Medieval Studies Commons^™

The Acts Of John Steinbeck: Medievalist – A Dive Into John Steinbeck’S Adaptation Of Thomas Malory’S Le Morte D’Arthur., Timothy Luft Jr.

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights John Steinbeck’s adaptation of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. In this thesis, I argue that Steinbeck’s work is a qualified work of a talented medievalist with sustained close-readings of Acts and Morte along with biographical supplements from Steinbeck’s writings and his biographer Jackson Benson. This thesis seeks to bring light to the qualified, impressive work in Arthurian studies conducted by John Steinbeck over the course of his life that ultimately resulted in the posthumous publication of Acts.

Postmodern Poetry And Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics, David Hadbawnik

New Queer Medievalisms

This volume builds on recent scholarship on contemporary poetry in relation to medieval literature, focusing on postmodern poets who work with the medieval in a variety of ways. Such recent projects invert or “queer” the usual transactional nature of engagements with older forms of literature, in which readers are asked to exchange some small measure of bewilderment at archaic language or forms for a sense of having experienced a medieval text. The poets under consideration in this volume demand that readers grapple with the ways in which we are still “medieval” – in other words, the ways in which the …

"Slain Ye Shall Be": Eschatological Morality And The House Of Feanor In Tolkien's The Silmarillion, Ashley Anteau

Honors Projects

This thesis expands on existing research and analysis of the eschatology of J. R. R. Tolkien’s invented mythology, with a critical analysis of how it relates to morality and the overarching exploration of good and evil, primarily in The Silmarillion. By analyzing Tolkien’s medieval and spiritual influences, as well as Tolkien’s unfinished works published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien, it explores the effect of the relationship between morality and mortality on the emotional core of Tolkien’s work. It offers new insights into the text by engaging especially with the often overlooked story of the sons of Feanor, and how this story …

"Saint Galadriel?: J.R.R. Tolkien As The Hagiographer Of Middle-Earth", Jane Beal Phd

Journal of Tolkien Research

Abstract: Galadriel is perceived in different, sometimes contradictory ways both within the world of Middle-earth and the world of Tolkien scholarship. In some ways, she is a liminal figure, on the threshold between Middle-earth and Valinor, and between secular and sacred influences from the primary world Tolkien actually lived in. One neglected context that may help readers to understand Tolkien’s characterization of Galadriel is the medieval cult of the saints.

The cult of the saints provides specific practices and beliefs that shaped how Tolkien consciously characterized Galadriel as saint-like, especially in terms of her beauty, holiness, and power. Her saintliness …

Literary Theories Of Circumcision, A. W. Strouse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Literary Theories of Circumcision” investigates a school of thought in which the prepuce, as a conceptual metaphor, organizes literary experience. In every period of English literature, major authors have employed the penis’s hood as a figure for thinking about reading and writing. These authors belong to a tradition that defines textuality as a foreskin and interpretation as circumcision. In “Literary Theories of Circumcision,” I investigate the origins of this literary-theoretical formulation in the writings of Saint Paul, and then I trace this formulation’s formal applications among medieval, early modern, and modernist writers. My study lays the groundwork for an ambitious …

Quatrains Of Mahsati Of Ganja, Literary Imagination, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

“Mahsatī of Ganja’s Wandering Quatrains,” (introduction to translations of the twelfth-century Persian poetess), Literary Imagination 13 (2): 225-227. Translations of Mahsati's quatrains, pp. 227-231.