L680 12039 INGHAM
Special Topics in Literary Study & Theory

1:30p – 4:00p TR

TOPIC: MEDIEVAL ARTHURIAN ROMANCES

This course examines medieval tales of Arthurian Romance in the
context of a triangulated history of exchanges (violent as well as
peaceful, sexual as well as political) among England, France and the
so-called ‘Celtic Fringe.’We will examine legends of Arthur for
their insights into the importance of imagination and fantasy for
the creation of ‘national’ histories and identities; we address the
genre of medieval romance for the pertinence of gender and
sexualities to the politics of ‘British’ sovereignty.  Why, after
all, do many of these tales render mythical British kingship as a
story of love gone wrong? And why do they link the dissolution of
an “imagined community” of knights to adulterously disloyal loves
and the (frequently) illicit desires of women? How do the psychic
dramas narrated here cope with the dangers and pleasures of intimacy
and their relation to the politics of kingship? Finally, why do
Middle English accounts of Arthur mark him as the abject king, and
fantasize a native sovereignty imbued with longing and loss?