Now Out in Paperback - The Arthurian World

I'm excited to see this is now in paperback. Full details and ordering information at https://www.routledge.com/The-Arthurian-World/Coldham-Fussell-Edlich-Muth-Ward/p/book/9781032186320. 

The Arthurian World

Edited By Victoria Coldham-Fussell, Miriam Edlich-Muth, Renée Ward

Copyright 2022

Paperback - $47.99

Hardback - $240.00

eBook - $47.99

ISBN 9781032186320

602 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations

Paperback published April 14, 2025 by Routledge

Description

This collection provides an innovative and wide-ranging introduction to the world of Arthur by looking beyond the canonical texts and themes, taking instead a transversal perspective on the Arthurian narrative. Together, its thirty-four chapters explore the continuities that make the material recognizable from one century to another, as well as transformations specific to particular times and places, revealing the astonishing variety of adaptations that have made the Arthurian story popular in large parts of the world.

Divided into four parts—The World of Arthur in the British Isles, The European World of Arthur, The Material World of Arthur, and The Transversal World of Arthur — the volume tracks the legend’s movement across temporal, geographical, and material boundaries. Broadly chronological, each part views the unfolding Arthurian story through its own lens, while temporal and geographical overlaps between the sections underscore the proximity of these developments in the legend’s history.

Ranging from early Latin chronicles and Welsh poetry to twenty-first century anime and political conspiracies, this comprehensive and illuminating book will be of interest to anyone researching Arthurian literature or tracing the evolution of medievalism through literature, the visual arts, and popular culture.

Contents

Introduction

PART I: The World of Arthur in the British Isles

1 King Arthur: Hero or Legend?

P. J. C. Field

2 The Invention of Arthurian Britain: Arthur in the Early Welsh Literary Tradition

Helen Fulton

3 Arthur Among the Nine Worthies

Audrey Martin and David Mason

4 Prophecy and Place in the Arthurian Tradition

Victoria Flood

5 Spenser, Malory, and Regionalism in Arthurian Literature

Kenneth Hodges

6 The Post-medieval Arthur at War

Andrew Lynch

7 The Arthurian Legends in the Sixteenth Century: The Misfortunes of Arthur and The Faerie Queene

Andrew Hadfield

8 "what’s past is prologue" – Early Modern Explorations of Arthurian Romance and Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Claudia Olk

9 Victorian Medievalisms: Rehabilitating Arthur in Eleonora Louisa Hervey’s The Feasts of Camelot

Renée Ward

10 Staging Guenevere’s Maternity in Richard Hovey’s The Marriage of Guenevere and The Birth of Galahad

Virginia Blanton

PART II: The European World of Arthur

11 The Byelorussian Tristan

Milica Spremić Končar

12 Continuity and Discontinuity in the Irish Arthurian Romances

Bernadette Smelik

13 No Country for Young Men: The Challenge of the Medieval Greek Old Knight

Thomas H. Crofts

14 A Not-So-Unique Text: Melekh Artus and Medieval Jewish Arthurian Romance

Caroline Gruenbaum

15 Viduvilt: The Yiddish World of Arthur

Annegret Oehme

16 No Knights, No England, No Arthur: Arthurian Theater in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Germany

Cora Dietl

17 Guiron le Courtois Across Borders: The Life of a Prose Narrative Cycle

Nicola Morato

18 Optical Illusion, Illusory Objects, and the Quest of the Holy Grail in the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and Perlesvaus

Martha Baldon

PART III: The Material World of Arthur

19 Making and Illustrating Arthurian Manuscripts

Alison Stones

20 Sir Palamedes the Indelibly "Saracen" Knight: Heraldry, Monstrosity, and Race in Fifteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts

Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan

21 Minding the Gaps: Topology and Gender in the Remediation of Medieval German Arthurian Romance

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

22 Arthurian Imagination in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Art

Peter N. Lindfield

23 Finding Arthur in the Percy Folio

Katie Garner

24 A History of Malory’s Morte Darthur in Print

James Wade

25 A Grave Discovery? Guinevere’s Death and Burial at Amesbury in Medieval and Early Modern Tradition

Mary Bateman

PART IV: The Transversal World of Arthur

26 The Arthurian Legends in America

Alan Lupack

27 In the Ancient Days of Sagas: Astrid Lindgren and the Legacy of Arthurian Romance

Sofia Lodén

28 "Hail to the king[s], baby": Arthur vs Army of Darkness

Jeff Massey and Tabitha Ochtera

29 Arthur in Modern Fantasy Literature

Shiloh Carroll

30 Cinema Arthuriana and the Knights of the Not-So-Round Table

Kevin J. Harty

31 The Grail is in Another Castle: The World of Arthur in Digital Games

Alicia McKenzie

32 Desire and the Flexible Grail: The Japanese Fate Franchise and Evolving Notions of Arthurian Power

E. L. Risden

33 "Moor" and "Saracen" in Medieval and Contemporary Arthurian Texts

Kris Swank

34 Guy Ritchie, King Arthur, and the Great Conspiracy

Andrew B. R. Elliot

About the Editors

Victoria Coldham-Fussell is a Research Ethics Adviser for Victoria University of Wellington—Te Herenga Waka. Her research focuses on renaissance humor and the work of Edmund Spenser. She is the author of Comic Spenser: Faith, Folly, and The Faerie Queene (2020), co-author of the Oxford Bibliographies article 'Edmund Spenser' (2017), and contributor to Conversātiō—In the Company of Bees (2021).

Miriam Edlich-Muth holds the Chair of Medieval English and Historical Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Renée Ward is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of Lincoln, UK, and co-editor of The Year’s Work in Medievalism.

Apocalyptic Arthuriana - Kalamazoo 2025 Co-Sponsored Session

I am pleased to report the success earlier today of our first co-sponsored session for this year's International Congress on Medieval Studies. 

Please find the session details below.

Apocalyptic Arthuriana (A Roundtable) (Virtual)

60th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI)

Session 144: Thursday, 8 May, from 7:00-8:30 PM EDT

Principal Sponsoring Organization:

Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain

Co-Sponsoring Organization(s):

International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)

Organizers: Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College; Joseph M. Sullivan, Univ. of Oklahoma

Presider: Karen Casey Casebier - Univ. of Tennessee–Chattanooga

Morte Darthur: Conflicted Loyalties, Promised Reconciliation

Hannah Montgomery, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract:

Many scholars have commented on the importance of fellowship and unity in Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, and it is the failure of this central ideal that leads to Arthur’s death. Malory depicts the fall of Camelot as specifically a civil war. While there is still an element of divine retribution for the moral failings of Arthur and his knights, the immediate and primary cause is discord within the Round Table fellowship. These cracks within the Round Table are not the result of simple disloyalty or betrayal, but rather of irreconcilable conflicts of loyalty coming to a head and forcing Arthur’s most faithful knights to choose between a multitude of important relationships, whether to be loyal to their lord, their brother in arms, their lady, or their family.

In part because Morte Darthur ends in conflict, without resolution, there have long been debates about its genre. While Whetter has argued that Morte Darthur is best understood not as a romance but as a tragic-romance, I argue that it is actually an incomplete romance. The promised return of Arthur suggests the completion of the genre’s narrative pattern of separation and return, rise, fall, and rise again, a narrative structure that I argue is linked to a generic relationship arc of separation and reunion or reconciliation. In delaying, yet promising, the return, Arthurian legend forces us to linger in the moment of conflict, drawing attention to the causes of the fall, but leaves hope that, although reconciliation is not currently possible, it is yet to come.

Hannah Montgomery is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill. Her dissertation project analyzes the role of friendship and loyalty in Middle English romance, considering their connections to ideas of identity and ethics, and arguing for the centrality of interpersonal relationships to the plot, structure, and themes of the genre. She is currently working on a chapter examining romances’ simultaneous idealization and problematization of knightly brotherhood. Her other research and teaching interests include fantasy and medievalism.

Cthulhu Returns to Camelot: New Works of Lovecraft-Inspired Arthurian Fiction

Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

Abstract:

In the Matter of Britain, there are multiple ways for Camelot to fall, but some of the more interesting occur in texts that mash up the Arthurian legends with the Cthulhu Mythos of H P. Lovecraft. This presentation represents the latest update in my ongoing attempt to catalog representation of Lovecraft-inspired Arthuriana and will focus on the recent anthology series Shadows Over Avalon (2022-2023) published by 18th Wall Productions.

Michael A. Torregrossa (he/him/his) is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor of writing and literature courses in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His research focuses on popular culture’s adaptation, appropriation, and transformation of literary classics, like the Arthurian legends and the works of writer H. P. Lovecraft. In addition to these pursuits, Michael is the founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain (2000-) and The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (2004-). He also serves as editor for these organizations' various blogs and as moderator of their discussion lists and leads the development of their conference activities. Besides this work, Michael is active in the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) and organizes sessions for their annual conference in the fall. Since 2019, Michael has been NEPCA’s Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair, but he previously served as its Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair, a position he held from 2009-2018. 

Rebuilding Camelot: Life After Arthur's Death in Grossman's The Bright Sword

Leah Haught, Univ West Georgia

Abstract:

Can Camelot survive Arthur's death? Versions of this question have, of course, haunted Arthuriana since the Middle Ages. In these remarks, I will briefly explore how Grossman's recent reimagining of Arthur's death as survived only by the Round Table's "oddballs" is in conversation with medieval narratives that end with Arthur's death, including the Alliterative Morte and Malory. Grossman's original character, Collum, is determined to uphold the legacy of the recently killed king who he long idolized, but he quickly realizes that he isn't entirely sure what that legacy is or should be. Along with the other survivors of Camlann, Collum tries make his way in an Arthurless world, which appears at times impossible, at times hopeful, and, more often than not, inevitable.

Leah Haught is an Associate Professor of English at the University of West Georgia. Her research interests include the Arthurian legend, cultural understandings of gender and sexuality, the history of monsters, and the functions of nostalgia within medievalism. Her work frequently explores the intersections between past and present idealisms and has been published in Arthuriana, Parergon, JEGP, Year’s Work in Medievalism, and Studies in Medievalism as well a variety of edited collections. Forthcoming publications include a chapter in The Cambridge History of Arthurian Literature and Culture and a co-edited volume for METS.