Necrology for Professor Fiona Tolhurst (1968–2021)

Fiona Tolhurst, bottom right; Evelyn Meyer, back to the camera; Molly Martin and Richard Sévère, top right; Barney Haney, top left; Joseph M. Sullivan, middle left; K.S. Whetter, bottom left: at the IAS conference at Würzburg University, 2017.

Photo courtesy of David F. Johnson.

Dr. Fiona Tolhurst died unexpectedly on 21 December 2021; she was 53. The death of a good friend or respected teacher or fine scholar is always hard, and Fiona was all of these things—and was these things to an extraordinarily wide range of people. But Fiona's death has hit many of us especially hard for coming when it did: in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic that complicates or negates conference travel, many Arthurians have been looking forward with more than usual enthusiasm to the days when we can all see one another again at a Branch meeting or Kalamazoo conference or the International Arthurian Congress. Suddenly, there is a conspicuous absence in our Arthurian fellowship, an absence that echoes and enforces the poignant lament for lost fellowship spoken by Malory's King Arthur: 'nevyr shall I se you agayne holé togydirs!'

Fiona Tolhurst pursued her undergraduate English literature degree at Rice University, graduating Magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa (1990); it was also at Rice that Fiona met her life-long love and husband, Christoph Neuendorf. From Rice, Fiona proceeded to a Mellon Fellowship and Princeton for her graduate training (earning her M.A. in 1994 and Ph.D. in 1995), eventually pursuing a Ph.D. thesis under the direction of the noted medievalist and Chaucerian John Fleming on what Fleming initially jokingly referred to as 'the trash literature of the Middle Ages': Arthurian literature. (Fleming's remark encapsulates what was, for much of the twentieth century, the dominant scholarly attitude towards romance and Arthurian literature, but Fleming was very supportive of Fiona and they worked well together.) After her Ph.D., Dr. Tolhurst worked one year at Texas A&M before taking up a tenure-track position at Alfred University, becoming one of the youngest female faculty members to achieve Full Professor. Fed up with American politics, Fiona and Christoph leapt at the chance to move to Switzerland for several years, where he worked in finance and she taught and continued her scholarship. When Christoph and Fiona returned to North America, Fiona secured a permanent position at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she was recently promoted (for the second time in her career) to Full Professor. At the time of her death, Fiona was Chair of the Department of Language and Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.

As a scholar, Fiona had many interests and published widely. She was a recognized authority on Geoffrey of Monmouth, particularly feminist approaches to Geoffrey, a topic on which she wrote numerous articles and book chapters as well as two monographs (see especially the commissioned chapter on 'Geoffrey and Gender: The Works of Geoffrey of Monmouth as Medieval "Feminism,"' in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, edited by Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron Smith [Brill, 2020], pp. 341–68; Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship [Palgrave Macmillan, 2013]; and Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend [Palgrave Macmillan, 2012]). She also edited an important special collection of Arthuriana (8.4 [1998]) devoted to theoretical approaches to Geoffrey, a collection that she put together remarkably early in her career. She then co-edited a book of essays in memory of Maureen Fries (On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, edited by Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst [Scriptorium Press, 2001]), and also published articles emphasizing the extent of C.S. Lewis' Arthurian interests (including 'Beyond the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis as Closet Arthurian,' Arthuriana 22. 4 [2012]: 140–66). Throughout her career she also consistently worked on medieval women, particularly Eleanor of Aquitaine (including 'Catty Queen Consort, Lioness in Winter and Loyal Queen Mother: Images of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Film', in Medieval Women on Film: Essays on Gender, Cinema...