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Merlin
Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian legend, has been a source of enduring fascination for centuries. In this authoritative, entertaining, and generously illustrated book, Stephen Knight traces the myth of Merlin back to its earliest roots in the early Welsh figure of Myrddin. He then follows Merlin as he is imagined and reimagined through centuries of literature and art, beginning with Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose immensely popular History of the Kings of Britain (1138) transmitted the story of Merlin to Europe at large. He covers French and German as well as Anglophone elements of the myth and brings the story up to the present with discussions of a globalized Merlin who finds his way into popul...
The Arthur of the English
This first comprehensive treatment of Arthurian literature in the English language up until the end of the Middle Ages is now available for the first time in paperback. English people think of Arthur as their own – stamped on the landscape in scores of place-names, echoed in the names of princes even today. Yet some would say the English were the historical Arthur’s bitterest enemies and usurpers of his heritage. The process by which Arthurian legends have become an important part of England’s cultural heritage is traced in this book. Previous studies have concentrated on the handful of chivalric romances, which have given the impression that Arthur is a hero of romantic escapism. This study seeks to provide a more comprehensive and insightful look at the English Arthurian legends and how they evolved. It focuses primarily upon the literary aspects of Arthurian legend, but it also makes some important political and social observations.
Sovereign Fantasies
During and after the Hundred Years War, English rulers struggled with a host of dynastic difficulties, including problems of royal succession, volatile relations with their French cousins, and the consolidation of their colonial ambitions toward the areas of Wales and Scotland. Patricia Ingham brings these precarious historical positions to bear on readings of Arthurian literature in Sovereign Fantasies, a provocative work deeply engaged with postcolonial and gender theory. Ingham argues that late medieval English Arthurian romance has broad cultural ambitions, offering a fantasy of insular union as an "imagined community" of British sovereignty. The Arthurian legends offer a means to explor...
Saracens and the Making of English Identity
This book explores the ways in which discourses of religious, racial, and national identity blur and engage each other in the medieval West. Specifically, the book studies depictions of Muslims in England during the 1330s and argues that these depictions, although historically inaccurate, served to enhance and advance assertions of English national identity at this time. The book examines Saracen characters in a manuscript renowned for the variety of its texts, and discusses hagiographic legends, elaborations of chronicle entries, and popular romances about Charlemagne, Arthur, and various English knights. In these texts, Saracens engage issues such as the demarcation of communal borders, th...
The True History of Merlin the Magician
A medieval historian examines what we really know about the man who was “Merlin the Magician” and his impact on Britain. Merlin has remained an enthralling and curious individual since he was first introduced in the twelfth century in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. But although the Merlin of literature and Arthurian myth is well known, his “historical” figure and his relation to medieval magic are less familiar. In this book Anne Lawrence-Mathers explores just who he was and what he has meant to Britain. The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and n...
Arthurian Literature XXXVI
Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Medieval Insular Romance
Major themes explored are narratives of the disguised prince, and the reinvention of stories for different tastes and periods. These studies cover a wide chronological range and familiar and unfamiliar texts and topics. The disguised prince is a theme linking several articles, from early Anglo-Norman romances through later English ones, like King Edward and the Shepherd, to a late 16th-century recasting of the Havelok story as a Tudor celebration of Gloriana. 'Translation' in its widest sense, the way romance can reinvent stories for different tastes and periods, is anotherrunning theme; the opening introductory article considers the topic of translation theoretically, concerned to stimulate...
