CFP: The Return of King Arthur in the Post-Medieval World (12/1/11; Plymouth, NH 4/20-21/12)

The Society is pleased to announce its sponsorship of "Once and Future Kings? The Return of King Arthur in the Post-medieval World," which 33rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum to convene at Plymouth State University (Plymouth, NH) from 20-21 April 2011. The full CFP can be accessed at King Arthur Forever. Film and television have made significant use of this motif, and we hope to receive many submissions for the session.

Comics Get Medieval 2012 Call for Papers

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages is pleased to announce our sponsorship of sessions under the theme of "The Comics Get Medieval 2012: A Celebration of Medieval-Themed Comics in Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of Prince Valiant" for the 2012 Joint Meeting of the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from 4-7 April 2012.

Complete details can be accessed at The Medieval Comics Project Blog at http://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/2011/05/comics-get-medieval-2012-call-for.html.

Kalamazoo 2012 Session Proposals

1. The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages in association with The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Villains of the Matter of Britain and The Institute for the Advancement of Scholarship on the Magic-Wielding Figures of Visual Electronic Multimedia has proposed the following session for the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies to be held from 10-13 May 2012. Interested parties should contact the Society at Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com (please note "Are You From Camelot 2012" in the subject line). An official call for papers will be distributed this summer upon notification of acceptance from the Congress's organizing committee.

Are You From Camelot? Recent Arthurian Film, Television, and Electronic Games as Innovators of the Arthurian Tradition and Their Impact (Roundtable)

The Matter of Britain is alive and well in modern mass media, and the media of film and television, especially, have long been recognized as important disseminators of the Arthurian legend to audiences of various ages and in disparate countries across the globe. Such productions are often assessed by their fidelity to pre-established versions of the legend, an anxiety of influence that Norris J. Lacy has termed “the tyranny of tradition.” However, mass media like film, television and electronic games also function as innovators of new traditions for representing characters or motifs that then become fixed in popular Arthuriana (consider, for example, both the long-standing iconographic portrayal of Merlin, cemented via Wolfgang Reitherman’s The Sword in the Stone, as an aged figure with flowing white hair, beard and robes or John Boorman’s conflation—copied by many later writers—of Morgan le Fay and Morgause in Excalibur and the resulting figure’s role as the mother of Mordred, an expansion of her traditional filmic role as an enemy within Camelot), yet, to date, few studies, beyond lamentations of how to, as Lacy, puts it to “unteach” these texts, have explored this aspect of these modern Arthurian texts. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in particular, include many innovative productions (including Alexandre Astier’s Kaamelott; Steve Barron’s Merlin; Chris Chibnall and Michael Hirst’s Camelot; Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur; Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Johnny Capps, and Julian Murphy’s Merlin; Mythic Entertainment’s Dark Age of Camelot; SyFy’s Stargate SG-1 and Type-Moon’s Fate/Stay Night) that deviate significantly from preexisting literary and filmic/televisual traditions of the legend, and these works have influenced and will influence both further Arthurian texts and the popular reception of the Arthurian story as they are dispersed across the intertextual landscape of the modern Matter of Britain. For this session, in furtherance of the goals of the three sponsoring organizations, we are particularly interested in how these recent representations of Arthurian characters (for example King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Morded, Morgan le Fay, and Morgause) and motifs (such as the Grail legend) in film, television, and electronic games have shaped contemporary conceptions of these elements and, also, in exploring how these productions may influence ongoing or future Arthurian texts.


2. The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages has proposed the following session for the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies to be held from 10-13 May 2012. Interested parties should contact the Society at Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com (please note "Comics Get Medieval at Kalamazoo 2012" in the subject line). An official call for papers will be distributed this summer upon notification of acceptance from the Congress's organizing committee.

The Comics Get Medieval at Kalamazoo: New Perspectives for Incorporating Comics into Medieval Studies Teaching and Research (Roundtable)

Arthurian TV Update

BBC1's Merlin finishes the run of its third season next month on SyFy on Fridays at 10 PM, while Starz premieres its own Camelot on April 1, a Friday this year, also at 10 PM. One wonders about the coincidence of this choice of time slot.

Of course, the Merlin always seemed perfect for family viewing (NBC's airing of the first season at 7 PM was great), and SyFy's own decision to air the series at 10 PM (and repeat at midnight) never made sense to me.

Tyler Tichelaar's King Arthur's Children

There is an extended post on Tyler Tichelaar's recent book Arthur's Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition (Modern History Press, 2011) at our affiliate blog Researching the Villains of the Matter of Britain. The book includes some discussion of the role of Arthur's children in Guinevere (1994) and A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995).Publish Post

Juan Miguel Zarandona on Daniel Mangrané and Carlos Serrano de Osma's Spanish Parsifal (1951)

Spanish Arthurian scholar Juan Miguel Zarandona has just published "Daniel Mangrané and Carlos Serrano de Osma's Spanish Parsifal (1951): a Strange Film?" in the latest number of Arthuriana 20.4 (Winter 2010). The article can also be accessed through Project MUSE.

Posted abstract as follows:

The Spanish cinematic work entitled Parsifal (1951) has always been termed ‘strange’ and regarded as an artistic failure. However, reconsideration of the context in which this film was produced suggests it is worthy of greater attention. After considering the difficult history of Spanish cinema, General Franco’s Spain, local legends of the Grail, and the Wagnerian cult in Barcelona, we can see that Parsifal is a very interesting interpretation of the story of the Arthurian knight.

Medieval Studies at the Movies Returns

The Society is pleased to announce the return of Medieval Studies at the Movies.

Michael Torregrossa
Blog Editor/Listserv Moderator
Co-Founder

Listserv Updates (Cross-Posted)

It is with deep regret that I write to inform readers of the demise of the following listservs sponsored by the Society: The Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages Discussion List, The Medieval Studies at the Movies Discussion List and The Medieval Comics Project Discussion List. The three have been disbanded due to lack of interest by the members. Archives for these lists will remain online for the time being, but further items of interest on these topics can be found instead on the various blogs currently sponsored by the Society, including Studies of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages and The Medieval Comics Project Blog.

Michael A. Torregrossa
Blog and Listserv Editor
Co-Founder

Comics Get Medieval 2011 Update (Cross-Posted)

A belated update on the status of The Comics Get Medieval 2011 sessions for the upcoming Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association's annual meeting this spring:

The session has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

Please consider submitting a proposal for The Comics Get Medieval 2012 sessions to convene at PCA/ACA in Boston and (pending approval) at Kalamazoo. 2012 is the 75th anniversary of Prince Valiant, and it would be great to make ourselves visible as we commemorate this landmark event.

Michael Torregrossa

Blog and Listserv Editor
Co-Founder

King Arthur Forever Returns

The Society is pleased to announce the relaunch of KingArthurForever.org as a blog dedicated to study and debate of the representations of the Matter of Britain in post-medieval popular culture produced from the close of the Middle Ages through tomorrow.

Merlin Season 3 Coming to SyFy Next Week

SyFy premieres season 3 of BBC1's Merlin next Friday. Here is the teaser from BBC1's YouTube Channel:

Doctor, Merlin, and Gandalf?

The following appears in a recent book from Kitsune Books:

Burdge, Anthony S. “The Professor’s Lessons for the Doctor: The Doctor’s Sub-Creative Journey Toward Middle-earth.” In The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who. Eds. Anthony S. Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine Larsen. Crawfordville, FL: Kitsune Books, 2010. Pp. 65-84.

CFP: Medieval Film/TV/Electronic Games (12/31/10; Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum 4/14-16/11)

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages invites paper proposals to round out a panel devoted to the topic of medievalism in film, TV, and/or electronic games for the 2011 Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum to be held at Plymouth State University, Plymouth, New Hampshire, from 15-16 April 2011. Please submit paper proposals to the Conference Committee at Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com by 31 December 2010.

Michael A. Torregrossa

Co-Founder

Blog Moderator

Listserv Moderator

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Remaking the Middle Ages--New from McFarland

I recently posted the details of Andrew B. R. Elliott's Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World to the main society blog. The post can be accessed by clicking here.

A look at the index reveals that Elliott covers the following Arthurian films: Black Knight, Camelot, Dragonheart, Excalibur, First Knight, A Kid in King Arthur's Court, King Arthur, A Knight in Camelot, Knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Guinevere, Lancelot du Lac, Merlin, Merlin: The Return, Perceval le Gallois, Prince Valiant, Quest for Camelot, Siege of the Saxons, The Sword in the Stone, The Sword of Lancelot, Sword of the Valiant, and Tristan + Isolde. Additional Arthurian films are noted in the filmography.

Michael

Avalon High on iTunes

The recent telefilm Avalon High, which aired earlier this month on The Disney Channel, can now be downloaded from iTunes for $9.99. No official word yet on a DVD release or if/when it might be available for download on Amazon.com.

Early Avalon High Review

The following was posted on EW.com and featured in the 12 November 2010 edition of Entertainment Weekly:

Avalon High

Even by the standards of wholesome movies about teenage reincarnations of King Arthur's court, Avalon High is as silly as cutting down a tree with a herring. Nevertheless, Britt Robertson (Life Unexpected) is a capable lead and the New Zealand locales impress. B-— John Young

The telefilm airs Friday, 12 November, from 8-9:45 PM EST. 

Coming Soon to DVD: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) premieres on DVD and Blu-Ray on 30 November. Here is a selection of trailers and related videos from the official DisneyMovieTrailers Channel on YouTube.

The film features the quest for Merlin's successor in order to defeat Morgan le Fay once and for all.

More on Avalon High from The Disney Channel

An assortment of videos on the upcoming Avalon High from The Disney Channel's YouTube Channel (FYI some of these may repeat earlier posts):

Vampires and the Grail! Rosencrantz and Guldenstern are Undead

Coming to DVD on 2 November: Rosencrantz and Guldenstern are Undead, a film written and directed by Jordan Galland. The official site includes a wealth of details about the film, including the following synopsis that highlights the film's connections to the lore of "undead Arthuriana":

Julian Marsh (Hoffman) is an out of work ladies man who lands a job directing a bizarre adaption of Hamlet. After casting his best friend (Lemche) and his ex-girlfriend (Aoki) in the show, Julian finds himself in the middle of a two thousand year old conspiracy that explains the connection between Shakespeare, the Holy Grail and some seriously sexy vampires. It turns out that the play was actually written by a master vampire named Theo Horace (Ventimiglia) and it's up to Julian to recover the Grail in order to reverse the vampire's curse... If only being undead wasn't so much God-damned fun!

The following trailers are from YouTube:

More on Avalon High