hrj

Session 3: Hybridity and Medieval Britain

Multilingualism and Welsh Marches: Walter Map's De nugis curialium (Joshua Byron Smith)

This was more about conceptual "multilingualism" and a general multi-cultural setting than linguistic topics, per se. The paper focuses on Map's story about King Hurla(sp?) who goes to the otherworld for 200 years and comes back not realizing time has passed. The linguistic aspect comes in when he meets a Saxon farmer who tells Hurla that "he can hardly understand him because he speaks Saxon and Hurla speaks British." The focus is on the tale as an ironic commentary on Henry II's court and the contrast between "antiquity" and "modernity" in Map's themes.

"A Painted Act of Speech": Deconstructing the Grail in Malory's Tale of the Sankgreal (A. Joseph McMullen)

This paper would make a good drinking game -- chug every time you hear the word "signifier". It feels like someone practicing the application of an academic theoretical framework to a specific topic. There wasn't much in the way of new content or analysis -- just an academic exercise in the formulaic use of nomenclature.

Cultural Clashes in Premodern Travel Guides (Susan Phillips)

A very interesting discussion of how Early Modern phrasebooks/dictionaries illustrate cultural stereotypes/prejudices as well as providing language data. Her main text is a six-language phrasebook written originally in the Low Countries. She asked in passing for suggestions of similar texts and since she hadn't yet run across Andrew Boorde's Welsh phrasebook (which is very much in the same genre as what she's working with) I was able to provide her with a useful citaiton.

Session 75: J.K. Rowling's Medievalism I

All Things Arthurian: The Wealth of the Harry Potter Books (Kathryn Lorenz)

All but the last paper in this session were mainly organized around identifying and analyzing parallels between the Matter of Britain and the Harry Potter universe in characters, themes, events, props, symbolism, etc. Some typical examples:

cloak of invisibility / Yvain's ring of invisibility
HP's scar / Yvain's mark
goblet of fire / grail
magically appearing food at banquet (original grail motif)
sword of Griffendor (pulled from hat, pulled from enchanted pool) = Excalibur pulled from stone, given by Lady of the Lake
savage forest = locus of trials and wild beasts
lake = gate to otherworld

A contrast between Arthurian hints in Book 1 moving to a more overt embodiment of Arthurian matters in Book 7. More character-based parallels:

Arthur & Harry: raised as orphans in obscurity, wizard mentor - but also cf Yvain's scar, Perceval's attributes of youth and questioning and his natural physical talents.
Ginny, possibly Guenivere, but her fate diverges significantly
Hermione, doesn't match well, and mostly parallels with masculine characters
Ron, blends Kay, Lancelot, some others

A New Galahad? Harry Potter as Grail Narrative (Monica L. Wright)

Focuses not on Harry as Arthur but as the Grail hero, the "seeker" wandering in the wilderness on a quest for magic objects. Most easily compared with Galahad (especially in that he must have "pure" motives -- to defeat Voldemort -- rather than personal gain as his motivation. But also like Perceval he was kept away from his natural milieau "for his own good" and has trouble integrating, he misinterprets others' actions and his own goals.

Harry Potter's Grail Quest (Carol Parrish Jamison)

Just as Mallory synthesized misc. Arthurian themes into a unified narrative, JKR brings diverse themes together into a single narrative. She explores the blending and synthesis of multiple Arthurian characters in a more coherent fashion.

J.K. Rowling's Medieval Landscape (Lynn Wollstadt)

She notes the theme that the deeper Harry approaches magic, the more obviously "medieval" the setting, character attributes, and accoutrements are. The more flawed or evil characters are, the more their attributes (and even their flaws) partake of modernity.