‘Ile be the bane of Cornwall Kinge’: The ballad of King Arthur and King Cornwall and the relentless pursuit of vengeance in the pre-modern Arthurian tradition

This paper concerns the narrative logic behind the disregard for the life of King Arthur’s opponent in the seventeenth-century ballad of King Arthur and King Cornwall. It approaches its subject through comparisons with the last book of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Le petit Poucet, Jack and the Beanstalk and the History of Mother Twaddle, and the Marvellous Atchievements [sic] of her Son Jack. It argues that by associating Arthur’s rival, King Cornwall, with magic objects and a fire-breathing creature called Burlow Beanie, as well as placing Cornwall’s domain away from Arthur’s, the ballad marks Cornwall as ‘other’ and, in so doing, implies that ordinary moral considerations do not apply when it comes to actions such as the killing of Cornwall. The article additionally argues that a major difference between the ballad and the last book of Le Morte Darthur, where much of the action is driven by factors that also feature prominently in King Arthur and King Cornwall, lies in the fact that in Le Morte Darthur none of the major actors are marked as ‘other’ – highlighting the nature of the tragedy that unfolds as one of destructive internal conflict.

The Academic Book of the Future

This paper explores the contexts in which the academic books of the future in the arts and humanities (A&H) are being shaped, with the aim of demonstrating how crucial it is that the communities of practice that produce those books continue to work together to build better bridges of understanding and collaboration. There is particular reference to the Arts and Humanities Research Council/ British Library Academic Book of the Future Project (2014–2017) and to a case study of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.

Memory, Gender and Recognition in Le Morte Darthur

This article examines recognition motifs in earlier English romances to better understand female perception and the use of recognition tokens in Le Morte Darthur. Drawing on the work of Mary Carruthers and Elisabeth van Houts on medieval concepts of memory and emotion and Anne Lester on women’s association with the care and keeping of relics, as well as the social and legal roles of women preserving knowledge of familial and sexual relationships, this article argues that medieval English understanding of disguise-perception was gendered and that in medieval culture women were considered to be better at recognising individuals than men. The use of recognition tokens in Middle English romance reflects this gendered view of perception; recognition scenes in Le Morte Darthur uphold this view. In addition, the materiality and efficacy of the recognition tokens in romance denotes the nature of the relationship between the perceiver and the disguised or transformed individual. Thus, when Malory introduces a recognition-token exchange scene between Isolde and Tristan and then frustrates their later recollections and recognitions of each other, he infuses Tristan and Isolde’s relationship with a sense of unease that foreshadows their tragic end.