Is Cersei a collection of bad medieval stereotypes? Have nerds gone mainstream? Were American cowboys a modern retelling of the medieval knight? Put down that comic, put away your bag of dice, and indulge your inner nerd.
Crafting the witch: Gendering magic in medieval and early modern England
November 2, 2014 By
This project documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.
Which Man Would You Be in King Arthur’s Court?
October 22, 2014 By
The legendary days of King Arthur were full of love and betrayal, loyalty and ambition, violence and intrigue. Which man would you have been in Arthurian times? Take the test and find out!
I Heart Art
September 18, 2014 By
What I love about King Arthur stories is that they give authors the opportunity to explore the complexities of kingship and relationship without any of the personal knowledge of actually being king.
Reflection of the Wars of the Roses in Thomas Malory`s Le Morte D`Arthur: Literary-cultural analysis
August 12, 2014 By
The aim of this research paper is to analyse the Morte D’Arthur and find certain historical moments incorporated in the book. Firstly, as the goal of work follows a hypothesis that Thomas Malory reflected manifold incidents from the Wars of the Roses in the Morte D’Arthur, it was inevitable to understand author’s position in this civil war, which meant investigating in the authorship.
Medieval Misogyny and Gawain’s Outburst against Women in “‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’
August 12, 2014 By
The view has been gaining ground of late that the Gawain of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a knight renowned as ‘Pat fyne fader of nurture’ (1. 919) and as ‘so cortays and coynt’ of his ‘hetes’ (1. I525), degenerates at the moment of leave-taking from the Green Knight, his erstwhile host, to the level of a churl capable of abusing the ladies of that knight’s household (11.2411 -28).
Caught in Love’s Grip: Passion and Moral Agency in French Courtly Romance
August 12, 2014 By
French royal courts in the late twelfth century were absolutely smitten with love. Troubadaours traveled from place to place reciting stories of knights and the ladies they wooed.
A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
August 5, 2014 By
The famous line from that modern romance- “A kiss is just a kiss”- is the message the Gawain-poet gave his listeners six centuries ago.
Mordred: Treachery, Transference, and Border Pressure in British Arthurian Romance
March 12, 2014 By
This study focuses on the question of how Mordred comes to be portrayed as a traitor within the British Arthurian context.
The Prologue to Chrétien’s Erec et Enide: Key to the Alchemical San of the Romance
February 6, 2014 By
Critical consensus holds that Chrétien’s first Arthurian romance, Erec et Enide, tends toward cultural and psychological realism.
The Public and Private Boundaries of Motherhood: Queen Igraine in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia and Laȝamon’s Brut’
January 11, 2014 By
In 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.
The Development of Arthurian Legends
November 24, 2013 By
King 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.
An Examination of the Family in ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’
September 27, 2013 By
This 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.
Queen Guinevere. A queen through time
July 22, 2013 By
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.
Chaucer’s Arthuriana
March 18, 2013 By
The 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
February 10, 2013 By
The 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.
Missionaries and Crusaders in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
November 18, 2012 By
The War of Roses might have been the most prominent event on the English political stage at the time when the Morte d’Arthur was written, and there is evidence that Malory’s writing was in part informed by he civil discord he was witnessing.
Monstrous transformations: loyalty and community in four medieval poems
September 23, 2012 By
I will examine two forms of transformation, the werewolf transformation and the monstrous human transformation, both of which feature shape shifters who presumably cannot be trusted
Triangles of the Sacred Sisterhood
August 19, 2012 By
In courtly works, the resolution is generally in favour of the status quo as a courtly adulterous affair rarely works out, while in the fabliau the marriage is generally left intact, although a deceitful wife may be given carte blanche to philander.
Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval English Literature
July 24, 2012 By
Madness has been long misrepresented in medieval studies. Assertions that conceptions of mental illness were unknown to medieval people, or that all madmen were assumed to be possessed by the devil, were at one time common in accounts of medieval society.
“Well Cut through the Body:” Fitted Clothing in Twelfth·Century Europe
July 22, 2012 By
Before we go any farther, we should investigate the very practical suggestion that tightly fitted clothing resulted from developments in “cutting and sewing technology.” In the case of twelfth century Europe, however, it seems there was no real change in the tools of the trade; for example, iron shears, which might seem primitive, continued to be used by tailors into the late middle ages.
The negotiation of gender and power in medieval German writings
July 8, 2012 By
The Christian religion plays a most important role in the internalization and re-enforcement of patriarchy in the Western world. As will be seen later in this thesis, the relationship between a patriarchal God and his “children” is reflected in the relationship between the male head of the family and his wife, children and servants.
“Thus he rode sorowyng”: Travel Narratives and the Ethics of Sexual Behavior in Le Morte d’Arthur
June 23, 2012 By
The Arthurian oeuvre traditionally maintains a plot structure that requires knights to depart from the Round Table, either as a response to a challenge or in quest of chivalric “aventure,” followed by a return to Camelot. Within this narrative framework, there exists an intricately designed logic to descriptions of movement and travel. In particular, sex and travel appear inseparable.
The Court of Beast and Bough: Contesting the Medieval English Forest in the Early Robin Hood Ballads
May 6, 2012 By
The medieval English forest has long been a space of contested legal meanings. After King William I first created the 75,000-acre New Forest, the English monarchy sought to define the vert, both legally and ideologically, as a multiplicity of sites in which the king’s rights were vigorously enforced.
Reading about Lancelot in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
April 5, 2012 By
This book is the central one of Troilus and Criseyde’s five books, with the sexual union of Troilus with Criseyde forming the climax and turning-point of the entire plot-structure, condensed at the start of the work by Chaucer in the words “fro woe to wele and after out of joie.”
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