Imperial Ideology and Subversive Practice in Arthurian Legend

This project approaches Arthur and Arthurian legend as vital elements in British self-identification from the medieval period onward by examining narratives of national origin in legendary history, romance, and other forms of cultural production. In my readings of these texts, I am concerned with how national identity and otherness are constructed and negotiated in a literary space, how myths of utopian origins rely on the endorsement and glorification of cultures of violence that sustain and justify imperial enterprises in the Middle Ages and beyond. It is my argument that in the absence of actual voices of resistance, romance tropes often stand in for that unofficial voice. In the case of Arthurian legend, this most often manifests in the representation of magic and sexual difference. I distinguish between "magic" and "supernatural" as differently invested tropes in Romance. The supernatural acts as a literary representation of Otherness and marginality as viewed from the hegemonic center; the supernatural is passive and locked into objecthood. Magic, however, represents an agential Other, and therefore carries far more subversive potential than the mere supernatural in the Arthurian Romance.