Arthurian Texts Research Articles

‘And I am more than this man can comprehend’: Contemporary Arthurian Texts & Resistance to White Supremacy

Abstract Beginning with the appropriation of medieval iconography by alt-right movements, particularly in the contexts of Brexit and the January 6 2021 American insurrection, this article highlights how modern adaptations of the Arthurian legend (in particular, Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, and the video game We Happy Few) resist white nationalist rhetorics. These texts remix figures and symbols from the Arthurian oeuvre to offer stories wherein characters come to recognize and thus resist systematic forgetting, or a societal attempt to overlook uncomfortable facts from the past, thus offering alternative visions of identity and belonging. The ethical implications of historical representation and the power of narrative in contemporary political discourse make these texts powerful works of art that speak to and counter white supremacist attempts to claim and revise medieval iconography to serve their own ends.

Towards Narrative Plenitude: Asian Representation in Young Adult Arthurian Fantasy

Abstract: This article examines how two authors of Asian descent tackle the problem of 'narrative scarcity' for marginalized writers in their Young Adult Arthurian texts: Williams' 'The Quay Stone' posits the relationship between colonizer/colonized as akin to domestic abuse, while Chupeco's A Hundred Names for Magic series integrates Eastern and Western myths. (PY)

The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. by Kathy Cawsey and Elizabeth Edwards. Peterborough, Ont.: broadview press, 2024, 506 pp., 1 b/w fig., 10 color plates.

Undoubtedly, the genres of Arthurian romances and verse narratives continue to appeal deeply to the current generation, and we can be certain that focusing on those texts in our seminars will help tremendously to attract enough students. Of course, heroic poetry, courtly love poetry, the fabliaux or mæren also prove to be of timeless value. Kathy Cawsey and Elizabeth Edwards here present a hefty anthology of Arthurian texts in modern English translation, hence for English-speaking students. I can well imagine that this book could become very useful for a course at the university level, with no other text editions/translations necessary.

When is a Knight a Knight?

The Middle Welsh Ystoryaeu Seint Greal, the ‘Stories of the Holy Grail’, are a late fourteenth-century translation of two thirteenth-century Old French Arthurian texts—La Queste del Saint Graal and Le Haut Livre du Graal (Perlesvaus). Statistical analysis shows evidence of a sophisticated and so far unique system for the use of the adjective urdaỼl (Mod. Welsh urddol) ‘ordained’ in qualifying the status of otherwise unknown knights.

Notes Towards a Close Reading of David Lowery’s 2021 Film The Green Knight

Abstract This essay offers a close reading of David Lowery’s 2021 film The Green Knight suggesting that the director has consciously subverted the text of his source to produce an always intriguing film whose debts to the medieval are many. Unlike previous directors whose ‘Gawain’ films failed even to engage with their medieval source, Lowery follows details in his source when it suits his purpose, but, more often than not, he adds scenes to, or deletes scenes from, the fourteenth-century Middle English poem. His additions are especially noteworthy in how they offer an alternate, perhaps even a queer, reading of the poem. Lowery’s goal seems to be to retell a basically linear tale in a more convoluted and circular manner thereby calling into question viewers’ thematic and narrative expectations. At the same time, Lowery’s film can be read as an antidote to the toxic masculinity found in so many other Arthurian texts across multiple genres.

Winner and Waster and its Contexts: Chivalry, Law and Economics in Fourteenth-Century England by W. Mark Ormrod

Reviewed by: Winner and Waster and its Contexts: Chivalry, Law and Economics in Fourteenth-Century England by W. Mark Ormrod Jennifer Goodman Wollock w. mark ormrod, Winner and Waster and its Contexts: Chivalry, Law and Economics in Fourteenth-Century England. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2021. Pp. xi, 189. isbn: 978-1-84384-581-2. $99. This posthumous book presents a long-term project of the late W. Mark Ormrod (1957–2020), Professor of History at the University of York, one of the preeminent medieval historians of our generation. He should be familiar to Arthurian scholars, for much essential work, especially his magisterial biography of Edward III (Yale, 2012). The present volume was delivered to its publisher shortly before the author's death in August 2020. It is a privilege to review it here. [End Page 108] The fourteenth-century alliterative debate poem Winner and Waster survives in BL Additional MS 31042, one of two collections assembled by Robert Thornton (fl. 1418–56), gentleman of Yorkshire. Winner and Waster resonates with other alliterative Arthurian texts, especially the Alliterative Morte Darthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, whose opening lines are notably similar, as well as with Piers Plowman. Its dating and significance challenge its interpreters. It has a good deal of intrinsic charm and deserves to be better known. Professor Ormrod's painstaking account of this puzzling text began in a research seminar discussion and developed into this book, which took form during his retirement. Winner and Waster's theme preoccupies many Arthurian texts. The conflict between the royal virtue of magnificence—conspicuous consumption and largesse, the old 'treasure giving'—and the principle that the king should be a prudent manager of his own assets is ancient. In 'Culhwch and Olwen' Arthur manifests lavish generosity and Cei speaks up for rigor, law and order, gatekeeping, and stricter self-control. The theme resurfaces in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal; Wolfram endorses Cei's viewpoint. If there were more Ceis, the courts of thirteenth-century Europe would not contain so much riff-raff. Even Malory's Merlin is dryly critical of Arthur's excessive generosity. Outside of Arthuriana, winners and wasters are a primary theme in Piers Plowman. Under that famous connoisseur Richard II the topic continued to be of great interest. It runs throughout English history, down to the present. Ormrod's study begins by describing Winner and Waster and its manuscript context. It ends with a timeline, a modernized version of the text, bibliography and index. In the introduction to his 'traditionally historicist' study, Ormrod discusses previous efforts to localize the poem. He makes a case for a date in the 1360s—certainly after 1363, rather than earlier or later. Supporting this thesis, Ormrod's central chapters reconsider the poem's references to the Garter Feast of 1358 and English diplomacy during the 1350s and 1360s, the Statute of Treasons of 1352 and royal arbitration, the short-lived sumptuary Laws of 1363, and the royal household and finances under Edward III. Ormrod then reassesses Winner and Waster against other poems of the Alliterative Revival. He rejects established views of the poem as contrasting mercantile and courtly perspectives. Instead, he sees it as a debate involving 'that large portion of the lay elite that participated actively in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War' (p. 15). This project complements existing literary studies. Ormrod focuses on Winner and Waster as a single poem. His expert work sheds light on social, economic, and institutional history, bringing many highly technical elements together. Its analysis of the historical record, decade by decade, illuminates the fourteenth century as a whole. It adds significant contextual information to localize this example of alliterative poetry in relation to late medieval Arthurian literature. I recommend it to my own graduate students, colleagues, and all readers interested in seeing history and literature collaborating effectively with one another. In the race between life and death that we all run, Professor Ormrod continues to guide us in this painstaking, clearly written study, and leaves us, his colleagues, with a gift of great value. This work (to be supplemented by an upcoming volume of essays, and by the concurrent work of other...

Creative Creatures

This essay reads the fifteenth-century Arthurian romance The Awntyrs off Arthur at the Terne Wathelyn (The Adventures of Arthur at Wadelyn Lake) in the context of medieval debates on human creativity as a function of creatureliness. Demonstrating a keen interest in the vulnerability and creatureliness shared by human and non-human animals, the romance encodes nuances of shared affect, vulnerability, and expressive communication across species. Such considerations, here and in select Arthurian texts, poignantly undermine any presumed human-animal divide.

LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND POWER IN GUILLEM DE TORROELLA’S LA FAULA

This article examines the role of French language and culture in the fourteenth-century Arthurian text, La Faula, by the Mallorcan, Guillem de Torroella. Reading the appropriation of French language and literary models through the lens of earlier thirteenth-century Occitan resistance to French political and cultural hegemony, La Faula’s use of French dialogue becomes significant in light of the political tensions in the third quarter of the fourteenth century that saw the conquest of the Kingdom of Mallorca by that of Catalonia-Aragon and the subsequent imposition of Catalano-Aragonese political and cultural power. La Faula’s clear intertextual debt to French literary models and its simultaneous ambivalence about the authority and reliability of those models makes French language into a space for the exploration of the dynamics of cultural appropriation and political accommodation that were constitutive of late fourteenth-century Mallorca.

Literary Narratives and the Cultural Imagination: King Arthur and Don Quixote as National Heroes by María Odette Canivell Arzú

Reviewed by: Literary Narratives and the Cultural Imagination: King Arthur and Don Quixote as National Heroes by María Odette Canivell Arzú Juan Miguel Zarandona maría odette canivell arzú, Literary Narratives and the Cultural Imagination: King Arthur and Don Quixote as National Heroes. Foreword by Richard Barber. Cultural Studies / Literary Studies. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019. Pp. xxxix, 253. isbn: 978–1–498–53695–0. $110. Richard Barber’s foreword to this monograph is correct to warn readers that ‘María Canivell offers an unusual approach to the Arthurian legend’ (p. ix). Using techniques common to comparative literature and cultural studies, Canivell-Arzú tries to find common ground between England’s national hero, King Arthur, and Don Quijote de la Mancha, whom she dubs Spain’s national hero. The monograph is divided into an introduction, five chapters, a conclusion, and a bibliography. The introduction contrasts the historical individualism of the Spanish people with the British ability to unite when their nation is in need (p. xiii). Thanks to such an emphasis on individualism for ‘a single-minded group of intellectuals, the [End Page 117] Generation of 1898, Quijote became the embodiment of the Spanish spirit and of its soul . . . In time, Don Quijote himself and his status as a hero overflowed national boundaries to become a universal symbol’ (emphasis mine; pp. xvi–xvii). That this monograph’s interest for Arthurian scholars may lie in what it has to say about Don Quijote, rather than about King Arthur, is immediately emphasized by its cover, which features three illustrations related to Cervantes and only one to Arthur. Chapter One, ‘Is the Hero Still Worshipable?’ (pp. 1–39), provides the monograph’s theoretical background in terms of myth and the heroic, using multiple examples based on both Arthur and Quijote. Chapter Two, ‘To Be or Not to Be Arthur—Is That the Question?’ (pp. 41–81), traces possible evidence for an historical Arthur through Welsh sources, Latin texts, French romances, Malory, and so on and ends by surveying treatments of the legend of Arthur from the nineteenth century on. Chapter Three, ‘In a Place of La Mancha Whose Name I Cannot Recall . . .’ (pp. 83–137), begins with a brief account of the history of the conflict between England and Spain and their respective empires. As an aside, the chapter also seems to support the much-disputed theory of the peaceful coexistence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam during medieval Spain. The chapter then offers a detailed description of the geography of La Mancha region, including the tourist route of Don Quijote, and summarizes the various theories that have tried to solve the mystery of the place name that Cervantes did not want to recall. Canivell-Arzú finds here a parallel between Arthur’s possible historicity and the claim that Don Quijote may have been a real individual living in a La Mancha village who might have been a source of inspiration for Cervantes. The complex chapter also offers a biography of Cervantes and an account of his literary fame, comparing Cervantes’ lengthy literary output with the enormous number of Arthurian texts. Canivell-Arzú’s goal is clear as she comes full circle at the end of this chapter: ‘In the same fashion that Arthur came to represent the ideals, needs, and hopes of Great Britain, in spite of being a regional hero who initially had been seen as the idol of a geographically bound community, Don Quijote came to symbolize the idea of Spain, both as a nation and as the fulfillment of what a nation should be. Examined under that perspective, this “new reading” of Don Quijote created something that Cervantes could not have anticipated: the representation of the collective imaginary of the Spain the writer would never manage to see’ (pp. 122–123). Indeed! Chapter Four, ‘The Path to Herodom’ (pp. 139–185), returns to Arthur and Don Quijote but deals with them separately, repeating a number of ideas previously raised in the monograph. Canivell-Arzú is especially keen to reemphasize her points that the Generation of 1898 turned Don Quijote into ‘a national icon’ (emphasis mine; p. 159) and that ‘Don Quijote de la Mancha is not a prototype of...

Studies in Medieval Star-Gazing

This article considers human acts of looking at the stars or at what were thought to be stars. Star-gazing is aligned with richly generative literary works of naming, translation, word-play, with cosmological speculation, and with cultural practices. The problem of the star and of the constellation is exposed through examples from Arthurian texts, the Cicero-Aratus, the Bayeux Tapestry, and works by Geoffrey Chaucer. (SMA)

Soziale Netzwerkanalysen zum mittelhochdeutschen Artusroman oder: Vorgreiflicher Versuch, Märchenhaftigkeit des Erzählens zu messen

Abstract This article discusses the question of how complex the narrations of Arthurian romances are by comparing them to the ‘simple form’ of fairy tales. In order to achieve this, we identify properties of the European folktale, which we then compare with an Arthurian text corpus consisting of Hartmann von Aue’s ‘Erec’ and ‘Iwein’ as well as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ‘Parzival’. The typological investigation is carried out using data-driven methods, primarily Social Network Analysis, and focuses on various aspects of characters. By doing this, we gain an in-depth understanding of the relationships between Arthurian romances and fairy tales and of the differences within the genre of the Arthurian romance itself. We show that the results of statistical analysis refuse clear interpretation, thus providing new insights into the well-known objects.

Retraction and the Making of Arthurian Texts

Retraction and the Making of Arthurian Texts

Nostalgia for Chivalry and the Myth of the Knight: The Post-Medieval Reception of Arthurian Tales

Abstract The role of Renaissance writers in discovering Medieval Arthurian texts has been a crucial one, and somehow precedes the cultural process of Romantic authors. In this article a few narrative strategies and attitudes are analysed, with reference to authors like Pierre Sala, Mossen Gras, Alain Bouchart, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos, Niccolò degli Agostini, Luigi Alamanni, and with comparative considerations about Malory, Ariosto and Boiardo.

Arthurian Women: A Casebook ed. by Thelma Fenster

REVIEWS quotations from that criticism, including summaries of the romance plots taken from it, his own comments are lean, spare, skeletal, unde­ veloped. It is ironic that a book concerned with the layout of texts should have an unhelpful layout itself. Evans divides his text into small blocks and uses several hierarchies of headings to show the relation of the parts. Unfortunately, this presentation, along with a lack of transi­ tional statements, requires that the reader frequently turn backward and forward to understand how an individual section fits into the larger structure of the chapter. Those with a serious interest in Middle English romances and ro­ mance manuscripts would be wise to read this monograph, for it does contain some valuable information and insights, especially about the different versions ofromances and the implications ofthe fact that cer­ tain groups of romances frequently occur together in manuscripts. However, the reader should not expect an easy passage through the rel­ atively small number of pages (about 100) of text. Caveat lector: ap­ proach with caution and, above all, with patience. GEORGE R. KEISER Kansas State University THELMA FENSTER, ed. Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Arthurian Characters and Themes, vol. 3. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996. Pp. lxxvii, 344. $35.00. Ofthe nineteen essays (excluding the lengthy introduction) that appear in this volume, fifteen are reprints. Two (E. Jane Burns, "Rewriting Men's Stories: Enide's Disruptive Mouths," and Laurence Harf-Lancner, "Fairy Godmothers and Fairy Lovers") are abridged versions ofpieces as they originally appeared, and two (Harf-Lancner and Anne Berthelot, "From the Lake to the Fountain: Lancelot and the Fairy Lover") are translations from the original French. Thus, there is little here that one could not find in previously published sources. The primary value of such a book, therefore, is in the assimilation of a group of carefully se­ lected articles into one convenient volume, in keeping with the intent ofthe Garland casebook series, whose editors have pronounced "the pro­ liferation of research devoted to Arthurian material" to be "daunting" (p. xi) and have set out to simplify the task of researchers and students 237 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER by assembling collections of notable articles on given themes or characters. Thelma Fenster, editor of Arthurian Women: A Casebook, has done an excellent job of selecting articles to be included in the volume, balanc­ ing studies on medieval texts with those of nineteenth- and twentieth­ century works, and including articles that focus on French, German, English, and Italian literature. However, inherent in such a collection of reprinted articles are annoying inconsistencies. For example, some es­ says include bibliographies while others do not, and consequently foot­ note styles vary among the articles. It is also unfortunate that contrib­ utors' notes are not included in the volume. They would be particularly useful in a book of this sort, which covers several disciplines and in­ cludes scholars who work in a number of different literary periods. Fenster's lengthy opening essay is divided into four sections (1) jus­ tifying the need for the book, (2) listing and summarizing the roles of Arthurian women, (3) showing how the feminine presence in the Arthurian corpus finds its richest fulfillment in the fairy world (a curi­ ous section that evolves into a brief essay on Marie de France's "Lanval"), and (4) setting forth the various sections of the volume: "Resisting Tales," "Story, Gender, and Culture," "Fairies' Tales," "Iseut and Guene­ vere in the Nineteenth Century," "Another Look," and "Revisionary Tales: Guenevere and Morgan in the Twentieth Century." The temptation to comment individually on each of the articles is quelled by their sheer number and the space limitations of this review. However, taken together the essays handily demonstrate a variety of ap­ proaches to and perspectives on Arthurian texts and underscore the flex­ ibility of the Arthurian legends that have been adapted so variously from age to age and from country to country to the tastes of their re­ ceptor audiences. They also suggest some of the difficulties inherent in dealing with characters whose names and roles may vary from text to text, which seems to be even more of a problem with female characters...

The trouble with Britain

This essay argues that scholars have overlooked the analytical power, complexity, and useful mobility of the category of ‘Britain.’ I argue, accordingly, for a reconsideration of the ways that an attentive appreciation of the diverse medieval uses of ‘Britain’ or the ‘British Isles’ might defamiliarize geographic relations both within and among the islands of the British archipelago. Drawing on various works that trouble the singularity of those terms, I trace a few lines of association across areas usually understood as utterly different, culminating in a reading of the geographic confusions of the Middle Scots Arthurian text, The Knightly Tale of Sir Gologras and Gawain. In that text, European location emerges, plausibly, as a ‘British,’ that is, a Scottish, question.

Vikings Of The Round Table: Kingship in The Islendingasögur and the Riddarasögur

Arthurian literature had an enthusiastic reception in Scandinavia. The Norwegian King Hákon Hákonarson (1217–1263) commissioned translations of Brother Thomas’ Tristan legend and Chrétien de Troyes’s romances as a form of entertainment in order to emulate the Angevin courts of Henry III; these translations articulate a relationship between the Norwegian court and the English courts. The majority of the surviving Scandinavian manuscripts, however, were translated or copied in Iceland by Icelanders who did not have kings or courts. Reading Arthurian Icelandic texts such as Ívens saga (1226) and Möttuls saga (ca. 1250) against Icelandic family sagas such as Egils saga (ca. 1220–1240) and Laxardal saga (ca. 1220–1240) reveals that Icelandic Arthurian texts express a preference for the knights that travel as opposed to the kings. Icelandic Arthurian texts are distinct from their French counterpart by the addition of Viking customs, such as gift-giving, and by the different ideologies that engendered the texts. The Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd, for example, innovates a Spanish Tristan, marking Scandinavian Arthurian literature as transcultural, and distancing the story from English and French versions of the tale.

Gawain and the Nick of Time: Fame, History, and the Untimely in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

'Pag I be not now he ^at ge of speken.'-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l. 1242But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowing it, and our supposedly lying words foreshadow an imminent reality.-Marcel Proust, Sodom and GomorrahWhen Gawain flinches before the first swing of the Green Knight's axe, Bertilak offers a harsh judgment, declaring 'Pou art not Gawayn' (1.227ο).1 In this climactic moment of the poem, Gawain's failures have become numerous. By not disclosing that he accepted the green girdle from Lady Bertilak, he violates the Exchange of Winnings game that he entered into with her husband. However, the rules of that game were devised in such a way that he could do nothing but fail: he must either reject the Lady's offer of the lace and fail to live up to his courtly reputation, or accept it under her terms (that he keep it to himself) and violate the oath he made to give his winnings to Bertilak in exchange for Bertilak's winnings during the day's hunt. Even more, in flinching before the swing of the ax, Gawain acts as a coward, a trait unbecoming a knight of his stature. He is neither the lauded Gawain of courtly romance, nor is he the virtuous Pentangle knight that the poem puts forth. The Green Knight's accusatory challenge to Gawain's identity is as biting as the nick that marks the third swing, for it claims that the young knight is a pretender to the name of Gawain and not the true Gawain of Arthur's court. This sort of taunt is common in medieval romance, but I argue here that it can be read in a more literal fashion, that Gawain is not, in fact, Gawain. The link between the proper name 'Gawain' and the fame attributed to him is in essence far more tenuous and slippery than it would, at first, appear. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight thus puts the category of fame under interrogation, revealing how it occupies and engenders heterogeneous temporalities which unsettle stable senses of personal identity and of history.Fame, so important to Arthurian texts, is already something polychronic in its very make up.2 Put simply, fame is the transmission of a name (and the narrative associated with it) over time. Its dissemination through the ages participates in a significant process of accretion; in a manner similar to Jonathan Gil Harris' discussion of the temporality of matter in the Early Modern period, fame 'collate[s] diverse moments in time.'3 The fame of Gawain gains new layers and narratives as time passes, while also maintaining earlier versions, amended ones, revised ones, and those that are nearly forgotten. Although fame is apprehended in the present, it originates in the past-or paradoxically, in the future. And, as something that bridges different moments in time, fame carries with it the traces of those other encounters, a palimpsest of narratives. The temporality of fame, therefore, is an untimely one; the untimely, as Derrida observes, is non-contemporaneous and out of joint with the present moment, a spectral presence that haunts and disturbs the now.4 Elizabeth Grosz further locates in the untimely 'that which is strong enough, active enough, to withstand the drive of the present to similarity, resemblance, or recognition, for the untimely brings with it the difference that portends the future.'5 These disruptive yet generative aspects of the untimely are most apparent in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where the statements of non-identity that haunt Gawain throughout the poem gesture toward the non-simultaneity of his reputation with himself. Specifically, Gawain's virtuous presentation in the poem contradicts the worldlier version found in the French Arthurian romances and invoked by so many of the characters that he meets; the knight's presentation in this poem enacts a historical fantasy that attempts to conjure away the trauma of the inevitable downfall of the Arthurian order. In this essay, I argue that the untimeliness of Gawain's fame drags in its wake a future that the poem seeks to banish, yet cannot seem to forget. …

The Arthur of the Italians: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture ed. by Gloria Allaire and F. Regina Psaki (review)

GLORIA ALLAIRE AND F. REGINA PSAKI, eds., The Arthur of the Italians: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014. Pp. xiii, 297. isbn: 978-1-78416-050-1. $130.This volume, seventh in the series Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, is a very welcome addition, for it is the first comprehensive study in English of the legend's impact on medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund G. Gardner's The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature (1930). In 1968, Daniela Delcorno Branca's Tristano e Lancilotto in Italia: Studi di letteratura arturiana provided a much-needed update, but although Italian-language scholarship (such as this remarkable study) is 'abundant, dynamic, meticulous and sophisticated' (1), as Psaki notes in her introduction, Anglophone criticism has been relatively limited. This is one reason why the Arthuriana of Italy has been less visible than that of other nations or regions covered in earlier volumes of this series. Another reason is that there was a relative lag in the development of Italian works devoted to Arthur, compared to other western European nations, in part because the Italian peninsula was extremely multilingual, with some of the earliest Arthurian texts appearing in Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin. The Italian corpus is thus shared among different languages, with French playing a predominant role.Accordingly, Part One, 'France and Italy,' addresses the interface between the French and Italian lands that participated in the spread of Arthurian texts. Keith Busby describes the cultural colonization that the Italians welcomed in the various courts and city-states of Naples, Veneto, Lombardy, and Florence and demonstrates that Chretien's romances were well known and exerted an influence even earlier than the thirteenth-century French prose romances. Broaching the subject of the French redactions in Italy, Fabrizio Cigni discusses Rustichello da Pisa's Arthurian Compilation (after 1270-74). While exploring this important work, he shows its relation to Guiron le Courtois and charts the progress that is being made in the edition and study of a work that is still unedited and thus little studied.As is well known, Tristan was by far the most popular Arthurian character in Italy. Marie-Jose Heijkant traces the reception of the French Prose Tristan on the peninsula, and after describing the two principal French traditions of that work, she surveys the many manuscripts copied and owned in Italy and the numerous translations and adaptations composed in the vernaculars of Tuscany and Veneto: principally Tristano Riccardiano, Tristano Panciatichiano, Tristano Veneto, Tristano Corsiniano, the Tavola Ritonda, and shorter texts. In these works, Tristan is the exemplary knight and lover, presenting an ideal mirror for the aristocratic aspirations of the new middle class. The Tavola Ritonda is explored in much more detail in the chapter contributed by Delcorno Branca, who sees it as the Italian contribution par excellence to the Arthurian tradition in that, unlike the other Tristan romances, it has a narrative outline that is original with respect to the French tradition and represents 'a holistic attempt to assemble into a single romance the entire Arthurian cycle from Uther Pendragon to the Mort Artu, with Tristan as its focus' (69). The chivalric world it presents, moreover, is characterized by religious and civic ideals that appealed to audiences of varying political and societal tendencies.Part Two, 'Arthurian Material in Italian Narrative Forms,' shows how Arthurian themes, characters, and motifs were exploited by Italian authors. Using examples drawn from the Tavola Ritonda, Tristano Riccardiano, and Tristano Panciatichiano, Stefano Mula demonstrates how the authors used interlace, repetition, and compilation to adapt the long, often convoluted, French romances to the tastes of new audiences. Maria Bendinelli Predelli examines the Arthurian cantari (narrative ottava rima poems that were sung in public), identifying common traits and showing how the canterini (mostly anonymous except for Antonio Pucci) distill traditional romance situations into their most elementary components to make them more easily transmissible to a different culture. …

From Guinevere to Isabel: Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Transformations of Oriana in Amadís de Gaula

From Guinevere to Isabel:Rodríguez de Montalvo’s Transformations of Oriana in Amadís de Gaula Stacey Triplette The 1508 romance of chivalry Amadís de Gaula provides some of the best evidence for the transmission of Arthurian legend to the Iberian Peninsula. Though Guiraut de Cabrera references the matter of Britain as essential repertoire for jongleurs in 1170, many scholars consider the Iberian Peninsula “an Arthurian backwater”, to borrow Michael Harney’s term (Lida de Malkiel, “Arthurian Literature” 405; Harney, “Spanish Lancelot” 188). Two partial translations of the prose Lancelot survive in Iberian languages: the sixteenth century Castilian Lanzarote del Lago, a manuscript copy of a 1414 codex, and a shorter, unrelated manuscript fragment in Catalán (Contreras Martín and Sharrer xii). The story of Lancelot is also preserved in references in other texts.1 For example, the popular Lancelot ballad “Nunca fuera caballero de [End Page 29] damas tan bien servido”, which Don Quijote mentions in his discussion of Lancelot and Guinevere, dates to the fourteenth century and survives in four sixteenth-century variants (Contreras Martín and Sharrer xi; Sharrer 180–81). Carlos Alvar notes that two Lancelot ballads were sung at the court of the Reyes Católicos (“Materia de Bretaña” 43). Amadís, a belated Arthurian text, imitates the plotline of the French Lancelot en prose but rewrites its love triangle, substituting juvenile disobedience for adultery. This change has prompted scholars to classify the Amadís’s values as bourgeois or “middle class” (Entwistle 216). Michael Harney, citing Fogelquist, explains that “[t]he shift in the locus of control over the female converts the triangle of the jealous husband (Arthur), his wife (Guinevere), and her lover (Lancelot), into that of the domineering father (Lisuarte), his daughter (Oriana), and her suitor (Amadís)” (“Spanish Lancelot” 192; Fogelquist 103). Edwin Williamson argues that the purpose of the revision is moral, as the Amadís participates in a “Christianizing process” typical of both the French Post-Vulgate and the Iberian tradition (39). While these readings are all valid, they do not tell the whole story. In this article, I contend that the transformation of the mal mariée into the rebellious daughter also has political implications. Peggy McCracken, referencing medieval French romance, notes that stories of adulterous queens “respond, sometimes indirectly, to issues raised by the evolving shape of queenship during the period of their production: the role of the queen in government, the importance of childbirth and succession in the royal family, and the importance of the queen’s chastity in the rituals and symbolic structures of the royal court” (Romance of Adultery 15). Oriana’s sexual transgressions, though they fall short of adultery, leave her vulnerable to criticism as her political power increases, as is often the case in the romances McCracken studies (Romance of Adultery 26; “Queen’s Secret” 289–90). Montalvo, in his 1508 revision of Amadís, redeems the sinful princess through marriage to Amadís in order to legitimate the political power that the two share as the co-rulers of Britain and Gaul. Oriana evokes at certain moments the image [End Page 30] of Isabel, and the chivalric dual monarchy provides a fictional echo for the kingdom of the Reyes Católicos. Imitation of Isabel Though she differs from Isabel in her sentimental life, Montalvo’s Oriana comes to resemble the monarch of Castilla in her role as heiress to the throne of Britain. Montalvo’s topical references reveal that he revised Amadís during the last decades of the fifteenth century and likely concluded it around the time of the conquest of Granada (Avalle-Arce 133). Barbara Weissberger asserts that the depiction of female characters during Isabel’s reign is “deeply affected by the presence on the throne of an absolutist monarch who is also a woman” (xiv). Isabel ruled Castilla from 1474 to her death in 1504, and her frequent travels made her a familiar public figure. Montalvo was a regidor of Medina del Campo and thus on the periphery of Isabeline bureaucracy. According to Frank Pierce, “Medina del Campo was a place especially favored by Isabella and her husband (the queen died there in 1504...

The Arthurian Legacy in Sweden

The Arthurian Legacy in Sweden Sofia Lodén The so-called Eufemiavisor, three translations into Old Swedish written at the behest of the Norwegian Queen Eufemia at the beginning of the fourteenth century, mark the beginning of Swedish literature. At least, there is no trace of earlier literary texts of the same scope as the Eufemiavisor: the runic inscriptions, law texts, and legends that precede them are really not narrative literary texts as extensive as the Eufemiavisor. This beginning of Swedish literature also signalled the arrival of King Arthur in Sweden. Two of the Eufemiavisor link up directly with the Arthurian tradition. Herr Ivan mainly recalls Chrétien de Troyes’s famous romance Le Chevalier au lion: the French text was the Swedish translator’s main source text, while the Old Norse translation of the romance, Ívens saga, served as occasional support.1 The source text of the second of the Eufemiavisor, Hertig Fredrik av Normandie, has not survived, but similarities with the German genre of the Spielmannsepos [End Page 62] have been pointed out by William Layher (1999), and the text presents a strong “Arthurian veneer” (Layher 1999, 247). Florian Bambeck, who has studied Hertig Fredrik av Normandie extensively, considers it as “ein nachklassischer Artusroman mit Brautwerbungsepisode, der seine Handlung in eine nacharturische Ära verlegt” (2009, 235) [a postclassical Arthurian romance with a courtship episode, whose plot is set in a post-Arthurian era].2 The third text that was written at the behest of Queen Eufemia, Flores och Blanzeflor, can hardly be considered an Arthurian text, since it goes back to the tradition of the French roman idyllique, a genre that was also known throughout medieval Europe. The Old Swedish Herr Ivan, the first of the three Eufemiavisor, presents both ideological and stylistic ideals, and simultaneously introduced the Arthurian legend to Sweden.3 When reading the becomes clear that King Arthur was not considered a well-known character by the new public but needed a careful presentation: J nampn fadhers oc sons oc thæs hælgha andhawil iak taka mik till handaforna saghu fram att førathem til skemptan ther a wilæ høraaff the werdhogasta konunga twather man æ hørdhe sakt j fra:Karlamagnus oc konung Artws;til dyghdh oc æro waro the fws.Artws war konung aff Ængland.Han van Rom medh swerdh oc brandok war ther keyser medh mykle æra.Han frælste Ængland aff hardhe kæra [End Page 63] ok skat ther romara førra giordho,swa at ængin han sidhen kreffwia thordhe.Annar war Karlamagnus aff Franz.Thet wil iak idher sighia til sanz,mot hedhna mæn for cristna at stridæwaro enge fræmbre j thera tidæ.Badhe the herra iak sigher j frathe haffwa thera framfærdh skipath swa,ower alla werldina gaar thera loffhwar herra och førstæ søkiæ hoff.Konunga synir the søkto thera heem,hertoghar, iærlar, greffuar thiænte them;riddara synir the giordo och swaoch alle the ther wider kunno na.Om thenne werdug konung Artus daghawaro kempæ starke thera liiff tordo wagafor ridderskap och frvr æræ.Thet ær illæ the æru nw færræfore frvor loff wilæ priis at winnæ;man kan them nw næplik finnæ. (Noreen 1931, vv. 1–32) In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I will take it upon myself to tell an old tale as entertainment for those who want to listen about the two most worthy kings about whom stories have ever been told: Charlemagne and King Arthur; they were eager for virtue and honor. Arthur was the king of England. He conquered Rome with sword and fire and was emperor there with great glory. He freed England from hardship and from tribute which the Romans formerly imposed, so that nobody has dared demand it since. Charlemagne was the other one. In truth I want to tell you: where Christians battled against the heathens none was more outstanding in those days. The two rulers I am telling you about have governed their actions in such a manner that their praise has spread over the entire earth...