessible to a far wider public,1 and to find consolation—quite untealistically—in the hope that 'perhaps the pleasures of the [seil, 'translated'] medieval text will lead some...readers back to the original language' (ibid...

Masculine Military Unions: Brotherhood and Rivalry in The Avowing of King Arthur

When viewed in the larger context of chivalric culture during the Wars of the Roses, The Avowing of King Arthur suggests the pertinence of the Arthurian story to the construction of late-medieval military masculinity.