Though firmly rooted in the Middle Ages, Arthurian legend has captivated readers since Caxton and Malory and continues to thrive today. By looking at contemporary reworkings of Arthuriana, this book explores the intersection of popular fiction and feminist discourses in Western society. It examines selected Arthurian novels and short stories by such women writers as Fay Sampson, Mary Stewart, Gillian Bradshaw, and Marion Zimmer Bradley to analyze the textual strategies that articulate feminist ideas. While these texts maintain continuity with established literary traditions through the replication of conventions, their reworking of women's roles encourages readers to engage liberal feminist ideology. The book first gives an overview of theories of popular fiction, feminism, and reading. It then surveys the medieval texts on which the Arthurian tradition is founded and which the contemporary texts rewrite. The chapters that follow discuss how popular contemporary women writers have reworked Arthurian legend through their narrative strategies and their representation of female character types, such as the royal woman and the magical woman.

Though firmly rooted in the Middle Ages, Arthurian legend has captivated readers since Caxton and Malory and continues to thrive today. By looking at contemporary reworkings of Arthuriana, this book explores the intersection of popular fiction and feminist discourses in Western society. It examines selected Arthurian novels and short stories by such women writers as Fay Sampson, Mary Stewart, Gillian Bradshaw, and Marion Zimmer Bradley to analyze the textual strategies that articulate feminist ideas. While these texts maintain continuity with established literary traditions through the replication of conventions, their reworking of women's roles encourages readers to engage liberal feminist ideology. The book first gives an overview of theories of popular fiction, feminism, and reading. It then surveys the medieval texts on which the Arthurian tradition is founded and which the contemporary texts rewrite. The chapters that follow discuss how popular contemporary women writers have reworked Arthurian legend through their narrative strategies and their representation of female character types, such as the royal woman and the magical woman.

This collection of new essays seeks to define the unique qualities of female heroism in literary fantasy from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s through the present. Building upon traditional definitions of the hero in myth and folklore as the root genres of modern fantasy, the essays provide a multi-faceted view of an important fantasy character type who begins to demonstrate a significant presence only in the latter 20th century. The essays contribute to the empowerment and development of the female hero as an archetype in her own right.

This book contains a collection of essays dealing with different re-workings of the Arthurian myth. The papers trace the Arthurian myth, inquiring into its origins in Ancient Rome, and pointing out influences from the Dark Ages up to the present. Reference is made to oral tradition, visual narrative and iconic messages in manuscript illumination, the myth in medieval chivalry and the decay of the latter. Parallelisms are drawn with Christian figures and beliefs, with Irish literature and Gaelic mythology, and with novels and films. The methodological approaches and points of view show great diversity: from an inquiry into the historical sources of the myth, to comparative literature, inter-textuality, feminist criticism, analysis of cinema up to a refreshing practical classroom exercise.

Women characters from Arthurian legends, including Guinevere, Igrayne, and Elaine, tell their stories.

This literary companion surveys the young adult works of American author Marion Zimmer Bradley, primarily known for her work in the fantasy genre. An A to Z arrangement includes coverage of novels (The Catch Trap, Survey Ship, The Fall of Atlantis, The Firebrand, The Forest House and The Mists of Avalon), the graphic narrative Warrior Woman, the Lythande novella The Gratitude of Kings, and, from the Darkover series, The Shattered Chain, The Sword of Aldones and Traitor's Sun. Separate entries on dominant themes--rape, divination, religion, violence, womanhood, adaptation and dreams--comb stories and longer works for the author's insights about the motivation of institutions that oppress marginalized groups, especially women.

How do genres develop? In what ways do they reflect changing political and cultural trends? What do they tell us about the motivations of publishers and readers? Combining close readings and formal analysis with a sociology of literary institutions and markets, Minor Characters Have Their Day offers a compelling new approach to genre study and contemporary fiction. Focusing on the booming genre of books that transform minor characters from canonical literary texts into the protagonists of new works, Jeremy Rosen makes broader claims about the state of contemporary fiction, the strategies of the publishing industry over recent decades, and the function of literary characters. Rosen traces the recent surge in "minor-character elaboration" to the late 1960s and works such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. These early examples often recover the voices of marginalized individuals and groups. As the genre has exploded between the 1980s and the present, with novels about Ahab's wife, Huck Finn's father, and Mr. Dalloway, it has begun to embody the neoliberal commitments of subjective experience, individual expression, and agency. Eventually, large-scale publishers capitalized on the genre as a way to appeal to educated audiences aware of the prestige of the classics and to draw in identity-based niche markets. Rosen's conclusion ties the understudied evolution of minor-character elaboration to the theory of literary character.