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This book focuses on how and why various cultures have appropriated the story of King Arthur. It is about re-vision, how cultures alter inherited texts and are, in turn, changed by them, and it deals with the ways in which various cultures have empowered the Arthurian legend so that power might be derived from it. The authors suggest that the vitality of the Arthurian legend resides in its ability to be transformed and to transform, in its potential for appropriation and use.
Culture and the King deals with issues of literature, history, art, politics, economics, gender study, and popular culture. It crosses the boundaries traditionally erected around these disciplines and addresses emerging critical methodologies concerned with the "poetics of culture."
"This book's main strength is its diversity. There is an astonishing amount of territory covered here. The methodological diversity is especially notable, with many of the essays leaning toward contemporary criticism." — Julian Wasserman, Loyola University
Valerie M. Lagorio: A Tribute
Mildred Leake Day
Introduction: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend
Martin B. Shichtman and James P. Carley
Part I The Middle Ages: Inventing a Lost Past
Marie de France's Arthurian Lai : Subtle and Political
David Chamberlain
Lévi-Strauss in Camelot: Interrupted Communication in Arthurian Feudal Fictions
Donald Maddox
Arthur in Culhwch and Olwen and in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes
Armel Diverres
The Knight as Reader of Arthurian Romance
Elspeth Kennedy
The Stanzaic Morte Arthur : The Adaptation of a French Romance for an English Audience
Edward Donald Kennedy
Was Merlin a Ghibelline? Arthurian Propaganda at the Court of Frederick II
Donald L. Hoffman
A Grave Event: Henry V, Glastonbury Abbey, and Joseph of Arimathea's Bones
James P. Carley
The Speaking Knight: Sir Gawain and Other Animals
Felicity Riddy
Politicizing the Ineffable: The Queste del Saint Graal and Malory's "Tale of the Sankgreal"
Martin B. Shichtman
"The Prowess of Hands": The Psychology of Alchemy in Malory's "Tale of Sir Gareth"
Bonnie Wheeler
How Many Roads to Camelot: The Married Knight in Malory
Maureen Fries
Part II Reinventing the Middle Ages
Spenser for Hire: Arthurian History as Cultural Capital in The Faerie Queene
Laurie A. Finke
Arthur Before and After the Revolution: The Blome-Stansby Edition of Malory (1634) and Brittains Glory (1684)
David R. Carlson
Reluctant Redactor: William Dyce Reads the Legend
Debra N. Mancoff
The Snake in the Woodpile: Tennyson's Vivien as Victorian Prostitute
Rebecca Umland
Feminism, Homosexuality, and Homophobia in The Mists of Avalon
James Noble
Camelot 3000 and the Future of Arthur
Charles T. Wood
Index