Arthurian Monster Quest: Investigating
the Monsters of the Arthurian Tradition, Medieval through Modern (2)
Inspired by the
pioneering work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, teratology, the study of monsters, is experiencing
a renaissance of late in Medieval Studies. Much of this new work has been
conducted under the auspices of MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental
Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and
Practical Application), but there remain other avenues to explore, especially
with regards to fields of interest, like Arthurian Studies, that stretch outside
the medieval and into the various eras of post-medieval history. In sponsoring
these sessions, The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Villains of
the Matter of Britain hopes to offer some much needed illumination into the
darker parts of Arthur’s realm and provide some sense of the history of the monsters
that dwell in these shadows.
In existence for nearly
fifteen hundred years, the Matter of Britain, the body of myths and legends
associated with King Arthur and his court, has long been linked with the
supernatural, chiefly in Arthur’s own nebulous fate as the Once and Future King
and in the wonder-workings of the incubus-spawned Merlin, the fairy women
variously called the Lady of the Lake, and Arthur’s sibling Morgan le Fay, who is
of human origin despite her otherworldly title. These characters have all
received much attention from scholars, but the larger mass of Arthurian preternature
has not. Besides these examples, the denizens of Camelot presented in medieval
texts encounter many further mystical creatures, all of which we might consider
as unnatural, or monstrous, today, including demons, dragons, the Fair Folk, figures
we would now label as witches, giants, griffins, hellhounds, the restless dead,
unicorns, werewolves, and, who can forget, the enigmatic Questing Beast. These monsters,
although important features of their respective narratives, have all received
little attention in modern scholarship. Their successors have received even
less attention, despite the continuance of all of these preternatural beings in
post-medieval Arthurian texts, including such extremes as the Blazing Dragons franchise, which recasts
Arthurian figures as anthropomorphic dragons. In addition, as the corpus of
Arthuriana has expanded exponentially following the close of the Middle Ages,
this new Matter of Britain has also introduced additional creatures of the
night (such as ogres, vampires, zombies, and a plethora of new creations
featured in the Merlin television
series) not found in medieval tales of Arthur’s court. Modern Arthurian texts,
moreover, have expanded the provenance of the monstrous and transformed ordinary
figures from the legend into monsters. It is this world of Arthurian monsters
that we seek to explore in these sessions with the intent of opening up their
realm for further discussion and appreciation.
