Blood, Sex, Malory

Blood, Sex, Malory
Author: David Clark
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2011
Genre: Arthurian romances
ISBN: 1843842815

Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur

Disability and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur
Author: Tory Pearman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0429818149

This book considers the representation of disability and knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur. The study asserts that Malory’s unique definition of knighthood, which emphasizes the unstable nature of the knight’s physical body and the body of chivalry to which he belongs, depends upon disability. As a result, a knight must perpetually oscillate between disability and ability in order to maintain his status. The knights’ movement between disability and ability is also essential to the project of Malory’s book, as well as its narrative structure, as it reflects the text’s fixation on and alternation between the wholeness and fragmentation of physical and social bodies. Disability in its many forms undergirds the book, helping to cohere the text’s multiple and sometimes disparate chapters into the "hoole book" that Malory envisions. The Morte, thus, construes disability as an as an ambiguous, even liminal state that threatens even as it shores up the cohesive notion of knighthood the text endorses.

Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England

Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England
Author: Hollie L. S. Morgan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 1903153719

First full-length interdisciplinary study of the effect of these everyday surroundings on literature, culture and the collective consciousness of the late middle ages. The bed, and the chamber which contained it, was something of a cultural and social phenomenon in late-medieval England. Their introduction into some aristocratic and bourgeois households captured the imagination of late-medievalEnglish society. The bed and chamber stood for much more than simply a place to rest one's head: they were symbols of authority, unparalleled spaces of intimacy, sanctuaries both for the powerless and the powerful. This change inphysical domestic space shaped the ways in which people thought about less tangible concepts such as gender politics, communication, God, sex and emotions. Furthermore, the practical uses of beds and chambers shaped and were shaped by artistic and literary production. This volume offers the first interdisciplinary study of the cultural meanings of beds and chambers in late-medieval England. It draws on a vast array of literary, pragmatic and visual sources, including romances, saints' lives, lyrics, plays, wills, probate inventories, letters, church and civil court documents, manuscript illumination and physical objects, to shed new light on the ways in which beds and chambersfunctioned as both physical and conceptual spaces. Hollie L.S. Morgan is a Research Fellow in the School of History and Heritage, University of Lincoln.

An Introduction to Medieval English Literature

An Introduction to Medieval English Literature
Author: Anna Baldwin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2015-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137595825

This is a comprehensive guide to a literary period characterized by great variety and imagination, and vividly alert to the social transformations overtaking society. Spanning almost two centuries, it introduces the reader to a diverse range of authors writing for a fast-developing readership of both men and women. Each chapter focuses on a group of genres primarily associated with a particular social class – from the Drama and Saints' Lives accessible to the illiterate, to the sophisticated Romances of Love savoured by the aristocracy and the Court. Lively historical narratives place each group of texts in their social, political and cultural contexts. Significant or typical texts are given more detailed analysis that includes critical issues and questions to guide the reader's own approach, and each section is supported by a detailed bibliography of further reading.

The Manuscript and Meaning of Malory's Morte Darthur

The Manuscript and Meaning of Malory's Morte Darthur
Author: Kevin Sean Whetter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1843844532

An examination of the rubricated letters in the Morte makes a convincing case for the design being by Malory himself. The red-ink names that decorate the Winchester manuscript of Malory's Morte Darthur are striking; yet until now, no-one has asked why the rubrication exists. This book explores the uniqueness and thematic significance of the physical layout of the Morte in its manuscript context, arguing that the layout suggests, and the correlations between manuscript design and narrative theme confirm, that the striking arrangement is likely to have been the product of authorial design rather than something unusual dreamed up by patron, scribe, reader, or printer. The introduction offers a thorough account of not only the textual tradition of the Morte, but also the ways in which scholarship to date has not done enough with the manuscript contexts of Malory's Arthuriad. The book then goes on to establish the singularity and likely provenance of Winchester's rubrication of names. In the second half of the study the author elucidates the narrative significance of this rubrication pattern, outlining striking connections between manuscript layout and major narrative events, characters, and themes. He suggests that the manuscript mise-en-page underscores Malory's interest in human character and knighthood, creating a memorializing function similar to the many inscribed tombs that dominate the landscape of the Morte's narrative pages. Inshort, Winchester's design creates a memorializing tomb for Arthurian chivalry. K.S. WHETTER is Professor of English at Acadia University, Canada.

A New Companion to Malory

A New Companion to Malory
Author: Megan G. Leitch
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843845237

A comprehensive survey of one of the most important texts of the Middle Ages.

Heroes and Anti-heroes in Medieval Romance

Heroes and Anti-heroes in Medieval Romance
Author: Neil Cartlidge
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2012
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1843843048

Investigations into the heroic - or not - behaviour of the protagonists of medieval romance. Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous, antisocial or even downright sinister their protagonists can be, and, correspondingly, of just how admirable or impressive their defeated opponents often are. This tension between the heroic and the antiheroic makes a major contribution to the dramatic complexity of medieval romance, but it is not an aspect of the genre that has been frequently discussed up until now. Focusing on fourteen distinct characters and character-types in medieval narrative, this book illustrates the range of different ways in which the imaginative power and appeal of romance-texts often depend on contradictions implicit in the very ideal of heroism. Dr Neil Cartlidge is Lecturer in English at the University of Durham. Contributors: Neil Cartlidge, Penny Eley, David Ashurst, Meg Lamont, Laura Ashe, Judith Weiss, Gareth Griffith, Kate McClune, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Ad Putter, Robert Rouse, Siobhain Bly Calkin, James Wade, Stephanie Vierick Gibbs Kamath

Arthurian Literature XXXII

Arthurian Literature XXXII
Author: Elizabeth Archibald
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2015-12
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 184384396X

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Arthurian Literature XXXVI

Arthurian Literature XXXVI
Author: Megan G. Leitch
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843846047

Guest Editors: Sarah Bowden, Susanne Friede and Andreas Hammer This special issue focuses on space and place in Arthurian literature, from a wide range of European traditions. Topics addressed include the connections between quest space and individual spirituality in the Vulgate Queste and Malory's Morte Darthur; penitence in Hartmann's Iwein and Gregorius; parallels in sacred spaces in the Matter of Britain and medieval Ireland; political prophecy in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Awntyrs off Arthure A; syntagmatic and paradigmatic spaces in Chrétien's Perceval; spatial significance in Wigalois and Prosa Lancelot; the political meaning of the tomb of King Lot and the rebel kings in Malory's Morte Darthur; and sexual spaces in twelfth-century French romance.

Handbook of Arthurian Romance

Handbook of Arthurian Romance
Author: Leah Tether
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2017-06-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110432463

The renowned and illustrious tales of King Arthur, his knights and the Round Table pervade all European vernaculars, as well as the Latin tradition. Arthurian narrative material, which had originally been transmitted in oral culture, began to be inscribed regularly in the twelfth century, developing from (pseudo-)historical beginnings in the Latin chronicles of "historians" such as Geoffrey of Monmouth into masterful literary works like the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Evidently a big hit, Arthur found himself being swiftly translated, adapted and integrated into the literary traditions of almost every European vernacular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This Handbook seeks to showcase the European character of Arthurian romance both past and present. By working across national philological boundaries, which in the past have tended to segregate the study of Arthurian romance according to language, as well as by exploring primary texts from different vernaculars and the Latin tradition in conjunction with recent theoretical concepts and approaches, this Handbook brings together a pioneering and more complete view of the specifically European context of Arthurian romance, and promotes the more connected study of Arthurian literature across the entirety of its European context.