Medievalists.net » Geoffrey of Monmouth

Crafting the witch: Gendering magic in medieval and early modern England

Medievalists.net — Sun, 02 Nov 2014 19:01:47 +0000

This project documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.

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Approaches to paganism and uses of the pre-Christian past in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Snorri Sturluson

Medievalists.net — Mon, 05 May 2014 17:52:13 +0000

The dissertation is a comparative analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s and Snorri Sturlusson’s descriptions of paganism and uses of pre-Christian history. What was the function of these pre-Christian narratives, and what apporaches were used by the two authors to construct a complete image of the past, acceptable to their contemporary societies?

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Translating the Life of Merlin

Medievalists.net — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 23:24:29 +0000

This 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.

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Mordred: Treachery, Transference, and Border Pressure in British Arthurian Romance

Medievalists.net — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 22:29:08 +0000

This study focuses on the question of how Mordred comes to be portrayed as a traitor within the British Arthurian context.

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Writing conquest: traditions of Anglo-Saxon invasion and resistance in the twelfth century

Medievalists.net — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:17:38 +0000

Writing Conquest examines the ways in which Latin, Old English, and Middle English twelfth-century historical and pseudo-historical texts remembered and reconstructed three formative moments of Anglo-Saxon invasion and resistance...

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The very first Anglo Saxon toast?

Medievalists.net — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 04:37:59 +0000

If the Historia should not be used to accurately retrace the history of Britain, it nonetheless features some of those tiny hints historians must seriously attend to.

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The Public and Private Boundaries of Motherhood: Queen Igraine in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia and Laȝamon’s Brut’

Medievalists.net — Sat, 11 Jan 2014 21:07:00 +0000

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.

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A Tale of the Rise of Law: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain

Medievalists.net — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 15:41:35 +0000

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain is a tale of the rise of law, suggesting that there can be no Britain without law – indeed, that Britain, like all nation-state constructs, was law or at least a complex network of interrelated processes and procedures that we might call law.

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Mapping Scottish Identity in the Roman de Fergus

Medievalists.net — Wed, 24 Jul 2013 22:40:58 +0000

In 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

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Queen Guinevere. A queen through time

Medievalists.net — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 04:16:46 +0000

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.

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