English 795.7X

Hours: M,T,Th, 3:00-6:00 p.m.

Office: 2316 Boylan

Telephone: 951-5197

Arthurian Legend Transformed

This seminar offers intensive study of selected Arthurian texts. After a brief view of the medieval foundations of Arthurian legend, the course will focus on two works, Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Malory’s prose text, written just prior to the transition from manuscript to printed culture at the end of the fifteenth century, condenses, reorganizes, and translates an entire library of Arthurian romances into a single, new work. For Malory, Arthurian legend represented a golden age that contrasted to the anarchy of the time. Tennyson’s blank verse text, composed over the course of nearly sixty years, uses the Arthurian legends to reinterpret the past and create a mythic rationale for empire building. His text was part of a rekindled interest in the Arthurian cycle in the second half of the nineteenth century, a literary and artistic movement known as the Arthurian Renaissance.

We will adopt a mode of analysis called culturalism (or New Historicism), analysis of the "textual forms and documented practices of a culture…to reconstitute the patterned behavior and constellations of ideas shared by the men and women who produce and consume the texts and practices of that society." In addition to reading primary texts closely, students will research either related fifteenth-century or related nineteenth-century cultural documents. Results of research will be presented through an oral report and a final research paper.

Required texts:

1. Chrétien de Troyes. Arthurian Romances. Trans. D.D.R. Owen. London: J. M. Dent, 1993.
2. The Quest of the Holy Grail. Trans. P.M. Matarasso. London: Penguin, 1969.
3. Tennyson Alfred, Lord. Idylls of the King. Ed. J.M. Gray. London: Penguin, 1996. Hereafter referred to as IK.
4. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Eugene Vinaver. 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Hereafter referred to as WM.

Tentative List of Assignments and Classroom Activities:

Sept. 5: An overview of the development of Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages. Introduction into New Historicism and individual research projects.

Sept. 12: Discussion of Chrétien’s romance and the role of "Perceval" in the production of subsequent manuscripts. Reading: Chrétien de Troyes’s "Perceval" in Arthurian Romances, pp. 374-495.

Sept. 19: Discussion of the prose Queste; introduction to a medieval manuscript via internet. Reading: The Quest of the Holy Grail, pp. 31-161.

Sept. 26: The origins of Arthur: the mythic past and the role of Merlin. More on New Historical methods. Reading: WM, "The Tale of King Arthur," pp. 3-110.

Oct. 3: The Arthurian knights, chivalry, and the concept of narrative interlacing. Oral reports. Reading: WM, "The Tale of the Noble King Arthur That Was Emperor Himself through Dignity of His Hands," pp. 113-146; "The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake," 149-173.

Oct. 10: follow Monday schedule.

Oct. 17: The role of Guinevere and Malory’s depiction of women. Oral reports. Reading: WM, "The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," pp. 611-669.

Oct. 24: The quest for the holy grail. Oral reports. Reading: The Quest of the Holy Grail, pp. 162-284.

Oct. 31 and Nov. 7: The death of Arthur and his world. Oral reports. Reading: WM, "The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon," pp. 673-726.

Nov. 14: Beginnings and the serial production of the Idylls. Reading: IK, pp. 19-75. Oral reports.

Nov. 21: The construction of parallel empires—mythic and actual. Oral reports. Reading: IK, pp. 76-124.

Nov. 28: The Doppelgänger and other heroic problems. Oral reports. Reading: IK, pp. 125-167.

Dec. 5: Tennyson’s depiction of women. Oral reports. Reading: IK, pp. 168-230.

Dec. 12: Tennyson’s vision of the future. Oral reports. Reading: IK, pp. 231-302.

Dec. 19: Final examination

Requirements and Grading: (1) an oral report (20%); (2) a research paper (60%); (3) a final examination (20%).

Selected Bibliography:

• Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.
• Arthur King of Britain. Ed. Richard L. Brengle. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1964.
• Arnold, Thomas. Christian Life, Its Course, Its Hindrances, and Its Helps: Sermons, Preached Mostly in the Chapel of Rugby School. 4^th ed. London: B. Fellowes, 1845.
• The Arthurian Encyclopedia. Ed. Norris J. Lacy. New York: Peter Bedrick, 1986.
• Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. Fenster. New York: Garland, 1996. See "Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory," by Geraldine Heng; "In Defense of Guenevere," by Carole Silver; "Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photographic Illustrations to Alfred Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King" by Joanne Lukitsh.
• Beardsley, Aubrey Vincent. Illustrations for Le Morte D’Arthur. New York: Dover, 1972.
• Buckler, William Earl. Man and His Myths: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King in Critical Context. New York: New York UP, 1984.
• Buckley, Jerome H. The Triumph of Time: A Study of the Victorian Concepts of Time, History, Progress, and Decadence. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966.
• Caxton, William. Le Morte Darthur. London: P.L. Warner, 1920.
• A Companion to Malory. Ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1996.
• Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend. Eds. Martine B. Shichtman and James P. Carley. Albany: State U of New York P, 1994. See "Reluctant Redactor: William Dyce Reads the Legend" by Debra N. Mancoff; "The Snake in the Woodpile: Tennyson’s Vivien as Victorian Prostitute" by Rebecca Umland; "Politicizing the Ineffable: The Queste del Saint Graal and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal’" by Martin B. Shichtman.
• Hughes, Linda K. and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.
• Kennedy, Beverly. Knighthood in the Morte Darthur. Arthurian Studies, 11. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 1985.
• Lacy, Norris J. and Geoffrey Ashe. The Arthurian Handbook. New York: Garland, 1988. Basic historical background and useful glossary.
• Lancelot and Guinevere: A Casebook. Ed. Lori J. Walters. New York: Garland: 1996. "The Presentation of the Character of Lancelot" by Derek Brewer; "The Figure of Lancelot in the Lancelot-Graal" by Elspeth Kennedy; "Unifying Makers: Lancelot and Guinevere in Modern Literature and Art" by Muriel Whitaker; "Which Queen? Guinevere’s Transvestism in the French Prose Lancelot" by E. Jane Burns; "Recovering Malory’s Guenevere" by Sarah J. Hill.
• Loomis, Roger Sherman, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
• McCarthy, Terence. An Introduction to Malory: Reading the Morte Darthur. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1988.
• The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition. Eds. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe. New York: Garland, 1988. "Life in La Mort le roi Artu" by Charles Méla; "Tennyson and the Passing of Arthur" by John D. Rosenberg; "Ideological Battleground: Tennyson, Morris, and the Pastness of the Past" by Jonathan Freedman; "Victorian Spellbinders: Arthurian Women and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle" by Carole Silver.
• The Paston Letters. London: Dent, 1961.
• Simpson, Roger. Camelot Regained: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800-1849. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990.
• Whitaker, Muriel. Arthur’s Kingdom of Adventure. Cambridge: Barnes and Noble, 1984.
• -----. The Legends of King Arthur in Art. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1990.

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