The Use of Arthurian Legend in Hollywood Film: From Connecticut Yankees to Fisher Kings (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture No. 57)Rebecca A. Umland and Samuel J. Umland
ISBN: 0-313-29798-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-29798-4
224 pages, filmography,
Greenwood Press
Publication: 10/30/1996
List Price: $110.95 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
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Description: This is the first book to examine the various uses of the Arthurian legend in Hollywood film, covering films from the 1920s to the present. The authors use five representational categories: intertextual collage (or "cult" film); melodrama, which focuses on the love triangle; conservative propaganda, pervasive during the Cold War; the Hollywood epic; and the postmodern quest, which commonly employs the grail portion of the legend. Arguing that filmmakers rely on the audience's rudimentary familiarity with the legend, the authors show that only certain features of the legend are activated at any particular time. This fascinating study shows us how the legend has been adapted and how through the popular medium of Hollywood films, the Arthurian legend has survived and flourished.
Table of Contents:
* Preface
* The Mythopoeic Nature of the Arthurian Legend and Its Methods of Transmission
* The Arthurian Legend as Intertextual Collage
* The Arthurian Legend as 1950s Hollywood Melodrama
* The Arthurian Legend as Forms of Propaganda
* The Arthurian Legend as Hollywood Epic: John Boorman's Excalibur
* The Arthurian Legend as Postmodern Quest
* Filmography
* Bibliography
* Index
Arthurian Legends on Film and TelevisionBert Olton
ISBN 978-0-7864-4076-4
42 photos, appendices, bibliography, index
351pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2009 [2000]
Price: $35.00
Description
The Arthurian legends are a crucial part of Western culture. With their enduring themes, archetypal characters, and complex plots, it is not surprising that the stories of Camelot should find their way into films and television programs.
From the moody (Excalibur) to the looney ("Knighty Knight Bugs"), more than 250 entries give complete credits, synopses, and analyses. Included are works based solely on Arthur and his literary origins and works that feature other figures, like Galahad, Percival, and the operatic favorites Tristan and Isolde. Also included are animated films, parodies like Monty Python’s, films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with Arthurian themes, and television series with Arthurian episodes such as Babylon 5 and MacGyver. Operatic and dramatic works recorded for film and television (like Camelot) are also covered. Appendices, bibliography and index.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Preface 1
THE FILMS AND TELEVISION PROGRAMS 3
Appendix I: Chronological Listing of Films and Television Programs 315
Appendix II: Films and Television Programs with Possible Arthurian Content 319
Bibliography 321
Index 325
About the Author
A former journalist and photographer, Bert Olton is a member of the International Arthurian Society. He is a freelance writer living in New York.
Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays (Rev. edn.)Edited by Kevin J. Harty
ISBN 978-0-7864-4683-4
50 photos, notes, filmography, bibliography, index
317pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2010 [2002]
Price: $49.95
Description
The legends of King Arthur have not only endured for centuries, but also flourished in constant retellings and new stories built around the central themes. With the coming of motion pictures, Arthur was destined to hit the screen.
This edition of Cinema Arthuriana, revised in 2002, presents 20 essays on the topic of the recurring presence of the legend in film and television from 1904 to 2001. They cover such films as Excalibur (1981) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), television productions such as The Mists of Avalon (2001), and French and German films about the quest for the Holy Grail and the other adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Contents:
Cinema Arthuriana : an overview / Kevin J. Harty --
Mythopoeia in Excalibur / Norris J. Lacy --
Fire, Water, Rock : Elements of Setting in John Boorman's Excalibur and Steve Barron's Merlin / Muriel Whitaker --
Morgan and the Problem of Incest / Jacqueline de Weever --
An Enemy in our Midst : The Black Knight and the American dream / Alan Lupack --
Tortilla Flat and the Arthurian View / John Christopher Kleis --
The Retreat from Camelot : Adapting Bernard Malamud's The Natural to Film / Barbara Tepa Lupack --
Cinematic American Camelots Lost and Found : The Film Versions of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and George Romero's Knightriders / Kevin J. Harty --
The Ironic Tradition in Four Arthurian Films / Raymond H. Thompson --
Two Films that Sparkle : The Sword in the Stone and Camelot / Alice Grellner --
Monty Python and the Holy Grail : Madness with a Definite Method / David D. Day --
Not Dead Yet : Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the Twenty-first Century / Donald L. Hoffman --
The Arthurian Legend in French Cinema : Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac and Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois / Jeff Rider ... [et al.] --
From Stage to Screen : The Dramatic Compulsion in French Cinema and Denis Llorca's Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde (1990) / Sandra Gorgievski --
Blank, Syberberg, and the German Arthurian tradition / Ulrich Müller (translated by Julie Giffin) --
Gawain on Film (The Remake) : Thames Television Strikes Back / Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman --
Will the "Reel" Mordred Please Stand Up? Strategies for Representing Mordred in American and British Arthurian Film / Michael A. Torregrossa --
Filming the Tristan Myth / Meradith T. McMunn --
Fable and Poésie in Cocteau's L'éternel Retour (1943) / Joan Tasker Grimbert and Robert Smarz --
Arms and Armor in Arthurian Films / Helmut Nickel --
Cinema Arthuriana : A Comprehensive Filmography and Bibliography / Kevin J. Harty.
About the Author
Kevin J. Harty is professor and chair of English at La Salle University in Philadelphia and associate editor of Arthuriana, the official journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society, of which he is the vice president. He is the author or editor of eleven books on film and medieval studies.
Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia (Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures)Susan Aronstein
Palgrave Macmillan, October 2005
ISBN: 978-1-4039-6649-0, ISBN10: 1-4039-6649-4,
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches.
272 pages.
Hardcover $80.00
Hollywood Knights examines the role played by Hollywood films in America's appropriation of the medieval past in times of cultural crisis. It analyzes the Arthurian films produced during the red scare of the 1950s, the breakdown of traditional authority in the 1960s and '70s, the turn to the right in the 1980s, and the redemption of national and masculine authority in the 1990s, arguing that these films propose an idealized past--an American Camelot and a democratic chivalry--to solve the problems of a troubled present, ensure prosperity at home, and extend a beneficial American authority abroad. Movies discussed include The Knights of the Round Table, The Sword in the Stone, Camelot, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, Excalibur, and The Fisher King.
Table of Contents:
Back to the future: the birth of modern medievalism in England and America. --
The birth of Camelot: the literary origins of the Hollywood Arthuriana. --
The knights of the round table: Camelot in Hollywood. --
"Once there was a spot": Camelot and the crisis of the 1960s. --
"Let's not go to Camelot": deconstructing myth. --
Old myths are new again: Ronald Reagan, Indiana Jones, Knightriders, and the pursuit of the past. --
The return of the king: Arthur and the quest for true manhood. --
Democratizing Camelot: Yankees in King Arthur's court. --
Revisiting the round table: Arthur's American dream.
Susan Aronstein is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her previous publications include articles on Chrétien de Troyes, French Grail romances, medieval Welsh Arthurian narratives, medievalism in popular culture, and Arthurian film.
