English 83

Film buff here chiming in on the excellent double-feature. I feel like I just ate a communion wafer followed by an overstuffed jelly donut – you can guess which film I watched first.
Robert Bresson’s minimalist Lancelot du Lac strikes me as simultaneously the most thematically Christian and most stylistically modern Arthurian vision we’ve encountered. [...]

This musing is neither substantive nor particularly well-thought out, but today’s presentation and the resulting discussion of modern day forms of chivalry made me wonder about the current state of chivalry. The consensus seemed to be that class-based chivalry was dead and buried. I’m not so sure, however.
Admittedly the Victorian sort of imperialist/colonialist idea of [...]

I found The Coming of Arthur to be rather postmodern at points because of its use of multiple people’s views and opinions about King Arthur’s birth and conception, as well as the structure of placing the story of his conception and birth within another story. The reader is left to contemplate each telling and to [...]

Honestly, I must say, I have not completed this book, but even so I have seen a ton of irony in it so far. The first thing that struck me as hilarious is the fact that Hank, a low-class worker of relatively-modern times can go back to Arthurian Britain and almost be the king.
Later, [...]

I am sure we have all read some of Twain’s other works, many of which are American classics.  In this semester, we have all experienced older Arthurian traditions.  I would have to say that I think Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is inferior to both of these sets of things.  It is stylistically [...]

Click on the link for your group to access your colleague’s drafts (password required). Come to ITS as scheduled today to get the magic word. All shall be well.

Group 1 – Josh, Mary, Cristina, Sean
Group 2 – Nick, Kristen, Alistair, Mark
Group 3 – Kory, Dan, Andrea, Tessa
Group 4 – Mollie, James, Winston, Madison

Does anyone know if the groups for peer conferencing have been posted yet (and if so, where)? Thanks!

A lot of us agreed today on how Malory’s telling of stories we have previously read by French authors (The Knight of the Cart, The Death of King Arthur from Vulgate Cycle) were a bit distant and a little dry. I certainly felt that way at least. Even though the events of the narratives were [...]

That quote of course comes from what is perhaps the finest episode in Simpsons history, namely the golden age great “Homer the Heretic.” For any of you unfortunate enough not to know what I’m talking about, God appears to Homer to confront the yellow sloth about his newly formed religion, whose tenets largely consist [...]

There seems to be quite a divide between virginity expectations for women and men in the Arthurian tales. How many times have daughters of lords been offered to knights before being married to them? Virginal women or not virginal does not seem to be very important in Arthuriana, even adultry is questionably maybe OK within [...]

As the epitomy of what a knight should be Galahad is respected everywhere he goes. He completes adventures that no one else can manage just by simply being himself (i.e. the fiery tomb and the sword). Then, he achieves ultimate success by completing the quest for the grail. Once he is revered [...]

It’s been said that the idea of vernacular epic was first formalized by literary historians and philologists (i.e. early linguists and folklorists) in the nineteenth century, which is also traditionally the era of the rise of modern nationalism. This connection is not accidental, “epic” literature like the Chanson de Roland, and even Beowulf (which has [...]