Description
Book SynopsisThe great corpus that is medieval literature contains, at its very center, the tale. These verse and prose fictional narratives, as well as stories that are grounded in some degree of historical truth, are the foundation of what readers, scholars, and enthusiasts often point to as signifiers of the medieval age. These tales - from the skillfully crafted to the more rudimentary and plain - often make familiar to modern readers what seems so distant and foreign about the Middle Ages. This volume of essays focuses on the tale and its ability to create "mirth," what modern audiences would often define as "happiness" or "joy," and the significance that the book has had on the transference of this mirth to audiences.
This volume also celebrates the scholarship of Thomas H. Ohlgren, a medievalist whose work encompasses a number of different areas, but at its center lives the power of the tale and its ability to create a lasting impression on readers, both medieval and modern.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Introduction - Alexander L. Kaufman
PART I: OLD ENGLISH AND THE NORTH
Chapter 1: Grendel as Novelistic Outlaw-Hero: A Girardian Reading - Eric. R. Carlson
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Monster Fights: From Beowulf versus Grendel to Jón Gudmundsson lærdi versus the Snæfjalladraugur and Beyond - Shaun F. D. Hughes
Chapter 3: Salvation Twice Told: Idolatry, Typology, and Repentance in Genesis B - J. A. Jackson
Chapter 4: Vision and Sex in the Iconography of the Old English Genesis Manuscript - Molly A. Martin
Chapter 5: Heroic/Apocalyptic Metalandscapes of Some Anglo-Scandanavian Art - E. L. Risden
PART II: ROBIN HOOD
Chapter 6: Feasts in the Forest - Stephen Knight
Chapter 7: Show or Tell? Priority and Interplay in the Early Robin Hood Play/Games and Poems - John Marshall
Chapter 8: "...something of the air of a celebration": Scott, Peacock, and Maid Marian - Alan T. Gaylord
Chapter 9: Two Ancient Ballads: "Robin Hood's Courtship with Jack Cade's Daughter"; and "The Freiris Tragedie": An Edition - Alexander L. Kaufman
Chapter 10: "The grasping, rasping Norman race": Victorian Nationalism and Sir George Alexander Macfarren's 1860 Opera, Robin Hood - Kevin J. Harty
PART III: BOOKS AND LITERATURE
Chapter 11: The Evangelist Symbols in the Judith of Flanders Gospels: Devotion, Prestige, and Cultural Production - Mary Dockray-Miller
Chapter 12: Chaucer and the Art of Not Eating a Book - Robert Boenig
Chapter 13: Lancelot the One-Time Outlaw: Fallenness and Forgiveness in the Morte Darthur - Jack Ray Baker
Thomas H. Ohlgren's Published Writings
Index
