Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain

Patricia Clare Ingham

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2001

Sovereign Fantasies

Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain

Patricia Clare Ingham

In the series The Middle Ages Series

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812292541

Overview
Contents

About this book

During and after the Hundred Years War, English rulers struggled with a host of dynastic difficulties, including problems of royal succession, volatile relations with their French cousins, and the consolidation of their colonial ambitions toward the areas of Wales and Scotland. Patricia Ingham brings these precarious historical positions to bear on readings of Arthurian literature in Sovereign Fantasies, a provocative work deeply engaged with postcolonial and gender theory.

Ingham argues that late medieval English Arthurian romance has broad cultural ambitions, offering a fantasy of insular union as an "imagined community" of British sovereignty. The Arthurian legends offer a means to explore England's historical indebtedness to and intimacies with Celtic culture, allowing nobles to repudiate their dynastic ties to France and claim themselves heirs to an insular heritage. Yet these traditions also provided a means to critique English conquest, elaborating the problems of centralized sovereignty and the suffering produced by chivalric culture. Texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Caxton's edition of Malory's Morte Darthur provide what she terms a "sovereign fantasy" for Britain. That is, Arthurian romance offers a cultural means to explore broad political contestations over British identity and heritage while also detailing the poignant complications and losses that belonging to such a community poses to particular regions and subjects. These contestations and complications emerge in exactly those aspects of the tales usually read as fantasy-for example, in the narratives of Arthur's losses, in the prophecies of his return, and in tales that dwell on death, exotic strangeness, uncanny magic, gender, and sexuality.

Ingham's study suggests the nuances of the insular identity that is emphasized in this body of literature. Sovereign Fantasies shows the significance, rather than the irrelevance, of medieval dynastic motifs to projects of national unification, arguing that medieval studies can contribute to our understanding of national formations in part by marking the losses produced by union.

Author / Editor information

Patricia Clare Ingham is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: The Matter of Britain
1. Arthurian Imagination and the "Makyng" of History Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2. Arthurian Futurism and British Destiny Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Part II: Romancing the Throne
3. Disavowing Romance: Colonial Loss and Stones of the Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
4. "In Contrayez Straunge": Sovereign Rivals, Fantasies of Gender, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
5. Dangerous Liaisons: Disloyalty, Adultery, and the Tragedy of Romance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Part III. Insular Losses
6. Military Intimacies: The Pleasures and Pains of Conquest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
7. "Necessary" Losses: Royal Death and English Remembrance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	192
Afterword: Lost Books Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 296
Keywords: Literature; Cultural Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Literature

eBook

Published: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 9780812292541