Ethics in the Arthurian Legend: (Arthurian Studies)

An interdisciplinary and trans-historical investigation of the representation of ethics in Arthurian Literature. From its earliest days, the Arthurian legend has been preoccupied with questions of good kingship, the behaviours of a ruling class, and their effects on communities, societies, and nations, both locally and in imperial and colonizing contexts. Ethical considerations inform and are informed by local anxieties tied to questions of power and identity, especially where leadership, service, and governance are concerned; they provide a framework for understanding how the texts operate as didactic and critical tools of these subjects. This book brings together chapters drawing on English, Welsh, German, Dutch, French, and Norse iterations of the Arthurian legend, and bridging premodern and modern temporalities, to investigate the representation of ethics in Arthurian literature across interdisciplinary and transhistorical lines. They engage a variety of methodologies, including gender, critical race theory, philology, literature and the law, translation theory, game studies, comparative, critical, and close reading, and modern editorial and authorial practices. Texts interrogated range from Culhwch and Olwen to Parzival, Roman van Walewein, Tristrams Saga, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Malory's Morte Darthur. As a whole, the approaches and findings in this volume attest to the continued value and importance of the Arthurian legend and its scholarship as a vibrant field through which to locate and understand the many ways in which medieval literature continues to inform modern sensibilities and institutions, particularly where the matter of ethics is concerned.

Table of Contents:
Foreword - Jane Gilbert Acknowledgements "Introduction" - Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer Arthurian Ethics before the Pentecostal Oath: In Search of Ethical Origins in Culhwch and Olwen - Melissa Ridley Elmes Too Quickly or Not Quickly Enough, Too Rash and Too Harshly: The Arthurian Court's Lack of Ethics in Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival - Evelyn Meyer The Ethics of Arthurian Marriage: Husband vs. Wife in Hartmann von Aue's Iwein - Jonathan Seelye Martin Arthurian Ethics and Ethical Reading in the Perlesvaus - Joseph Derosier Translation Praxis and the Ethical Value of Chivalry in the Caligula Brut - Christopher Jensen Imperial Ambitions and the Ethics of Power: Gender, Race, and the Riddarasögur - Nahir Otaño Gracia Lowland Ethics in the Arthur of the Dutch - David F. Johnson Contesting Royal Power: The Ethics of Good Lordship, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the March of Wales - Steven Bruso 'As egir as any lyoun': The Ethics of Knight-Horse Relationships in Lybeaus Desconus - Caitlin G. Watt Malory's Ethical Dinadan: Moderate Masculinity in a Crisis of Hypermasculine Chivalry - Matthew D. O'Donnell Virtus, Vertues, and Gender: Cultivating a Chivalric Habitus in Thomas Malory's Tale of Sir Gareth - Holly A. Crocker Kingly Disguise and (Im)Perception in Three Fifteenth-Century English Romances - Mikayla Hunter 'Adventure? What is that?' Arthurian Ethics in/and the Games We Play" - Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand The Ethics of a New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur - and More Evidence for the Superiority of the Winchester Manuscript - † Fiona Tolhurst and K. S. Whetter The Ethics of Writing Guinevere in Modern Historical Fiction - Nicole Evelina Afterword - Elizabeth Archibald

About the Author :
Melissa Ridley Elmes is Associate Professor of English at Lindenwood University. Evelyn Meyer is Associate Professor of German at Saint Louis University. ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society. JANE GILBERT is Professor of Medieval Literature and Critical Theory at University College London, UK. DAVID F. JOHNSON is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. K.S. WHETTER is Professor of English at Acadia University.

Review :
A valuable collection for researchers and students working on and/or interested in analyzing the Arthurian legend as consisting of responsive didactic texts capable of serving multiple purposes and ethical imperatives, and who feel approaching those texts through ethical inquiry helps us avoid "misreading or under-reading" Arthurian romances (3).