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

Friday, June 14, 2024

New from D S Brewer - Arthurian Literature 39 for 2024

Arthurian Literature XXXIX: A Celebration of Elizabeth Archibald

Edited by Megan G Leitch and Kevin S Whetter


Full details, preview, and ordering information at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843847182/arthurian-literature-xxxix/.


TITLE DETAILS

190 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

Series: Arthurian Literature

Series Vol. Number: 39

Imprint: D.S.Brewer


Hardcover

9781843847182

June 2024

£70.00 / $115.00 

(ebook also available)


DESCRIPTION

"Delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

This volume is a special issue dedicated to Professor Elizabeth Archibald, who has had such an impact on, and made so many significant contributions to, the field of Arthurian Studies. It maintains its tradition of diverse approaches to the Arthurian tradition - albeit on this occasion with a particular focus on Malory, appropriately reflecting one of Professor Archibald's main interests.

It starts with the essay awarded this year's D.S. Brewer Prize for a contribution by an early career scholar, which considers the little-known debt owed by early modern sailors to Arthurian knighthood and pageantry. The essays that follow begin with a wide-ranging account of manuscript decorations and annotations in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, before turning to the Evil Custom trope in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Further contributions explore the formalities of requests and conditions in Malory's '"Tale of Gareth", emotional excess and magical transformation in several scenes across the Morte Darthur, tensions between public and private and self and identity in Malory's "Sankgreal", and friction between the (external and imposed) law and (internal and subjective but honourable) code of chivalry, especially apparent in Malory's final Tales. The last article examines the ways in which Mordred's origins in modern Arthurian fiction build on Malory's false, or forgotten, promise to relate Mordred's upbringing. The volume closes with a short tribute to Elizabeth Archibald, highlighting her leadership in the field and her encouragement of scholarly collaboration and community.


CONTENTS

1. The Derek Brewer Essay Prize: Playing Arthur: Making the Elizabethan Mariner - Felicity Brown

2. Ignoring Arthur: Patterns of (In)Attention in Manuscripts of Latin Histories - Siân Echard

3. 'Þe place þat ȝe prece to ful perelous is halden': The Evil Custom in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - David F. Johnson

4. 'aske bettyr, I counseyle the': Requests, Conditions, and Consent in Malory's 'Sir Gareth of Orkney' - Hannah Piercy

5. Supernatural Transformation in Malory's Le Morte Darthur - Natalie Jayne Goodison

6. Personal Piety and 'semyng outeward': Self and Identity in Thomas Malory's 'Tale of the Sankgreal' - Martha Claire Baldon

7. Evil Will and Shameful Death: Revisiting Law in Malory's Morte Darthur - Elizabeth Edwards

8. The Return of the Return of Mordred - Cory James Rushton


Recent from D S Brewer - Arthurian Literature 38 for 2023

Arthurian Literature XXXVIII

Edited by Kevin S Whetter and Megan G Leitch


Full details, preview, and ordering information at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843846475/arthurian-literature-xxxviii/.


TITLE DETAILS

342 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

3 b/w

Series: Arthurian Literature

Series Vol. Number: 38

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

Hardcover


9781843846475

April 2023

£75.00 / $115.00 

(also available as an ebook)


DESCRIPTION

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT


This issue offers stimulating studies of a wide range of Arthurian texts and authors, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, among which is the first winner of the Derek Brewer Essay Prize, awarded to a fascinating exploration of Ragnelle's strangeness in The Weddyng of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnelle. It includes an exploration of Irish and Welsh cognates and possible sources for Merlin; Bakhtinian analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's playful discourse; and an account of the transmission of Geoffrey's text into Old Icelandic. In the Middle English tradition, there is an investigation of material Arthuriana in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, followed by explorations of shame in Malory's Morte Darthur. The post-medieval articles see one paper devoted to the paratexts of sixteenth-century French Arthurian publishers; one to eighteenth-century Arthuriana; and one to a range of nineteenth-century rewritings of the virginity of Galahad and Percival's Sister. Two Notes close this volume: one on Geoffrey's Vita Merlini and a possible Irish source, and one on a likely source for Malory's linking of Trystram with the Book of Hunting and Hawking in an early form of The Book of St Albans.


CONTENTS

1. Animals at the Feast: Strange Strangers and Courtly Power in The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle - C. M. Palmer

2. The Kindred of a Boy without a Father: Merlin's British Forebears and Irish Cousins -John Carey

3. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Subtle Subversion: Active Double-Voiced Discourse in the Historia regum Britanniae - Vanessa K. Iacocca

4. 'Cornwall, up in the North': Geography and Place Names in the Source of the Old Icelandic Brut - Hélène Tétrel

5. Enacting Arthurianism in the Order of the Garter and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' - Matt Clancy

6. Deviants and Dissenters: Theorizing Shame and Punishment in Malory's Morte - Richard Sévère

7. Loyalty and Worshyp in Conflict in Malory's Lancelot - Manabu Agari

8. Emotional Inheritance in Malory's Morte Darthur: Shame and the Lott-Pellinore Feud - Karen Cherewatuk

9. Navigating and Indexing Arthurian Romance in Benoît Rigaud's Edition of Lancelot du Lake (1591) - Jane H. M. Taylor and Leah Tether

10. 'A great many strange puppets': Queen Caroline, Merlin's Cave, and Symbolic Arthurianism in the Age of Reason - Amy Louise Blaney

11. 'How Galahad Regained his Virginity: Dead Women, Catholicism, and the Grail in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry' - Kenneth Hodges

12. 'Merlin's Woodland House: Irish Cosmology in the Vita Merlini?' - Jennifer Lopatin and A. Joseph McMullen

13. Malory and the Book of St Albans - P. J. C. Field



Catching Up - Arthurian Literature 35 for 2020

Arthurian Literature XXXV

Edited by Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson


Full details, previews, and ordering information at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843845454/arthurian-literature-xxxv/


TITLE DETAILS

227 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

5 b/w illus.

Series: Arthurian Literature

Series Vol. Number: 35

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

Hardcover


9781843845454

June 2020

$115.00 / £75.00 (also available as an ebook)


DESCRIPTION

The continued influence and significance of the legend of Arthur are demonstrated by the articles collected in this volume.


The rich vitality of both the Arthurian material itself and the scholarship devoted to it is manifested in this volume. It begins with an interdisciplinary study of swords belonging to Arthurian and other heroes and of the smiths who made them, assessed both in their literary contexts and in "historical" references to their existence as heroic relics. Two essays then consider the use of Arthurian material for political purposes: a discussion of Caradog's Vita Gildae throws light on the complex attitudes to Arthur of contemporaries of Geoffrey of Monmouth in a time of political turmoil in England, and an investigation into borrowings from Geoffrey's Historia in a chronicle of Anglo-Scottish relations in the time of Edward I, a well-known admirer of the Arthurian legend, argues that they would have appealed to the clerical élite. Romance motifs link the subsequent pieces: women and their friendships in Ywain and Gawain, the only known close English adaptation of a romance by Chrétien, and the mixture of sacred and secular in The Turke and Gawain, with fascinating alchemical parallels for a puzzling beheading episode. This is followed by a discussion of the views on native and foreign sources of three sixteenth-century defenders of Arthur, John Leland, John Prise and Humphrey Llwyd, and their responses to the criticisms of Polydore Vergil. In twentieth-century reception history, John Steinbeck was an ardent Arthurian enthusiast: an essay looks at the significance of his annotations to his copy of Malory as he worked on his adaptation, The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. The volume moves to even more recent territory with an exploration of the adaptations of Malory and other Arthurian writers that occur in the comic books by Geoff Johns about Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, King of Atlantis. The book is completed by a reprint of a classic essay by Norris Lacy on the absence and presence of the Grail in Arthurian texts from the twelfth century on.


CONTENTS

Arthurian Swords I: Gawain's Sword and the Legend of Weland the Smith - Richard Barber

Rex rebellis et vir pacificus: Civil War and Ecclesiastical Peacekeeping in the Vita Gildae of Caradog of Llancarfan - Andrew Rabin

Once and Future History: Textual Borrowing in an Account of the First War of Scottish Independence - Christopher Michael Berard

'Me rewes sore': Women's Friendship, Affect and Loyalty in Ywain and Gawain - Usha Vishnuvajjala

The Sacred and the Secular: Alchemical Transformation in The Turke and Sir Gawain - Natalie Goodison

'The native place of that great Arthur': Foreignness and Nativity in Sixteenth-Century Defences of Arthur - Mary Bateman

John Steinbeck's 'Wonder-Words' - Elaine Treharne and William J. Fowler

The Once and Future King of Atlantis: The Arthurian Figure in Geoff Johns's Aquaman: Death of a King - Carl B. Sell

Arthur and/or the Grail - Norris J. Lacy