Le Morte d’Arthur as Literary Remediation Process to RPG Game

This article presents a proposal for the elaboration of an RPG game with board support based on the remediation of literary narratives and which is thought both for use in the classroom, as a didactic tool, but understood essentially as a playful activity. For that, we first start an observation about the act of playing and what it means in society and in linguistic terms. Subsequently, we are concerned with defining what a game is so that we can effectively present the proposal. To better exemplify it, we present as an example the remediation of Arthurian legends from Le Morte d’Arthur, by Thomas Malory, a project that we have previously tested. The discussion about the behaviour of games then runs through authors such as Johan Huizinga (1980) and Jesper Juul (2005).

Magic Forest Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in “Le Morte D`Arthur”: Image Semantics and its Russian “Replication”

The “magic forest” illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in spite of the continuity in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite and the reconstructed Middle Ages / Renaissance in the works, dedicated to Arthur on the pages of the Kelmscott Press publications, has a number of peculiar features. The semantics of the natural images of the black-and-white illustrations to Thomas Malory's “Le Morte D`Arthur” turns out to be consonant with both the folklore (pagan in its essence) ideas about the forest as other world, and the Christian symbolism of the passion forest, this uncultivated “exile lands”. The essential features of the “Beardsley`s forest” can include its gloominess (black grass, spectacular haze of frames), inaccessibility (thickets of giant bindweed “stifling” knights, fence of trunks, represented as the border of the forest edge, thorns, reminding of the torments of earthly love and its sinfulness). Thomas Malory reduces the element of unbelievable in his narration; Beardsley, on the contrary, returns dragons, fairies, satyrs to the Forest. The paper addresses the background of the first publications of his “forest” graphics in Russia, notes the transfer of emphasis from the medieval forest topic to the motif of the landscape garden that is more consonant with the rockail aesthetics. The authors also draw comparison of interpretation of the forest image and its goat-footed guardians, satyrs, in the representation of the English illustrator and in the text of the “Northern Symphony” by A. Bely.

“Harta de sombras estoy”. La Dama de Shalott de Alfred Tennyson como metáfora del ideal de feminidad victoriano y su reflejo en el imaginario pictórico decimonónico.

En un clima de revivalismo medieval y recuperación de la tradición artúrica, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) escribe en 1833 el que se convertiría en uno de sus poemas más célebres, La Dama de Shalott. En él, recuperaría la figura de la Doncella de Astolat creada por Sir Thomas Malory en La muerte de Arturo (1485). Pronto se convertiría en una de las heroínas paradigmáticas del poeta y uno de los motivos iconográficos preferidos de artistas prerrafaelitas y victorianos del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Tanto el poema como las imágenes, se tomaron como ilustraciones de actitudes victorianas hacia la reclusión de las mujeres en el área doméstica y la privación de su sexualidad.

T/V Pronouns and FTAs in the Works of Sir Thomas Malory: Medieval Politeness and Impoliteness in Directives, Expressives, and Commissives

Middle English second person pronouns thou and you (T/V) are considered to be among the means employed by medieval speakers to express their attitudes towards each other. Along with face-threatening acts, the use of these pronouns could indicate power relations or solidarity/distance between the interactants (Taavitsainen & Jucker 2003; Jucker 2010; Mazzon 2010; Bax & Kádár 2011, 2012; Jucker 2012). Using the tools available in pragmatic research, this paper attempts to provide an analysis of selected fragments from The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Vinaver 1948 [1947]), analysed through the lens of Searle’s speech act theory (1969, 1976). The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the usage of T/V pronouns in polite or impolite contexts depends on the speech act in which they appear or not. Secondly, it looks at the presence of face-threatening acts (FTAs) and their potential influence on polite or impolite pronoun usage. Lastly, the analysis looks at the usage of FTAs within specific speech acts. The fragments used in this article were chosen from five chapters of Malory’s text: The Tale of King Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere, The Morte Arthur, The Noble Tale, and Tristram de Lyones.

NOSTALGIA, UTOPIA E REGENERAÇÃO:A IDADE MÉDIA DE CAMELOT 3000

Este artigo discute a presença, na história em quadrinhos (HQ) Camelot 3000 (1983-85) de temas oriundos da literatura medieval, particularmente do romance de cavalaria Le Morte d’Arthur, de Thomas Malory, que a HQ em parte continua e em parte adapta. Busca-se demonstrar como as escolhas envolvidas nessa adaptação servem a um discurso duplamente alicerçado: de um lado, forças diabólicas oriundas do medievo se amalgamam aos problemas de um apocalíptico ano 3000, como campos de concentração e uso abusivo da ciência, de modo a constituírem um bloco maléfico claramente discernível; contrapõem-se a este, de outro lado, aspectos heróicos e miraculosos da Idade Média. Discute-se, então, como o discurso daí produzido apresenta, nostalgicamente, o retorno à Idade Média como solução para os males do presente, do qual o futuro distante da HQ não é mais que um espelho.

A construção da Cavalaria de Rei Arthur em Thomas Malory a partir do Juramento do Pentescostes

Nossa inquirição almejou compreender como foi construída a noção de cavalaria presente no texto literário Le Morte D’Arthur, redigido por Sir Thomas Malory por volta de 1495. Como o título sugere, por se tratar de uma narrativa sobre “Rei Arthur”, nosso primeiro passo foi compreender como essa figura foi construída entre a Antiguidade e o Medievo. Cruzamos as investigações sobre “Rei Arthur” com uma breve caracterização do fenômeno da “cavalaria” em seu contexto histórico, algo que fizemos a partir dos trabalhos de George Duby1, Jean Flori2 e Dominique Barthélemy3. Nossa revisão bibliográfica dividiu-se em três momentos distintos: I) referências sobre Malory e sua identidade (em disputa); II) contexto da Inglaterra durante a vida do autor; III) estudos acadêmicos que aproximam a imagética e o simbolismo em torno da figura do Rei Arthur com o Santo Graal e a cavalaria. Tal incursão nos permitiu visualizar como essa cavalaria que aparece na literatura de Malory estava fundada na confluência dos eixos: marcialidade; corte e sacralidade, reagindo a estes de forma crítica. Trata-se de uma cavalaria difusa que nos oferece um enquadramento para compreender como contradições, conflitos e tensões sociais do período reverberavam sobre a literatura. O núcleo disso aparece dentro da literatura de Malory na forma do Juramento do Pentescostes.

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte DArthur: Selections, ed. Maureen Okun. Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2015, 374 pp., 7 b/w ill.

As important as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Artur certainly proves to be for the entire history of medieval English literature, its massive volume makes it difficult for many of our students today to read the complete work. The present selection offers a more or less reasonable alternative and deserves to be considered for a variety of English literature courses. Maureen Okun offers the following sections: from From the Marriage of King Uther unto King Arthur; from A Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake; from Sir Tristram de Lyones; from The Noble Tale of the Sankgreal; from The Tale of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere; and from The Death of Arthur.