Studies in Arthurian and Chronicle Traditions in Memory of Fiona Tolhurst: Quondam Et Futurus

Essays examining Arthurian and Chronicle texts, contexts, and reception, in honour of Fiona Tolhurst’s contributions to Arthurian Studies.

In her all-too-short but ground-breaking academic career, Fiona Tolhurst made significant contributions to the discipline of Arthurian Studies, advancing, amongst much else, understanding of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthurian Women, the English Mortes, and modern Arthuriana, including cinematic versions of the legend. The essays assembled here reflect her commitment to explication of Arthurian and Chronicle texts and contexts. Several engage with Geoffrey of Monmouth, examining, among other topics, the depiction of women in his narrative of British origins; the function of giants and significance of landscape and geography in his writings; the contrast between Geoffrey’s Trojan-British empire and the Graeco-Egyptian foundation narratives of Scottish and Irish chronicles; and the reception and use of his writing from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Other contributors consider characterization and politics in the Brut tradition and Malory; the puzzling dualities of the alliterative Morte; the reception of Malory’s ＂Trystram＂; continuities between medieval and modern readings of the MorteDarthur; and the uses, adaptation, and appropriation of Arthurian themes and ideals in the twenty-first century.