Search results for ""Author Dr. Molly Martin""

First full-length study of these crucial buildings in the Morte, looking at the interplay between characters and space. Castles play an integral part in Malory's Morte Darthur; Camelot, Tintagel, Joyous Gard, and Dover, for example, are the crucial backdrop to the action and both host and shape the story as it moves through them. But despitethis, Malory's castles have received limited scholarly attention. As the first monograph to look extensively at either castles or space in Malory, this book aims to fill that gap. It reads the Morte through its castles - their architecture, structural and symbolic significance, and geographical locations, together with their political, communal, ritual, domestic, and martial functions. The book also traces the mutual development of space and identity in the text, looking at Malory's Arthurian community in and around castle space, both as individuals and as a group; for example, it considers Arthur's political success through his use of space, and shows how crucial Camelot and its hall are to the fellowship of knights. Overall, the volume suggests a better understanding of the community's central organising body, the Round Table, and offers important re-readings of a number of episodes and characters. MOLLY A. MARTIN is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Indianapolis.

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Fresh study of the intricate roles played by gender, visibility, and the idea of romance in Malory's Morte. Skilfully blending analysis of medieval ideas of optics and vision with careful close readings of the text and deft use of modern critical theory, the author offers a fresh, exciting and insightful reading of the Morte. Of interest to all medievalists, and particularly fascinating for those working in the fields of Arthurian literature, medieval science and philosophy, and gender studies. Dorsey Armstrong, Purdue University. This first book-length study of vision in the Morte Darthur examines the roles played by sight - seeing and being seen - in the Morte's construction of gender, highlighting also the influence of the romance genre in this process. The discussion addresses several key figures: Gareth provides a paradigm of visible romance masculinity; Launcelot's and Trystram's adulteries introduce competing needs for both visibility and invisibility; Palomydes and other less acclaimed knights, and reactions to their shortcomings, confirm the model of visible gender; grail knights and Malory retain secular romance ideas of vision and gender on the religious quest; and the two Elaynes and Percivale's sister prove femininity more variable and less rigid than masculinity in the text. The book argues that visibility is crucial to Malory's conception of gender identity and, further, that masculinity and femininity are determined throughout the Morte by the romance genre. MOLLY MARTIN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Indianapolis.

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