King Arthur's Enchantresses Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition

King Arthur summons visions of courtly chivalry, towering castles, windswept battlefields, heroic quests, and above all of the monarch who dies but who one day shall return. The Arthurian legend lives on as powerfully and enduringly as ever. Yet central to these stories are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses - spellcasters, mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny. Carolyne Larrington takes her readers on a quest to discover why these dangerous women continue to bewitch us. She explores them as they appear in poetry and painting, on the Internet and TV, in high and popular culture and shows that whether they be chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, they are manifestations of the Other, frightening and fascinating in equal measure.'Original, intelligent, persuasive and always interesting, Carolyne Larrington makes us see the Arthurian legends in a new light. For anyone with the slightest interest in the subject, King Arthur's Enchantresses will be essential reading.' - Allan Massie, author of Arthur the King'If you have always loved the stories of the Knights of the Round Table, but want to know more: then this is the book for you. If you've heard of the names - Lancelot, Guinevere, Morgan Le Fay - but never read the stories: then King Arthur's Enchantresses is the book that you have to read. New ideas and lost interpretations are brought together in this hugely entertaining and clever book that bridges the gap between simple pleasure and real scholarship.'- Jeanette Winterson, author and broadcaster.Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Magic and the Enchantress -- 2. Morgan and Arthur -- 3. Morgan and Chivalry -- 4. Morgan, Other Knights and Enchantresses -- 5. Viviane, the Damoiselle Cacheresse and the Lady of the Lake -- 6. The Queen of Orkney -- 7. Vivien and the Victorians -- 8. Morgan, Morgause, and the Modern Age -- Notes -- Bibliography -- List of Pictures and Sources -- IndexKing Arthur summons visions of courtly chivalry, towering castles, windswept battlefields, heroic quests, and above all of the monarch who dies but who one day shall return. The Arthurian legend lives on as powerfully and enduringly as ever. Yet central to these stories are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses - spellcasters, mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny. Carolyne Larrington takes her readers on a quest to discover why these dangerous women continue to bewitch us. She explores them as they appear in poetry and painting, on the Internet and TV, in high and popular culture and shows that whether they be chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, they are manifestations of the Other, frightening and fascinating in equal measure.'Original, intelligent, persuasive and always interesting, Carolyne Larrington makes us see the Arthurian legends in a new light. For anyone with the slightest interest in the subject, King Arthur's Enchantresses will be essential reading.' - Allan Massie, author of Arthur the King'If you have always loved the stories of the Knights of the Round Table, but want to know more: then this is the book for you. If you've heard of the names - Lancelot, Guinevere, Morgan Le Fay - but never read the stories: then King Arthur's Enchantresses is the book that you have to read. New ideas and lost interpretations are brought together in this hugely entertaining and clever book that bridges the gap between simple pleasure and real scholarship.'- Jeanette Winterson, author and broadcaster.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries

The Oxford School of children's fantasy literature : medieval afterlives and the production of culture

This thesis names the Oxford School of children’s fantasy literature as arising from the educational milieu of the University of Oxford’s English School during the mid-twentieth century. It argues that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis lay the foundations for the children’s fantasy genre by introducing an English curriculum at Oxford in 1931 (first examined 1933) that required extensive study in medieval literature, and by modelling the use of medieval source material in their own popular children’s fantasy works. The Oxford School’s creative use of its sources produces medieval ‘afterlives,’ lending the Middle Ages new relevance in popular culture. This research directly compares medieval literature to children’s fantasy works by Tolkien, Lewis, and four other Oxford-educated children’s fantasy authors in order to reveal the genre’s debt to actual medieval texts and to the Oxford English syllabus in particular. The four authors are Susan Cooper, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Diana Wynne Jones, and Philip Pullman. This thesis situates the tendencies of medievalised children’s fantasy in relation to Lewis and Tolkien’s personal and scholarly convictions about the patriotic, moral, and aesthetic qualities of medieval literature and folklore. Building on the theories of Michel de Certeau, this thesis demonstrates how Oxford School fantasy produces new mythologies for England and argues that, as children’s literature, these works have an implicit didactic function that echoes that of the English School curriculum. This thesis traces the attempts of some Oxford School authors to navigate or explode generic conventions by drawing upon new source material, and contends that the structures and hierarchies that underpin the genre reassert themselves even in texts that set out to refute them. It suggests that such returns to the norm can produce pleasure and invite diverse reading, growing out of the intertextual associations of each new rewriting.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

"Now many of those things are shown to me which I was denied before": Seidr, shamanism and journeying, past and present

One thousand years ago, the Lawspeaker of Iceland went "Under the Cloak" in quest of answers to problems of religious difference. This "out-sitting" has been interpreted as a kind of "seidr," potentially shamanistic practice of Northern Europe. This article discusses practitioner interpretations of evidence for seidr and its relation to "shamanism" in the old literature, revealing seidr as gendered shamanistic practice, involving ecstatic communication with spirits, journeying and shape-shifting, arousing mixed feelings in communities in which practitioners worked. The article explores ways in which people in North America and Britain are reconstructing seidr today as shamanistic practice with its own contradictions and contestations

DIFFERENT STROKES : JUDICIAL VIOLENCE IN VIKING-AGE ENGLAND AND SCANDINAVIA

Abstract: This paper takes a fresh look at the use of judicial violence in the societies of Viking-Age England and Scandinavia. Using interdisciplinary methodologies, it considers legal, historical, literary, and archaeological evidence for judicially-prescribed maiming and execution. Using this evidence, it describes the English and Scandinavian systems of judicial violence in new detail, reflecting on important aspects of each in turn before turning to a more comparative approach to redirect debate and focus future work