Arthurian Legend Archive
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Returning the King: The Medieval King in Modern Fantasy
Posted on April 5, 2014 | No CommentsTales of kingship in modern fiction, specifically in the work of Neil Gaiman (The Sandman) and George R. R. Martin (A Game of Thrones), are similar to the medieval models, as kingship and the requirements of kingship were popular themes in medieval texts, including Beowulf and King Horn. -
Translating the Life of Merlin
Posted on March 22, 2014 | No CommentsThis essay analyses three of the most prominent translations of the Life of Merlin, in order to discern how the translator's differing methods have resulted in subtle, yet important, changes in meaning. -
Star Wars and the Middle Ages
Posted on March 16, 2014 | No CommentsWhen George Lucas wrote up the screen play that would become Episode IV: A New Hope, he would make use of medieval history to help create his galaxy far, far away. -
‘Some Like it Hot’: The Medieval Eroticism of Heat
Posted on March 16, 2014 | No CommentsThe late fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal narrates the financial, martial and erotic adventures of one of the lesser-known knights of the Arthurian court. -
Mordred: Treachery, Transference, and Border Pressure in British Arthurian Romance
Posted on March 12, 2014 | No CommentsThis study focuses on the question of how Mordred comes to be portrayed as a traitor within the British Arthurian context. -
![The battle of Badon [Bellum Badonis], in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victorious.](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Battle-of-Badon-115x115.jpg "The derivation of the date of the Badon entry in the Annales Cambriae from Bede and Gildas")
The derivation of the date of the Badon entry in the Annales Cambriae from Bede and Gildas
Posted on March 5, 2014 | No CommentsThe battle of Badon [Bellum Badonis], in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victorious. -
A Quest for the Black Knight: Casting People of Color in Arthurian Film and Television
Posted on February 23, 2014 | No CommentsHowever, though there are more people of color in Arthurian film and television productions, progress toward inclusivity has not been quick or simple to achieve. -
The Prologue to Chrétien’s Erec et Enide: Key to the Alchemical San of the Romance
Posted on February 6, 2014 | No CommentsCritical consensus holds that Chrétien’s first Arthurian romance, Erec et Enide, tends toward cultural and psychological realism. -
Tristan and Isolde: A Medieval Story of Love and Betrayal
Posted on February 1, 2014 | No CommentsBy the high middle ages, Tristan and Isolde’s love story had become extremely popular. -
![Depictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend Diana Jefferies Journal of the Sydney Society for Scottish History: Vol 14 (2013) Abstract This paper will explore how motifs of Scotland […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Arthur-Pyle_King_Arthur_of_Britain-115x115.jpg "Depictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend")
Depictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend
Posted on January 22, 2014 | No CommentsDepictions of the Scots in the Arthurian Legend Diana Jefferies Journal of the Sydney Society for Scottish History: Vol 14 (2013) Abstract This paper will explore how motifs of Scotland […] -
The Public and Private Boundaries of Motherhood: Queen Igraine in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia and Laȝamon’s Brut’
Posted on January 11, 2014 | No CommentsIn literary criticism, awareness of transmission of tales between British and continental literature tends to encourage a view of some Arthurian narratives as more similar in tone, style, and language than they in fact are. -
Lancelot Can Keep His T-Shirt
Posted on January 2, 2014 | No CommentsIf t-shirts had been all the rage in the Middle Ages, you can bet there would have been 'Team Lancelot' ones selling like hotcakes. You can also bet that I wouldn't have owned one. -
The Development of Arthurian Legends
Posted on November 24, 2013 | No CommentsKing Arthur is a well known character of literature and film, and any person on the street could probably recall many aspects of his story. However, the story that so many people know and love is the result of hundreds of years of transformation and manipulation of a legend. It did not begin with much grandiosity or with very much background information. -
The millennium King Arthur: the commodification of the Arthurian legend in the 20th century
Posted on October 15, 2013 | No CommentsThe prophesy that King Arthur will return has come true. This legendary icon of Western civilization lives again in the popular culture novels of contemporary and futuristic literature. -
The uses of secular rulers and characters in the Welsh Saint’s lives in the Vespasian Legendary
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsThis study focuses on the functional use of famous characters from the Welsh literary and historical contexts, like King Arthur and King Maelgwn of Gwynedd, in the Welsh Saints’ Lives found in the Vespasian Legendary, the most significant Welsh legendary extant, dated to ca. 1200. -
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsIn this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field. -
An Examination of the Family in ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’
Posted on September 27, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis investigates the theme of family interactions within Malory‘s ―Tale of Sir Gareth,‖ examining the tale itself as well as looking at several analogous Fair Unknown stories in order to determine if the theme is Malory‘s own or if it could have come from a probable source. -
The Origins of the Arthurian Legend
Posted on September 11, 2013 | No CommentsI believe the ‘historical Arthur’ quest has, in practice, been misguided. Historians in search of him have committed themselves to a certain mode of approach. They have tried to strip away legend and isolate hard evidence -
Mapping Scottish Identity in the Roman de Fergus
Posted on July 24, 2013 | No CommentsIn the Roman de Fergus, a thirteenth-century verse romance in Old French, Guillaume le Clerc considers the consequences of Arthur’s assimilationist expansionism with a more focused attention to cultural difference and personal identity, again centered on the experience of a knight from Galloway, the eponymous -
![According to Hopkins, “[Arthur’s] queen, Guinevere, is more elusive, less written about [than Arthur and his knights], and yet has been for centuries a central character playing a critical role in the rise and fall of the Round Table” (6). He goes on by characterizing her as “a key figure in the life of Camelot, this remarkable woman is seen variably as scholar, seductress, warrior, and dignified gentle beauty by the countless artists and writers who have depicted her. Who, then, was Guinevere?” (10) The purpose of this essay is to answer this question by looking at different texts and novels referring to the Queen.](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Queen-Guinevere-115x115.jpg "Queen Guinevere. A queen through time")
Queen Guinevere. A queen through time
Posted on July 22, 2013 | No CommentsAccording to Hopkins, “[Arthur’s] queen, Guinevere, is more elusive, less written about [than Arthur and his knights], and yet has been for centuries a central character playing a critical role in the rise and fall of the Round Table” (6). He goes on by characterizing her as “a key figure in the life of Camelot, this remarkable woman is seen variably as scholar, seductress, warrior, and dignified gentle beauty by the countless artists and writers who have depicted her. Who, then, was Guinevere?” (10) The purpose of this essay is to answer this question by looking at different texts and novels referring to the Queen. -
Function and Representation of Women in Fourteenth-Century English Arthuriana
Posted on June 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis investigates the function and representation of female characters through Arthurian tropes in three fourteenth-century English Arthurian texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 'The Wife of Bath’s Tale,' and Sir Launfal. -
Black in Camelot (Africans in Arthurian Legend)
Posted on May 16, 2013 | No CommentsExamining depictions of Africans in medieval and contemporary Arthurian literature, television and film. -
Lincolnshire and the Arthurian Legend
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis article is intended to rectify this, proceeding from the widely-held assumption of the existence of a genuinely ‘historical Arthur’, before going on to consider the even more fundamental question of whether we ought to believe in Arthur’s existence at all. -
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
Posted on March 18, 2013 | No CommentsThe majority of medieval scholars, including Roger Sherman Loomis, argue that the popularity of the Arthurian legend in England was therefore on the wane in the latter half of the fourteenth century; as a result, the major writers of the period, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, refrained from penning anything beyond the occasional reference to King Arthur and his court. -
Mi Suete Leuedi, Her Mi Béne: The Power and Patronage of the Heroine in Middle English Romance
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsThe Middle English Romances are somewhat difficult to study as a group. In order to examine these works accurately, one must take into consideration other literature produced at the same tirne, as well as that which preceded it.
