To me, methought, who waited with a crowd,
There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore
King Arthur, like a modern gentleman
Of stateliest port; and all the people cried,
"Arthur is come again: he cannot die."

"Morte d'Arthur" (1842)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Arthurian Literature for 2010

Publisher D. S. Brewer has recently released an all Malory issue of the annual Arthurian Literature. Unfortunately, the contributors are not listed online, but other details are as follows:

Arthurian Literature XXVIII
Spec. Issue: Blood, Sex, Malory: Essays on the Morte Darthur
Edited by David Clark and Kate McClune.

First Published: 20 Oct 2011
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843842811
Pages: 214
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer

Sex, blood, and gender have diverse associations in the Malorian tradition, yet their inter-relatedness and intersections are comparatively understudied. This present collection of essays is intended to go some way toward remedying the need for a sustained examination of blood ties, kinship, gender, and sexuality, and the prominence of these themes in Malory's work. They concentrate in particular upon the analyses of sexuality and sexual activity (and its lack or erasure) and the significance of blood (and blood-shedding) in the Morte Darthur, as well as the interconnections with gender (biological sex) and familial ("blood") relations in the Morte, its sources and its later reworkings. The result is a wide-ranging investigation into related but distinctive thematic preoccupations, including the national and kinship affiliations of Malorian knights, sibling relationships, deviant sexuality, and blood-spilling in martial and intimate contexts.


Contents
1 Preface
2 Reading Malory's Bloody Bedrooms
3 [Dis]Figuring Transgressive Desire: Blood, Sex, and Stained Sheets in Malory's Morte Darthur
4 Bewmaynes: The Threat from the Kitchen
5 Sibling Relations in Malory's Morte Darthur
6 'Traytoures' and 'Treson': the Language of Treason in the Works of Sir Thomas Malory
7 'The Vengeaunce of My Brethirne': Blood Ties in Malory's Morte Darthur
8 Malory and the Scots
9 Blood, Faith and Saracens in 'The Book of Sir Tristram'
10 Barriers Unbroken: Sir Palomydes the Saracen in 'The Book of Sir Tristram'
11 Virginity, Sexuality, Repression and Return in the 'Tale of the Sankgreal'
12 Launcelot in Compromising Positions: Fabliau in Malory's 'Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake'

Arthuriana for Fall 2011

The latest issue of Arthuriana was recently released to print and digital subscribers (it is also available on Project Muse to those with access to the service). The issue is devoted to medieval Arthuriana, but the reviews include some comments on modern adaptions of the legend. Contents are as follows:

Arthuriana 21.3 (Fall 2011)

The Failure of Justice, The Failure of Arthur
Laura K. Bedwell 3

Longevity and the Loathly Ladies in Three Medieval Romances
Sandy Feinstein 23

Salvage Anthropology and Displaced Mourning in the Lais of Marie de France
Shirin Azizeh Khanmohamadi 49

Malory's Marginalia Reconsidered
James Wade 70

The Round Table 87 [a report from the IAS Triennial Congress this past summer]


REVIEWS

Mark Adderely, The Hawk and the Cup 91
Ann Howey

Laura Ashe, Ivana Djordjevic, and Judith Weiss, eds., The Exploitations of Medieval Romance 92
Myra Seaman

Barbara Tepa Lupack, The Girls' King Arthur: Tales of the Women of Camelot 95
Amy S. Kaufman

Molly Martin, Vision and Gender in Malory's Morte Darthur 96
Kenneth Hodges

Lancelot Grail:The Old French Arhturian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Translation. Parts I and II 98
Joan Tasker Grimbert



Sunday, October 9, 2011

Hanks on Tolkien and Malory

I came across the following essay earlier today:

Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr. “ ‘A Far Green Country Under a Swift Sunrise’—Tolkien’s Eucastastrophe and Malory’s ‘Morte Darthur'.” Fifteenth-Century Studies 36 (2011): 49-64.

Excerpts are available on Amazon and through Google Books, and, through them, one can see that Hanks' offers an insightful reassessment of Malory's final book based on Tolkien's theories of narrative presented in the essay "On Fairy Stories." This is definitely something to track down and read the full version. 

Michael Torregrossa