26th IAS Congress Cancelled

 A quick update on the XXVIth Congress of the International Arthurian Society scheduled to convene at Catania University, Italy, this July: 

Due to the persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the XXVIth Arthurian Congress of the IAS is cancelled

CFP Arthurian Medievalism (Spec Issue of Journal of the International Arthurian Society; 11/30/21)

Cross-posted:

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society on Arthurian Medievalism

The Journal of the International Arthurian Society (JIAS) welcomes submissions for a special issue (2022, volume 10) on Arthurian medievalism, or post-medieval adaptations, re- imaginings and recreations of medieval Arthurian texts, artefacts and spaces (real or imagined). The guest editors seek especially interdisciplinary and co-disciplinary explorations of how Arthurian myth makes meaning in a range of media, including (but not limited to) literary texts, television, film, games, visual arts, architecture, commodity culture, experiential medievalism, the heritage sector and geographical spaces.

Submissions from all categories of scholars, including postgraduate students, early career researchers and independent scholars are welcome, as are submissions from non-members of the Society.

Submissions must be between 7,000 and 10,000 words (inclusive of footnotes) and must follow the guidelines for submission for JIAS, which follow the MHRA style guide. Submissions (essay, short bio and abstract) should be sent electronically to the guest editors of the special issue, Dr Renée Ward (rward@lincoln.ac.uk) and Dr Andrew Elliott (aelliott@lincoln.ac.uk), no later than 30 November 2021.

Arthuriana Special Issue for Fall 2020

Here are the contents for the Fall 2020 number of Arthuriana. It presents a special issue, edited by Leah Haught and Leila K. Norako, on the theme of "Assembling Arthur".

As usual, the articles can be accessed by subscribers on the journal website (at http://www.arthuriana.org/access/30-3Contents.html) and to researchers on Project MUSE. 

  

Introduction: Assembling Arthur
Leah Haught and Leila K. Norako	3
Studies in Medieval Stargazing
Sarah M. Anderson	8
Beginning and Ending with Arthur: Reading Arthurian Romance ‘Compilationally’ in Two Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts
Rebecca Pope	50
The Paratexts of 15–17th Century Editions of the Morte Darthur Informed by Compilational Design
David Eugene Clark	68
Assembling the Fragments in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
D. Thomas Hanks, Jr.	101
REVIEWS
Christopher Michael Berard, Arthurianism in Early Plantagent England from Henry II to Edward I
Matthew Giancarlo	122
Susanna Fein, ed., Interpreting MS Digby 86: A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire
Daron Burrows	124
Nerys Anne Jones, Arthur in Early Welsh Poetry
Kevin R. Kritsch	126
Ann Marie Rasmussen, Rivalrous Masculinities: New Directions in Medieval Gender Studies
Emily Houlik-Ritchie	128
Adrian P. Tudor, The Knight and the Barrel (Le Chevalier au Barisel)
Linda Marie Rouillard	130

Guest Post: Mediavilla on The Camelot Rising Trilogy, Books 1 and 2

 

White, Kiersten. The Guinevere Deception.  Delacorte Press, 2019. The Camelot Rising Trilogy 1. 339 pages. Hardcover: $18.99, ISBN: 9780525581673. Paperback: $10.99, ISBN: 9780525581703.

 

 - - -. The Camelot Betrayal. Delacorte Press, 2020. The Camelot Rising Trilogy 2. 370 pages. Hardcover: $18.99, ISBN: 9780525581710. 

 

Guinevere is 16 years old when she marries Arthur, two years her senior. Though they have never met, the king welcomes her with open arms while the people of Camelot look on and cheer. Still, nothing is as it seems. As soon becomes apparent, theirs is merely a marriage of convenience arranged by Arthur’s mentor, Merlin, who was banished from Camelot many years before. Instead of a “real wife,” Guinevere, who has magical powers of her own, was sent by Merlin to protect the king from his enemies. Instead of saving Arthur, however, Guinevere is, more often than not, the one needing rescue as she foolishly follows her misguided impulses into danger in hopes of foiling threats against the king. Coming to her aid is usually Arthur’s older nephew Mordred, an enigmatic character for whom the queen finds herself having inexplicable feelings.

 

In a recent online bookstore event, bestselling author Kiersten White proclaimed that, because every Arthurian writer adds his or her own spin to the legend, there no longer is an Arthurian “canon.” Indeed, she herself takes every opportunity to shatter tradition by introducing unexpected plot elements. The Tristan-Isolde-Mark love triangle, for instance, is depicted here as a secret romance between Isolde and her handmaid Brangien. Likewise, Lancelot, the queen’s knight, is eventually revealed to be a woman, who may or may not be in love with Guinevere. As for Arthur, before marrying the queen, he had a short-lived affair with Elaine, the sister of Maleagant, who kidnaps Guinevere to avenge Elaine’s death during childbirth. The names may be the same, but White obviously takes pleasure in adding her own special twist to an age-old saga.

 

Although both books are written in third-person, all action is seen and interpreted (often wrongly) through Guinevere’s naïve eyes. One might think the point here is to view the usually male-dominated story through a strong feminist lens. But with Arthur constantly gone, managing the business of Camelot, Guinevere is mostly left to her own ill-conceived devices that usually lead to trouble. Instead of an intelligent, masterful heroine, the reader is left with a young, inexperienced queen who listens to her heart more than she does common sense—resulting, not surprisingly, in yet another abduction at the end of the second book, setting the scene for the trilogy’s third volume, The Excalibur Curse, due to be published in 2021.

 

Lots of unanswered questions one hopes will be resolved by the end of book #3: Who exactly is Guinevere? Is Merlin good or evil? Which side is Mordred on? And will Arthur and the queen finally consummate their marriage? Recommended for young adults who are unfamiliar with the traditional Arthurian story.

 

 

Cindy Mediavilla

 

Cindy Mediavilla is a retired public librarian who has collected, read and written about Arthurian fiction for more than 40 years. Her publications include Arthurian Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1999), "From 'Unthinking Stereotype' to Fearless Antagonist: The Evolution of Morgan le Fay on Television" (Arthuriana 25:1), and an article on Arthurian romance in Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction (2018). Cindy's MLS and PhD are from UCLA, where she also taught as a lecturer for 16 years.

 

Arthuriana Summer 2020

My apologies for the belated post. I believe this issue arrived during the fall, but I am just remembering to post on it now.

 

Here are the contents for the Summer 2021 number of Arthuriana. It offers a good balance of scholarship on medieval and modern texts, including an updated look on film by Kevin J. Harty.

As usual, the articles can be accessed by subscribers on the journal website and to researchers on Project MUSE.

 

Table of Contents
(30.2)

 
http://www.arthuriana.org/access/30-2Contents.html

Baldwin of Britain, His Vows, and the Chivalric Ideal in the Avowing of King Arthur
Roger Dahood	3
Reconciling the Uncanny: Forgiveness, Caritas, and Compassion for Malory’s Palomides
Annie Lee Narver	20
From Camelot to China, or, ‘A History or Moral Tale About a Young Sir Gabein’s Marvelous Adventures Illustrating Divine Providence’
Annegret Oehme	48
Reading the Grail: Parodic Metafiction in Patricia McKillip’s Kingfisher
Amelia A. Rutledge	73
The 2019 Loomises Lecture
James Bond, A Grifter, A Video Avatar, and a Shark Walk into King Arthur’s Court: The Ever-Expanding Canon of Cinema Arthuriana
Kevin J. Harty	89
REVIEWS
Glenn D. Burger and Holly Crocker, eds., Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion
Jennifer Sisk	122
Kellyann Fitzpatrick, Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones
Shiloh Carroll	124
Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe, eds., Arthur in the Celtic Languages: The Arthurian Legend in Celtic Literatures and Traditions
Georgia Henley	126
John Marshall, Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games, Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies
Kevin J. Harty	128
Elly McCausland, Malory’s Magic Book: King Arthur and the Child, 1862-1980
Ann F. Howey	129
Gail Orgelfinger, Joan of Arc in the English Imagination, 1429-1829
Kevin J. Harty	131
Julie Ormelanski, Symptomatic Subjects, Bodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England
Anita Obermeier	133
Heather J. Tanner, ed., Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate
Elizabeth Kinne	134

 

Guest Post: Dan Nastali Reviews By Force Alone

Tidhar, Lavie. By Force Alone. Tor/Tom Doherty Books, 2020. 416 pages, $27.99. ISBN: 9781250753458.

This is a dark fantasy novel that retells the traditional Arthurian story, from Uther Pendragon’s taking the kingship of Britain to Arthur’s final battle at Camlann, with incidents and characters drawn from a wide range of medieval sources. Here you will find new treatments of the familiar figures at every turn, but unless your tastes run to the grim and gory, you may have some difficulty digesting this version. The story is set in a post-Roman Britain more fully conceived than that of most Dark Age historical and fantasy novels, and the action shifts, not always smoothly, between the natural and supernatural worlds. Both offer more than a little gratuitous ugliness in the form of mutilation, murder, cannibalism, general bad behavior and rather too much excrement.

The McGuffin in this story is the grail—here a skystone or UFO that fell to earth in Uther’s reign and which somehow became both the source of gold and radioactive mutations, but that’s just one of many original takes. The sword in the stone, the Lady in the Lake, the Questing Beast, the Green Knight, even Glastonbury Well are given new and typically perverted twists, because this is not a novel that loves the tradition. It is basically a series of incidents hung on the bare bones of the legend. Britain and Fairyland coexist uneasily here. Londinium, the setting for much of the early story, is a mess of Roman remains, crime-ridden slums and mob-ruled trades—a sordid, cheerless place. The castles of the other world are not much better.

Arthur, when we meet him (and who never develops much distinctive character) leads a teenage protection racket and a round table of petty thieves and drug dealers before taking charge of the city and dealing with rival kings. Merlin, the offspring of a human and some unidentified unhuman, is a major figure throughout, but one whose powers and motives are never well-defined or of great consequence. The same is true of other supernatural creatures—Nimue, Morgause, Morgan, Cath Palug—who interfere with the mere mortals apparently by whim.

Guinevere is here a leader of a girl gang, Sir Kay the obligatory gay, Owain and Agravain are thugs, and so on. Lancelot has perhaps the most developed character through an elaborate back story which has him serving his master, Joseph of Arimathea, but there is little that distinguishes even Lancelot as a distinct personality. The dialogue of all of them, as well as the voice of the narrator, is in the naughtiness mode of teenage boys. The obscenities are so plentiful that any shock value has been wrung out of them by chapter two, so thereafter there’s little effect at all.

Tidhar is a cut above the writers of most modern fantasy in his descriptive abilities and understanding of the historical background of his tale, and he is a writer of solid prose. He incorporates, often unobtrusively, allusions not only to obscure medieval material, but also to Greek and Roman philosophers, Biblical writing and early Christian apocrypha, and even, if you’re attentive, to T.S. Eliot and Kurt Vonnegut. The book has its admirers—the back of the jacket is covered in favorable quotes—and when the writing is good, I tend to become a slow reader. I’m also always interested in new treatments of the legend, but with By Force Alone, I found myself rushing to its end.

Dan Nastali

Independent scholar

Kansas City, MO

 

Arthuriana for Winter 2019

I missed this earlier in the year, but here are the contents for the Winter 2019 number of Arthuriana.

Details are based on the list from the journal's website.

 

Table of Contents
(29.4)

Introduction: Performing Emotions in the Arthurian World
Raluca L. Radulescu	3
The Performative Function of the Socialized Body: Falling to One’s Knees in Hartmann’s Iwein and Erec
Chloé Vondenhoff	8
‘Al was hi sward, wat scaetde dat?’: Emotions and Courtly Cultural Exchange in the Roman van Moriaen
Frank Brandsma	28
Evadeam, Gawain, Merlin: Penitential Transformation and Unseen Truth in the ‘Dwarf Knight’ Section of the Vulgate Cycle
Mikayla Hunter	44
Extreme Emotions: Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle and the Danger from Within
Raluca L. Radulescu	57
In Memoriam: Necrology for Dhira Mahoney
Anita Obermeier and Georgiana Donavin	74
REVIEWS
Ian Cornelius, Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter
Andrew Galloway	76
Miriam Edlich-Muth, ed., Medieval Romances Across European Borders
Leah Haught	78
Sara Harris, The Linguistic Past in Twelfth-Century Britain
Scott Gwara	80
Geoffrey Russom, The Evolution of Verse Structure in Old and Middle English Poetry: From the Earliest Alliterative Poems to Iambic Pentameter
Ian Cornelius	82
Judith Shoaf, ed. and trans., The Quest of the Holy Grail
Ann McCullough	85
Alison Stones, Studies in Arthurian Illustration
Alan Lupack	86

 

Journal of the International Arthurian Society for 2020

The latest volume of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society arrived last month.

Here are the contents from the publisher's website; the links will bring you to pages to purchase access to the articles:


Volume 8 (2020): Issue 1 (Sep 2020)
in Journal of the International Arthurian Society

(direct access at https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/jias/8/1/jias.8.issue-1.xml)  


Titelseiten

Article Category: Frontmatter | Pages: i–iv | Published online: 22 Aug 2020

PDF

FREE ACCESS



Editorial

Leah Tether and Samantha J. Rayner

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 1–2 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020



King Arthur’s Charter: A Thirteenth-Century French Satire Against Bretons

Christopher Berard

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 3–37 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Love, sadness and other mental states in the Middle Welsh Owain (and related texts)

Erich Poppe

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 38–60 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Ships and Boats in David Jones’s Tristan ac Essyllt

P. J. C. Field

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 61–78 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


La voix et la lettre dans les romans arthuriens de la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle

Danièle James-Raoul

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 79–106 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


‘He ne wiste nother of evyll ne gude’: A Prelapsarian Perceval

Susanne Hafner

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 107–127 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Hybrid Identity and the Morte Darthur’s Lady of the Lake

Maggie Rebecca Myers

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 128–149 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020




Obituary

Dhira Mahoney (1938–2019)

Anita Obermeier and Georgiana Donavin

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 150–151 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Cyril Edwards (1947–2019)

Karen Pratt

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 152–154 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Barbara Nelson Sargent-Baur (1928–2020)

Alison Stones

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 155–156 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Muriel Whitaker (1923–2016)

Raymond H. Thompson

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 157–158 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Anna Maria Finoli (1923–2020)

Maria Colombo Timelli

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 159–161 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Maldwyn Mills (1926–2019)

Gillian Rogers

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 162–163 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020


Jacob Klingner (1973–2020)

Ludger Lieb and Christoph Schanze

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 164–166 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020




XXVIth International Arthurian Congress, Catania, Italy, 25–31 July 2021

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 167–168 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020



Biennial JIAS Essay Prize Competition 2021

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 169 | Published online: 22 Aug 2020 

 

Journal of the International Arthurian Society for 2019

(Apologies if this comes across messed up. It was not an easy site to extract the contents from.)

 

Journal of the International Arthurian Society
Volume 7 (2019): Issue 1 (Sep 2019) 

https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/jias/jias-overview.xml?tab_body=latestIssueToc-78033

Editor In Chief: Leah Tether and Samantha Rayner
 

Titelseiten

Article Category: Frontmatter | Pages: i–iii | Published online: 01 Sep 2019

PDF

FREE ACCESS




Editorial

Leah Tether and Samantha J. Rayner

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 1–2 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019




Female Arthurian Scholars: An Initial Collection of Tributes

Samantha J. Rayner

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 3–41 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019




Female Arthurians in Scandinavia: Eufemia, Christina and the Modern Female Scholar

Sofia Lodén

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 42–60 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Abstract

This article traces the line between the medieval female reader of Arthurian romance in Scandinavia and the female scholar of today. It draws at ... Show More



sine mugens nicht erdenken: wand ez kan vor in wenken rechte alsam ein schellec hase**: Women’s German Medieval-Arthurian Scholarship

Evelyn Meyer and Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 61–90 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Abstract

This article offers a survey of German Medieval Studies as a discipline, focusing on three generations of women’s German Medieval-Arthurian scholars ... Show More




Women’s Contributions to Middle English Arthurian Scholarship

Usha Vishnuvajjala

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 91–119 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Abstract

This article examines the history of scholarship of both Middle English Arthurian literature and its afterlives to argue that the marginalisati ... Show More



Celtic Heroines: The Contributions of Women Scholars to Arthurian Studies in the Celtic Languages

Krista Kapphahn

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 120–139 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Abstract

This article surveys some of the main contributions of female scholars to the study of Arthurian literature in the Celtic languages from the ... Show More




Thanks for Typing: Women’s Roles in Editions and Translations of Arthurian Literature in Penguin Classics, 1959–1985

Rebecca E. Lyons

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 140–162 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Abstract

Based on documentary research undertaken in the Penguin Archive in the University of Bristol’s Special Collections, this article highlights va ... Show More



Afterword

Keith Busby

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 163 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019



XXVIth International Arthurian Congress, Catania, Italy, 19–25 July 2020

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 164–165 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019
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Obituary

Marie-Luce Chênerie (1928–2018)

Philippe Ménard

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 166–169 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019


Sue Ellen Holbrook (1941–2017)

Michael W. Twomey, Bonnie Wheeler and K. S. Whetter

Article Category: Research Article | Pages: 170–172 | Published online: 01 Sep 2019 

Arthuriana for Spring 2020

The latest number of Arthuriana arrived in the mail this week. Here are the contents from the journal's website. Access is limited to subscribers.


Table of Contents
(30.1)

The Idea of the Wilderness: Gender and Resistance in Le Roman de Silence
Jessica Barr	3
‘She was recouered of that that she was defoylyd’: Recuperating Dame Ragnell’s Lute
Crystal N. Beamer	26
Women in Wood in Wynkyn de Worde’s 1498 Morte Darthur
D. Thomas Hanks, Jr.	54
Scottish Vikings and Norse Knights: Orkney as Palimpsest in Arthuriana
Leah Haught	73
*Winner of the ‘Fair Unknown’ Award*
The Role of the Lion in the Middle English Ywain and Gawain
Christopher Jensen	104
The Round Table: News from the IAS-NAB	125
REVIEWS
David K. Coley, Death and the Pearl Maiden: Plague, Poetry, England
Katherine H. Terrell	139
Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
Matthew X. Vernon	140
Nicholas J. Higham, King Arthur: The Making of the Legend
Christopher Michael Berard	141
Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton, eds., A New Companion to Malory
Sarah B. Rude	144
Molly A. Martin, Castles and Space in Malory’s Morte Darthur
Kathy Cawsey	146