Telling Tales and Crafting Books

Essays in Honor of Thomas H. Ohlgren

edited by Dorsey Armstrong, Shaun F. D. Hughes and Alexander L. Kaufman

Image coming soon

Extent: 404 pages

Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications

Subjects: Literary Studies, Medieval Studies

Series: Festschriften, Occasional Papers, and Lectures

Series volume number: 24

Language: English

PDF (Published)

(July 2016)

ISBN: 9781580442299

Price: $79.95

The 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.

List of Illustrations Introduction by Alexander L. Kaufman PART I: OLD ENGLISH AND THE NORTH Chapter 1: Grendel as Novelistic Outlaw-Hero: A Girardian Reading by Eric. R. Carlson Chapter 2: The Evolution of Monster Fights: From Beowulf versus Grendel to Jon Gudmundsson lAerdi versus the SnAefjalladraugur and Beyond by Shaun F. D. Hughes Chapter 3: Salvation Twice Told: Idolatry, Typology, and Repentance in Genesis B by J. A. Jackson Chapter 4: Vision and Sex in the Iconography of the Old English Genesis Manuscript by Molly A. Martin Chapter 5: Heroic/Apocalyptic Metalandscapes of Some Anglo-Scandanavian Art by E. L. Risden PART II: ROBIN HOOD Chapter 6: Feasts in the Forest by Stephen Knight Chapter 7: Show or Tell? Priority and Interplay in the Early Robin Hood Play/Games and Poems by John Marshall Chapter 8: "...something of the air of a celebration": Scott, Peacock, and Maid Marian by Alan T. Gaylord Chapter 9: Two Ancient Ballads: "Robin Hood's Courtship with Jack Cade's Daughter"
and "The Freiris Tragedie": An Edition by Alexander L. Kaufman Chapter 10: "The grasping, rasping Norman race": Victorian Nationalism and Sir George Alexander Macfarren's 1860 Opera, Robin Hood by Kevin J. Harty PART III: BOOKS AND LITERATURE Chapter 11: The Evangelist Symbols in the Judith of Flanders Gospels: Devotion, Prestige, and Cultural Production by Mary Dockray-Miller Chapter 12: Chaucer and the Art of Not Eating a Book by Robert Boenig Chapter 13: Lancelot the One-Time Outlaw: Fallenness and Forgiveness in the Morte Darthur by Jack Ray Baker Thomas H. Ohlgren's Published Writings Index

  • Edited by Dorsey Armstrong
  • Edited by Shaun F D Hughes
  • Edited by Alexander L Kaufman