Kalamazoo Roundtable Update

The details of our co-sponsored roundtable for the 2012 International Congress on Medieval Studies have now been finalized as follows. I am especially grateful to Ciny Mediavilla for her proposal on Morgan le Fay.

Are You From Camelot? Recent Arthurian Film, Television, and Electronic Games as Innovators of the Arthurian Tradition and Their Impact

Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Presider: Charlotte A. T. Wulf, Stevenson University

1. “Merlin: Magician, Man, and Manipulator in Starz’s Camelot (2011)”

Caroline Womack, University of Leeds

2. “Morgan, Uther’s Other Child, in BBC1’s Merlin (2008-) and Starz’s Camelot (2011)”

Cindy Mediavilla, UCLA Department of Information Studies

3. “Galahad and Indiana Jones: The Commodification of the Holy Grail in Modern Grail Quests”

Schuyler Eastin, San Diego Christian College

4. Arthurising the Wife of Bath: The Wife of Bath’s Tale in S4C’s The Canterbury Tales (1999) and BBC’s Canterbury Tales (2003)

Paul Hardwick, Leeds Trinity University College

5. Respondent

Karolyn Kinane, Plymouth State University 

CFP Are You From Camelot? (Roundtable) (9/1/11; Kalamazoo 5/10-13/12)

CALL FOR PAPERS

ARE YOU FROM CAMELOT?
RECENT ARTHURIAN FILM, TELEVISION, AND ELECTRONIC GAMES AS INNOVATORS OF THE ARTHURIAN TRADITION AND THEIR IMPACT

A ROUNDTABLE FOR THE 47TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES (WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY, KALAMAZOO, MI) FROM 10-13 MAY 2012

CO-SPONSORED BY THE ALLIANCE FOR THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH ON THE VILLAINS OF THE MATTER OF BRITAIN AND THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES

PROPOSALS BY 1 SEPTEMBER 2011 (EARLY SUBMISSION RECOMMENDED)

The Matter of Britain is alive and well in modern mass media, and the media of film and television, especially, have long been recognized as important disseminators of the Arthurian legend to audiences of various ages and in disparate countries across the globe. Such productions are often assessed by their fidelity to pre-established versions of the legend, an anxiety of influence that Norris J. Lacy has termed “the tyranny of tradition.” However, mass media like film, television and electronic games also function as innovators of new traditions for representing characters or motifs that then become fixed in popular Arthuriana (consider, for example, both the long-standing iconographic portrayal of Merlin, cemented via Wolfgang Reitherman’s THE SWORD IN THE STONE, as an aged figure with flowing white hair, beard and robes or John Boorman’s conflation—copied by many later writers—of Morgan le Fay and Morgause in EXCALIBUR and the resulting figure’s role as the mother of Mordred, an expansion of her traditional filmic role as an enemy within Camelot), yet, to date, few studies, beyond lamentations of how to, as Lacy, puts it to “unteach” these texts, have explored this aspect of these modern Arthurian texts. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in particular, include many innovative productions (including Alexandre Astier’s KAAMELOTT; Steve Barron’s MERLIN; Chris Chibnall and Michael Hirst’s CAMELOT; Antoine Fuqua’s KING ARTHUR; Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Johnny Capps, and Julian Murphy’s MERLIN; Mythic Entertainment’s DARK AGE OF CAMELOT; SyFy’s STARGATE SG-1 and Type-Moon’s FATE/STAY NIGHT) that deviate significantly from preexisting literary and filmic/televisual traditions of the legend, and these works have influenced and will influence both further Arthurian texts and the popular reception of the Arthurian story as they are dispersed across the intertextual landscape of the modern Matter of Britain. For this session, in furtherance of the goals of the sponsoring organizations, we are particularly interested in how these recent representations of Arthurian characters (for example King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Morded, Morgan le Fay, and Morgause) and motifs (such as the Grail legend) in film, television, and electronic games have shaped contemporary conceptions of these elements and, also, in exploring how these productions may influence ongoing or future Arthurian texts.

PLEASE SUBMIT PROPOSALS OF 500 WORDS OR LESS, PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM (AVAILABLE AT
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html), AND A COPY OF YOUR CV TO THE ORGANIZERS AT

Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com

PLEASE INCLUDE “KALAMAZOO 2012 PROPOSAL” IN THE SUBJECT LINE


FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ALLIANCE FOR THE PROMOTION OF RESEARCH ON THE VILLAINS OF THE MATTER OF BRITAIN, PLEASE ACCESS OUR BLOG AT http://ArthurianVillainyResearch.blogspot.com/

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES, PLEASE ACCESS OUR BLOG AT http://PopularCultureandtheMiddleAges.blogspot.com/

Arthurian Villains Recent Presentations (2010-2004)

I've been working over at The Medieval Comics Project trying to put together a listing of recent presentations on the topic, and, in the process, came across the following of interest to our readers. Please let me know if I've missed you.


Forty-fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 13–16, 2010

“We are all shamed and destroyed for ever!”: The Treasonous Tale of King Mark
Meredith Reynolds, Francis Marion Univ.

Crafting the Witch: The Transformation of Morgan le Fay
Heidi J. Breuer, California State Univ.–San Marcos


2010 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture Associations
March 31 – April 3, 2010
Renaissance Grand Hotel St. Louis

Arthurian Legends: Morgan, Mordred, and Magic: Arthuriana out in Left Field
Session Chair: Michele D. Braun, Northeastern University
“‘Sympathy for the Devil’: The Dichotomy of Mordred in Popular Fiction”
Diana M. Vecchio, Widener University
“Reining in Morgaine: Revising Feminist Possibilities out of The Mists of Avalon”
Deidra Donmoyer, Wesleyan College
“Magic and the Feminine in the BBC's Merlin”
Christina Francis, Bloomsbury University
“Saving Baseball, Saving Arthur: Morganna the Kissing Bandit Resurrects Morgan le Fay”
Jill Hebert, University of St. Mary


Forty-fourth International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 7–10, 2009

A Castle as a Prison: Morgan, Lancelot, and Bagdemagus’s Daughter
Stephen Atkinson, Park Univ.


2009 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture
Associations
April 8 – 11, 2009
New Orleans Marriott

Bearing the Royal Seed: The Body of Mordred‘s Mother in Feminist Fiction
Amy S. Kaufman, Wesleyan College


International Arthurian Congress 2008

« Morgana le Fay's children »
Kristina HILDEBRAND

« Modred's sons »
Edward Donald KENNEDY


Forty-third International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 8–11, 2008

Who Would Write a Letter about Piers Gaveston in the Voice of Morgan le Fay?
Michael W. Twomey, Ithaca College

The (Gendered) Politics of Change: Medieval Construction of English Identity and the Decline of Morgan Le Fay
Amanda Dysart, Univ. of Virginia

Morgan’s Headdress: “Toreted and Treleted with Tryfles Aboute” (SGGK 960)
Laura F. Hodges, Independent Scholar


Forty-Second International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 10–13, 2007

Stargate to Avalon: Pursuing Merlin and Morgan le Fey
Christina Francis, Bloomsburg Univ.

The Televisual Mordred: Strategies for Representing Mordred in Arthurian Television
Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar


2007 Joint Conference of the National Popular Culture and American Culture
Associations
April 4 - 7, 2007
Boston Marriott Copley Place

Arthurian Legend I: The M’n’M’s
One and Many: Morgan in Contemporary Fantasy
Jill Hebert, Western Michigan University
Mordred, Villain and Victim: Two Late Victorian Visions
Thomas Hoberg, Northeastern Illinois University
Reclaiming the Bad Seed: Mordred’s Rehabilitation in Modern Fiction
Michael D. Amey, University of Maine at Presque Isle


Arthurian Conference Utrecht, July 24-31, 2005

Gawain’s Family
Edward Donald Kennedy

Morgan la Fey: Feminine Sexuality and Arthurian Representation
Maria-Kristina Perez


Fortieth International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 5–8, 2005

Anna and the King: Mordred’s Claim to the Throne in Scottish Chronicles
Alan Lupack, Univ. of Rochester

Morgan’s Morals: Sexuality in Malory
Jill Hebert, Western Michigan Univ.

The Bedevilment of Morgan le Fay: Ethnographic Perspective and Hartmann’s Erec
Kristen Elena Dachler, Duke Univ.


26th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum at Plymouth State University
April 15-16, 2005

“Queen Margawse: The Matrix of Revenge in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.”
Peter C. Schwartz, Elmira College


Thirty-Ninth International Congress on Medieval Studies
6–9 May 2004

Can Mordred Be Portrayed with Sympathy?
Edward Donald Kennedy, Univ. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

Shapeshifter: Morgan le Fay as Arthur’s Unheard Political Advisor in Malory
Jill Hebert, Western Michigan Univ.


2004 Medieval Forum at Plymouth State University

"Morgan Le Fay: One Tough Witch."
Stacie Harris (Student, Elmira College)

Villain Research at Kalamazoo

The International Congress on Medieval Studies convenes this week at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and includes two presentations of interest:

THURS., 12 MAY 10:00 AM
Session 32 (Schneider 1275)
On the Margins of King Arthur’s World
Organizer: Tara Foster, Northern Michigan Univ., and Jon Sherman, Northern
Michigan Univ.
Presider: Tara Foster
PAPER 3 OF 3: False! Traitor! The Marginalization of Mordred and the Ambiguities of
Kingship
Steven Bruso, Fordham Univ.


SATURDAY, 14 MAY
10:00 AM
Session 391 (Schneider 2355)
Men, Women, and Their Relationships in Middle High German and Middle English
Literature
Presider: M. Wendy Hennequin, Tennessee State Univ.
PAPER 4 OF 4: Anglo-Saxon Echoes of Feud and Family: The Sister’s Son in Malory’s Morte Darthur
Abraham Cleaver, Univ. of New Mexico

New Mordred Research at the IAS Congress in July

The program for the 23rd International Congress of the International Arthurian Society to be held at Bristol University, Bristol, England, from 25-30 July 2011, is now available online and can be accessed at the following link: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medievalcentre/arthur/english/index_html. Further details and registration information can also be accessed there.

There are 2 presentations of interest to the Alliance and its virtual membership:


MONDAY, 25 JULY

4:30-5:30 PM
E. Arthurian Ideals and Identities: Malory
1. Lisa ROBESON (Ohio Northern University) – Political Propaganda and the Morte Darthur: Mordred and the ‘comyn voyce’


THURSDAY, 28 MAY

1:45-3:15 PM
A. Time for Arthur: Ideological Deployments of Arthurian Space
Moderator: Siân ECHARD (University of British Columbia)
2. Megan LEITCH (University of Cambridge) – Fighting for Mordred in the Fifteenth Century: Insular Identities and the Geopolitics of Literary Treason

Merlin Season 3 Concludes Friday on SyFy

SyFy airs the season finale of BBC1's Merlin tomorrow at 10 PM and an all-day marathon airing of the complete season starting at 8 AM. The season was particularly relevant to our purposes as it prominently featured the half sisters Morgause and Morgana and their various attempts to depose Uther Pendragon and place Morgana, who was revealed at one point as Uther's own daughter, upon the throne of Camelot.

Details as follows:

FRI, 8 APR
08:00 AM Merlin, Season 3--The Tears Of Uther Pendragon - Part 1
09:00 AM Merlin, Season 3--The Tears Of Uther Pendragon - Part 2
10:00 AM Merlin, Season 3--Gwaine
11:00 AM Merlin, Season 3--The Crystal Cave
12:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Changeling
01:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Castle Of Fyrien
02:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Eye Of The Phoenix
03:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--Love In The Time Of Dragons
04:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--Queen Of Hearts
05:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Sorcerer's Shadow
06:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Coming Of Arthur - Part 1

10:00 PM Merlin, Season 3--The Coming Of Arthur - Part 2 [season finale]

Kalamazoo 2012 Session Proposals

The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Villains of the Matter of Britain in association with The Institute for the Advancement of Scholarship on the Magic-Wielding Figures of Visual Electronic Multimedia and The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages has proposed the following session for the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies to be held from 10-13 May 2012. Interested parties should contact the Society at Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com (please note "Are You From Camelot 2012" in the subject line). An official call for papers will be distributed this summer upon notification of acceptance from the Congress's organizing committee.

Are You From Camelot? Recent Arthurian Film, Television, and Electronic Games as Innovators of the Arthurian Tradition and Their Impact (Roundtable)

The Matter of Britain is alive and well in modern mass media, and the media of film and television, especially, have long been recognized as important disseminators of the Arthurian legend to audiences of various ages and in disparate countries across the globe. Such productions are often assessed by their fidelity to pre-established versions of the legend, an anxiety of influence that Norris J. Lacy has termed “the tyranny of tradition.” However, mass media like film, television and electronic games also function as innovators of new traditions for representing characters or motifs that then become fixed in popular Arthuriana (consider, for example, both the long-standing iconographic portrayal of Merlin, cemented via Wolfgang Reitherman’s The Sword in the Stone, as an aged figure with flowing white hair, beard and robes or John Boorman’s conflation—copied by many later writers—of Morgan le Fay and Morgause in Excalibur and the resulting figure’s role as the mother of Mordred, an expansion of her traditional filmic role as an enemy within Camelot), yet, to date, few studies, beyond lamentations of how to, as Lacy, puts it to “unteach” these texts, have explored this aspect of these modern Arthurian texts. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in particular, include many innovative productions (including Alexandre Astier’s Kaamelott; Steve Barron’s Merlin; Chris Chibnall and Michael Hirst’s Camelot; Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur; Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Johnny Capps, and Julian Murphy’s Merlin; Mythic Entertainment’s Dark Age of Camelot; SyFy’s Stargate SG-1 and Type-Moon’s Fate/Stay Night) that deviate significantly from preexisting literary and filmic/televisual traditions of the legend, and these works have influenced and will influence both further Arthurian texts and the popular reception of the Arthurian story as they are dispersed across the intertextual landscape of the modern Matter of Britain. For this session, in furtherance of the goals of the three sponsoring organizations, we are particularly interested in how these recent representations of Arthurian characters (for example King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Morded, Morgan le Fay, and Morgause) and motifs (such as the Grail legend) in film, television, and electronic games have shaped contemporary conceptions of these elements and, also, in exploring how these productions may influence ongoing or future Arthurian texts.

Mordred, King of the Undead!

Mordred features prominently as a vampire and lord of the undead in the new novel The Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer by "Lucy Weston," the pseudonym (one presumes) of an author writing as the undead original of the character of Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Three trailers for the book have appeared on YouTube, and the second, attached below, features Mordred.



There is also a great deal of supplementary material and an excerpt from the book at the website LucyWestonVampire.com.

Tyler Tichelaar's King Arthur's Children

Tyler Tichelaar, medievalist, novelist, and professional editor and book reviewer, has recently published King Arthur's Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition (Modern History Press, 2011), a revision and expansion of his 1995 MA thesis. The book focuses primarily on Arthur's children and descendants in medieval literature but also includes sections on their representation in postmedieval texts, including twentieth-century fiction and select films. A press release on Tichelaar's website ChildrenofArthur.com offers the following information:

Marquette, MI—Scholars and archeologists continue to debate whether King Arthur ever lived, but if he were a real person, mathematical and DNA evidence reveals that almost the entire human race could be descended from the sixth century British king, a possibility that has inspired many writers, from medieval historians to modern novelists. Now all the evidence for King Arthur’s children and descendants is compiled and analyzed in one volume—Tyler R. Tichelaar’s “King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition” (ISBN 9781615990665 trade paper, 9781615990672 hardcover; Modern History Press, 2011).

While Mordred is the only child of King Arthur most people remember, in the Arthurian legend’s earliest versions, Mordred was only Arthur’s nephew, and some traditions suggest he was not even related to Arthur but a rival king. By contrast, ancient Welsh traditions provide King Arthur with three sons: Gwydre, Llacheu, and Amr, and the latter may be the earliest version of Mordred. While the Welsh legends state these sons all died before Arthur, other medieval traditions suggest Arthur’s descendants outlived him. 

Considering possibilities that Mordred was a Scottish king whose crown Arthur tried to usurp and that the Arthurian legend has only been told from the conqueror’s point of view, Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D., redeems Mordred’s character while also exploring obscure Arthurian genealogies, including claims that Scotland’s Clan Campbell and even the British royal family are King Arthur’s descendants. Separating fact from fiction in multiple and conflicting traditions, Dr. Tichelaar reveals how the Arthurian legend has been used as both a political weapon and an escapist fantasy. 

A significant portion of “King Arthur’s Children” also treats modern novelists’ interpretations of the Arthurian legend—including works by Stephen Lawhead, Elizabeth Wein, and Bernard Cornwell—that provide modern readers with a fresh connecting point to the dream of Camelot. Dr. Tichelaar’s striking conclusions about all these treatments of King Arthur’s children and descendants makes for fascinating reading about the psychological impact King Arthur still has upon the human imagination.

The book can be purchased directly from Tichelaar at his website, which also includes a sample chapter and other promotional material as part of a media kit. In addition, Tichelaar has passed along links to a review and interview posted on ReaderViews.com.