Project MUSE®: Arthuriana - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Arthuriana.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 4 (1994) through current issueLatest Articles: ArthurianaTWOProject MUSE®Arthuriana1934-15391078-6279Latest articles in Arthuriana. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Kudrun, with The Book of King Otnit and The Book of Wolf Dietrich ed. by William T. Whobrey (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989978
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In this third installment of his series of literary translations, William Whobrey presents new English translations of three significant representatives of post-classical medieval German narrative poetry: Kudrun, Otnit, and Wolf Dietrich. Bundling these three texts together is entirely logical: they are all epic poems, composed in the mid-13th century, self-conscious of their place in the shadow and wake of the titanic Nibelungenlied, and thematically similar, articulating a realism about dynastic rule, familial power, and the associated gender politics, as well as a notion of heroism as a social rather than an individual ideal, highlighting the military and community leader rather than the solo adventurer. They
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallKudrun, with The Book of King Otnit and The Book of Wolf Dietrich ed. by William T. Whobrey (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USKudrun, with The Book of King Otnit and The Book of Wolf Dietrich ed. by William T. Whobrey (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®85092026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Note from the Editor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989979
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I am excited to step into the role of Editor of this journal that I have been so proud to work on as Associate Editor for the past twelve years. In that time, I have been incredibly lucky to learn about editing and about the ins and outs of the journal from one of the best, my predecessor, Dorsey Armstrong. And of course, she learned from the great Bonnie Wheeler, who remains a guiding light for Arthuriana (both the journal and the field generally).This is a great issue, with a small cluster on solitude, which is guest edited by Usha Vishnuvajjala and features articles by Monica Wright and Lydia Hayes, and the 2025 Fair Unknown Award winner, Margaret Finlay. Working on the Fair Unknown has long been my favorite
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallNote from the Editor2026-05-12text/htmlen-USNote from the Editor2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®32122026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Award Announcement for The So What
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989980
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We are excited to report that the CELJ selected Arthuriana’s The So What for its 2025 Best Public Outreach Award. The So What, which launched in the spring of 2025, is a public-facing, digital publication focusing on the ‘whys’ and ‘so whats’ of medieval studies and pedagogy, and can be found on the Arthuriana website. Lead editors for The So What are Arielle McKee and Brittany Claytor. The judges had high praise for the publication:The So What undertakes a highly successful push to make the Middle Ages available to critical thought about the present. Topics include queerness, Blackness, epidemics (e.g., COVID), transness, the Right, and other urgent concerns. Notably, the feature also includes public activities
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallAward Announcement for The So What2026-05-12text/htmlen-USAward Announcement for The So What2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®37002026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Loneliness and Solitude in Arthurian Texts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989981
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Popular discourse and scholarship have been especially preoccupied with the topic of loneliness for the past few years. Social scientists and public health officials in various countries have been warning of a ‘loneliness epidemic,’ and self-help books and news articles have proposed solutions ranging from finding God to creating an AI friend or romantic partner.1 Scholars and other thinkers disagree on how to define and measure loneliness, whether we have become more lonely, what may be causing that loneliness, how bad loneliness is for you (as bad as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, according to one report from the U.S. Surgeon General), and even whether those reporting feelings of loneliness are actually
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallLoneliness and Solitude in Arthurian Texts2026-05-12text/htmlen-USLoneliness and Solitude in Arthurian Texts2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®390262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12‘Banished alone in some wild land’: Isolation, Captivity, and Loneliness in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, Lancelot, and Erec and Enide
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989982
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In Chrétien de Troyes’s romances, although knights are often solitary figures, they are not typically found in total isolation, but the moments when they are can often be pivotal in the narrative.1 The instances of isolation, captivity, and loneliness in Chrétien’s romances have been given little exclusive attention by scholars. While these are not the main themes in the narratives, they are crucial as they relate to larger topics, such as a knight’s quest, his relationship with his lady, and his role in courtly society. This essay will explore the various functions of isolation, captivity, and loneliness in the romances, explaining how separation from courtly Christian society is presented as an obstacle that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmall‘Banished alone in some wild land’: Isolation, Captivity, and Loneliness in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, Lancelot, and Erec and Enide2026-05-12text/htmlen-US‘Banished alone in some wild land’: Isolation, Captivity, and Loneliness in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, Lancelot, and Erec and Enide2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®993962026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Lonely Lovesick Knights in Medieval French Literature: Naked and Insane
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989983
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If interpersonal ties form the fabric of medieval society, then an individual’s absence constitutes a rent, an unraveling, with implications for the entire group. To be sure, knights who venture into the forest on quests spend a great deal of time alone, but this particular type of solitude is both voluntary and punctuated by encounters with others that ease their loneliness. Moreover, these wanderings occasion additional interpersonal connections with new acquaintances, who in turn become integrated into the knight’s original community. We have only to think of scenes in which victorious knights send their vanquished opponents to King Arthur to see how these journeys bring new knights into the fold.1 These
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallLonely Lovesick Knights in Medieval French Literature: Naked and Insane2026-05-12text/htmlen-USLonely Lovesick Knights in Medieval French Literature: Naked and Insane2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®883072026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Named and Stolen Swords: Gawayne as Worthy Heir in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989984
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The alliterative Morte Arthure’s concern for empire-building manifests most particularly in the specificity of the titles, positions, and honors accorded to the men Arthur selects to rule under him. This overarching concern, which becomes apparent even in the first hundred lines of the poem, encourages readers to pay attention throughout to historical and literary signs and symbols of kingship and rulership. Accordingly, Arthur’s three potential heirs—Cador, Mordred, and Gawayne—are each invested with titles indicative of fourteenth-century heirs to the throne of England. Only Gawayne, however, is singled out with the diegetic mark of worthy rulership—a named sword.1 Indeed, though medieval romances typically name
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallNamed and Stolen Swords: Gawayne as Worthy Heir in the Alliterative Morte Arthure2026-05-12text/htmlen-USNamed and Stolen Swords: Gawayne as Worthy Heir in the Alliterative Morte Arthure2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®923592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12The Round Table
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989985
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newsfrom the north american branchWebsite of the IAS-NAB: http://www.international-arthurian-society-nab.org/.nab officers december 15, 2024–2027 (for full addresses, see: http://www.international-arthuriansociety-nab.org/contact)President: Siân Echard (The University of British Columbia)Immediate Past President: Joseph M. Sullivan (University of Oklahoma)Vice President: Molly Martin (University of Indianapolis)Secretary–Treasurer: Jonathan S. Martin (Illinois State University)Bibliographer: Ann Howey (Brock University)Early Career Member: Pamela Yee (University of Rochester)Graduate Student Member: Cortney Berg (City University of New York, the Graduate Center)Arthuriana Editor: Molly Martin (University of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallThe Round Table2026-05-12text/htmlen-USThe Round Table2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®300922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Medieval Welsh Literature and its European Contexts: Essays in Honour of Professor Helen Fulton ed. by Victoria Flood (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989986
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This collection of essays is offered as a tribute to Professor Helen Fulton, under the editorship of her former doctoral student, Dr. Victoria Flood. The thirteen chapters, written by Fulton’s colleagues and former students, range across many aspects of medieval literature and exhibit a variety of approaches, mirroring the wide-ranging and prolific work of the honorand. Appended to these thirteen chapters are a personal tribute to Helen Fulton by Elaine Treharne, a selected bibliography of Fulton’s works, an index, and a Tabula Gratulatoria.The book’s title, playing on the title of Fulton’s 1989 monograph Dafydd ap Gwilym and the European Context, is a fitting encapsulation of Fulton’s primary research interests
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallMedieval Welsh Literature and its European Contexts: Essays in Honour of Professor Helen Fulton ed. by Victoria Flood (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USMedieval Welsh Literature and its European Contexts: Essays in Honour of Professor Helen Fulton ed. by Victoria Flood (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®84832026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Cinema Medievalia: New Essays on the Reel Middle Ages ed. by Kevin J. Harty and Scott Manning (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989987
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Cinema Medievalia: New Essays on the Reel Middle Ages was published in the twenty-fifth anniversary year of Kevin J. Harty’s magisterial survey, The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Asian films about Medieval Europe (1999, rev. 2006). The contributors to Cinema Medievalia: New Essays include well-known scholars who helped create the subfield of movie medievalism and scholars new to the field who have entered into the robust discourse of (and the extensive bibliography on) cinema medievalia—a term first coined by Harty, who broke the ground that we all continue to till, to invoke a metaphor William Langland would have approved. (One wonders what he would have thought of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallCinema Medievalia: New Essays on the Reel Middle Ages ed. by Kevin J. Harty and Scott Manning (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USCinema Medievalia: New Essays on the Reel Middle Ages ed. by Kevin J. Harty and Scott Manning (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®108832026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Medieval Humanism: Collected Essays by C. Stephen Jaeger (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989988
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This book offers readers a glimpse into Jaeger’s arc of thought and methodology as an intellectual historian and literary scholar by bringing together some of his most important as well as perhaps some of his lesser-known essays. The volume offers forays into and deeper looks at the various teachers and scholars associated with the eleventh- and twelfth-century cathedral schools in Germany and France; they are philosophers and poets drawn from monastic, clerical, and worldly spheres. Jaeger is preoccupied with cultural transformation during the period 950–1150 and particularly with how cultural activities can be gleaned from intellectual history. Anchored by two longer pieces, ‘Cathedral Schools and Humanist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallMedieval Humanism: Collected Essays by C. Stephen Jaeger (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USMedieval Humanism: Collected Essays by C. Stephen Jaeger (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®94932026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Historians on Robin Hood: The Outlaw’s Legend in the Later Middle Ages ed. by Stephen H. Rigby (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989989
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The first, essential thing to know about the collection Historians on Robin Hood is that the main topic is in the subtitle: The Outlaw’s Legend in the Later Middle Ages (emphasis added). Occasionally an essay suggests a twinkle in the authorial eye at the possibility of historicity: for example, David Crook briefly surveys scholars’ attempts at identifying a historical personage (pp. 75–77) and asserts one Robert of Wetherby ‘the most plausible candidate’ (p. 85). In the main, however, the writers discuss not Robin Hood’s existence-or-not as a person, but rather topics most of which fall under a broad sociocultural umbrella, using as its shaft predominantly tales printed—albeit not necessarily composed—between the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallHistorians on Robin Hood: The Outlaw’s Legend in the Later Middle Ages ed. by Stephen H. Rigby (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USHistorians on Robin Hood: The Outlaw’s Legend in the Later Middle Ages ed. by Stephen H. Rigby (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®78742026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Women and Medieval Literary Culture: From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century ed. by Corinne Saunders and Diane Watt (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989990
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Literary cultures in the contemporary west imagine authors as the sole genius and progenitors of their texts. But it takes only a little reflection to grasp that there is a vast network of institutions and individuals that constitute literary culture in the twenty-first century. Alongside authors and necessary to understand a literary culture, we would need to consider readers, booksellers, publishers, agents, editors (to name only a few), to reach Foucault’s notion, in ‘What is an Author?’ of the historical ‘author-function,’ a ‘mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society’ (Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology [New York: The New Press, 1998], p. 211). In short there are
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallWomen and Medieval Literary Culture: From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century ed. by Corinne Saunders and Diane Watt (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USWomen and Medieval Literary Culture: From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century ed. by Corinne Saunders and Diane Watt (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®91902026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Black Knights, Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race by Rachel Schine (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989991
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In Black Knights, Professor Schine examines racialization in premodern Arabic literature, taking as its central area of inquiry the sīrah (pl. siyar) or popular romance. Her debut monograph focuses on the Black characters of Sīrat ʿAntar, Sīrat Banī Hilāl, and Sīrat Dhāt al-Himmah. The study explores how and why these stories should feature Black heroes amidst a variety of geocultural contexts. Professor Schine discusses these texts’ Black characters within the frame of Islam, with the romances’ protagonists enacting the aspirational history of the world religion, imagined as ‘always already having had the scripts and tools for admitting extremely different peoples and positioning them to its ultimate strength’ (p.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallBlack Knights, Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race by Rachel Schine (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USBlack Knights, Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race by Rachel Schine (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®89712026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/989992
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Hannah Weaver’s fascinating monograph brilliantly argues that the scribal act of interpolation served as one of the most effective tools a medieval writer could use in the quest to understand the relationship between time, narrative and history. Interpolation, the practice of inserting sections of previously completed manuscripts into one’s writing, wove past and present together in a way that enhanced both writers’ and readers’ relationship with history by offering collisions of contemporary stories with authoritative texts from the past. Because the various Brut chronicles, the main body of medieval histories from which Weaver draws, often included interpolated sections of Merlin’s prophecies as written by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/397/image/coversmallExperimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)2026-05-12text/htmlen-USExperimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past by Hannah Weaver (review)2026-05-122026TWOProject MUSE®74452026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-12