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
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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
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
Thursday, April 7, 2011
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]
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
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.
There is also a great deal of supplementary material and an excerpt from the book at the website LucyWestonVampire.com.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Tyler Tichelaar's King Arthur's Children
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.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance -- New From D. S. Brewer
Corinne Saunders
Details
First Published: 15 Apr 2010
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843842217
Pages: 312
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Series: Studies in Medieval Romance
Subject: Medieval Literature
BIC Class: DSBB
The world of medieval romance is one in which magic and the supernatural are constantly present: in otherwordly encounters, in the strange adventures experienced by questing knights, in the experience of the uncanny, and in marvellous objects - rings, potions, amulets, and the celebrated green girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This study looks at a wide range of medieval English romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas. The book opens with a survey of classical and biblical precedents, and of medieval attitudes to magic; subsequent chapters explore the ways that romances both reflect contemporary attitudes and ideas, and imaginatively transform them. In particular, the author explores the distinction between the `white magic' of healing and protection, and the more dangerous arts of `nigromancy', black magic. Also addressed is the wider supernatural, including the ways that ideas associated with human magic can be intensified and developed in depictions of otherworldly practitioners of magic. The ambiguous figures of the enchantress and the shapeshifter are a special focus, and the faery is contrasted with the Christian supernatural - miracles, ghosts, spirits, demons and incubi.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Classical and Biblical Precedents
3 The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic
4 White Magic: Natural Arts and Marvellous Technology
5 Black Magic: The Practice of 'Nigromancy'
6 Otherworld Enchantments and Faery Realms
7 Christian Marvel and Demonic Intervention
8 Malory's Morte Darthur
9 Epilogue: Towards the Renaissance
10 Bibliography
Professor CORINNE SAUNDERS Saunders teaches in the Department of English, University of Durham.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Kalamazoo Session Cancelled
I am sorry to report that our co-sponsored session "Arthurian Villains on Film: Studies in Commemoration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of John Boorman’s Excalibur" has been cancelled due to under-whelming interest in the topic.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Tony Lee and Sam Hart's Excalibur: The Legend of King Arthur (2011)
I came across this today on Amazon and posted a notice to the Arthur of the Comics Project blog, but it is also very relevant here for Tony Lee's introduction of a new villain, Ulric, and its presentation of Morgan le Fay.
In a dramatic and moving tale of trickery and betrayal, forgiveness and hope, the legend of King Arthur, his loves and losses, the fall of Camelot, his Knights of the Round Table, the secrets of his past and mysteries of his future, all come to bear in this visually stunning portrait of a man. Before Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, was murdered by Ulric, as a final act, Uther thrust his sword, Caliburn, into a rock. Only a man true of heart would be able to draw and wield the weapon once more. Until that time, Ulric would become King of the Britons, raining terror over all the land. And the people of Albion would wait for a beacon of hope. The wizard Merlin knows just who that person is destined to be. If Ulric is to be overthrown, then it is Arthur, son of Uther, who must pull out the sword and become the rightful leader of the Britons. So, until Arthur comes of age, Merlin hides the future King - in so doing he strikes a dangerous bargain with the dark Unseelie Fae. As the day approaches when Arthur will come of age, there are strong powers at play. Not everyone wishes for Arthur to succeed - for it was Morgana, Arthur's half-sister, who Merlin traded to the Unseelie, in place of her brother, all those years ago. And now the witch has a vengeful score to settle.
Tony Lee has been a writer for over twenty years. He has worked for a variety of publishers including Marvel Comics, IDW Publishing, Markosia, Rebellion, Panini and Titan. He has contributed to many popular and high-profile properties such as X-Men, Doctor Who, Spider Man, Starship Troopers, Wallace & Gromit and Shrek. In 2008 Tony was nominated in the category for "Best Newcomer Writer" at the prestigious Eagle Awards. He lives in London. Sam Hart is a comic book artist and magazine illustrator, having worked on Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd and for publishers Markosia and DC Comics, amongst others. Born in England, he now lives and teaches comic art in Brazil.
Forthcoming from Walker Books and Candlewick Press:
Excalibur: The Legend of King Arthur
Tony Lee (Author), Sam Hart (Illustrator)
Hardcover $21.99 (978-0763646448).
Paperback $11.99 (978-0763646431).
In a dramatic and moving tale of trickery and betrayal, forgiveness and hope, the legend of King Arthur, his loves and losses, the fall of Camelot, his Knights of the Round Table, the secrets of his past and mysteries of his future, all come to bear in this visually stunning portrait of a man. Before Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, was murdered by Ulric, as a final act, Uther thrust his sword, Caliburn, into a rock. Only a man true of heart would be able to draw and wield the weapon once more. Until that time, Ulric would become King of the Britons, raining terror over all the land. And the people of Albion would wait for a beacon of hope. The wizard Merlin knows just who that person is destined to be. If Ulric is to be overthrown, then it is Arthur, son of Uther, who must pull out the sword and become the rightful leader of the Britons. So, until Arthur comes of age, Merlin hides the future King - in so doing he strikes a dangerous bargain with the dark Unseelie Fae. As the day approaches when Arthur will come of age, there are strong powers at play. Not everyone wishes for Arthur to succeed - for it was Morgana, Arthur's half-sister, who Merlin traded to the Unseelie, in place of her brother, all those years ago. And now the witch has a vengeful score to settle.
Tony Lee has been a writer for over twenty years. He has worked for a variety of publishers including Marvel Comics, IDW Publishing, Markosia, Rebellion, Panini and Titan. He has contributed to many popular and high-profile properties such as X-Men, Doctor Who, Spider Man, Starship Troopers, Wallace & Gromit and Shrek. In 2008 Tony was nominated in the category for "Best Newcomer Writer" at the prestigious Eagle Awards. He lives in London. Sam Hart is a comic book artist and magazine illustrator, having worked on Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd and for publishers Markosia and DC Comics, amongst others. Born in England, he now lives and teaches comic art in Brazil.
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