Abstract

This is a timely volume, given the surge in scholarly and popular interest in women's voices in the Arthurian tradition. The explicit purpose of this anthology is to explore the "rich and forgotten tradition" of women writers' contributions to the corpus of Arthurian literature, sketching a female lineage of literary descent that traces "certain traditions common to women writing on Arthurian themes" (xi, 4). While the foreword provides an overview of more familiar women authors such as Rosemary Sutcliffe, Mary Stewart, and Persia Wooley, in their selections of works to anthologize Lupack and Lupack choose to focus on lesser-known texts that are out of print or otherwise not easily accessible to most readers-a laudable decision, and the works collected here would bring much to a course on women and Arthuriana or a general Arthurian literature survey. For manageability the editors limit themselves primarily to poems and short stories, though they also include three longer texts-a novella, excerpts from a collection of linked stories, and a play. Beginning with a brief foray into the Middle Ages with two lais by Marie de France, newly translated by Norris Lacy, the anthology then moves to the early nineteenth century and proceeds through the 1990s. Concluding the volume are two very useful bibliographies of Arthurian literature by women, one devoted to fiction and the other to poetry and drama.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | History | Medieval History | Women's History | Women's Studies

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