MEDIEVAL STUDIES
Dr Roger Dalrymple, Dr Tony Hunt, Dr Santha Bhattacharji & Henrietta Leyser
Introduction
The Medieval Interdisciplinary Seminar has focused in recent years on The Matter of Britain through The Arthurian Tradition, a subject that reaches back historically into the early Middle Ages and whose fascination has been expressed in a myriad of artistic forms: folktale, myth, fiction, poetry, painting ~ and latterly in film.
Whilst this subject has not yet been confirmed for inclusion in 2007, the following outline may still be helpful to intending participants ~ to illustrate the content that might be expected (if it is confirmed) or the general way in which strands of the separate Medieval History, Literature and Women’s Studies Options are brought together in the Interdisciplinary Seminar.
Through an examination of diverse interpretations of The Matter of Britain, we will attempt to trace salient themes that continue to find resonance in literature and film today. Central points of study will be the earliest sources of the Arthurian legend, in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’; the incorporation of the legend into romance in the 12th-15th centuries and its link with the emergence of chivalry and courtly love; the reception of the legend in different media in modern times.
The topic will be approached through a study of historical and literary works, most of which are available as Penguin Classics. These include Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of England, Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian Romances, their German adaptations by Hartmann von Aue, and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the anonymous 14th century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D'Arthur.
The Seminar will proceed to look at the nineteenth-century reception of the Arthurian material in Pre-Raphaelite poetry and art ~ Oxford was the spiritual centre of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and there are many of their works to be seen in the city and the surrounding area.
Finally, we will look at Arthurian film, which has a history reaching back to the very beginnings of cinema and still continuing, with the quality of films ranging from the risible to the sublime: these include A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, Camelot, First Knight, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Excalibur and the one masterpiece of medieval cinema, Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac.