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
PS. The Medieval Comics Project Discussion List was, unfortunately, never very active and should have probably been put down much sooner. I do hope that this blog will be a welcome addition to furthering the study of medieval-themed comics.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Comics Get Medieval 2011 Update
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
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.
Friday, December 31, 2010
New Scholarship on Beowulf Comics
Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination
Edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins
Details
First Published: 21 Oct 2010
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843842514
Pages: 302
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Series: Medievalism
Subject: Medieval Literature
BIC Class: DSBB
Britain's pre-Conquest past and its culture continues to fascinate modern writers and artists. From Henry Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader to Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, and from high modernism to the musclebound heroes of comic book and Hollywood, Anglo-Saxon England has been a powerful and often unexpected source of inspiration, antagonism, and reflection. The essays here engage with the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons and their literature have been received, confronted, and re-envisioned in the modern imagination. They offer fresh insights on established figures, such as W.H. Auden, J.R.R. Tolkien, and David Jones, and on contemporary writers such as Geoffrey Hill, Peter Reading, P.D. James, and Heaney. They explore the interaction between text, image and landscape in medieval and modern books, the recasting of mythic figures such as Wayland Smith, and the metamorphosis of Beowulf into Grendel - as a novel and as grand opera. The early medieval emerges not simply as a site of nostalgia or anxiety in modern revisions, but instead provides a vital arena for creativity, pleasure, and artistic experiment.
Contents (from WorldCAT):
Introduction / Nicholas Perkins and David Clark --
From Heorot to Hollywood : Beowulf in its third millennium / Chris Jones --
Priming the poets : the making of Henry Sweet's Anglo-Saxon reader / Mark Atherton --
Owed to both sides : W.H. Auden's double debt to the literature of the North / Heather O'Donoghue --
Writing for an Anglo-Saxon audience in the twentieth century : J.R.R. Tolkien's Old English chronicles / Maria Artamonova --
Wounded men and wounded trees : David Jones and the Anglo-Saxon culture tangle / Anna Johnson --
Basil Bunting, Briggflatts, Lindisfarne, and Anglo-Saxon interlace / Clare A. Lees --
Boom : seeing Beowulf in pictures and print / Siân Echard -- [comments and images (in full color) from Gareth Hinds's Beowulf]
Window in the wall : looking for grand opera in John Gardner's Grendel / Allen J. Frantzen --
Re-placing masculinity : the DC Comics Beowulf series and its context, 1975-6 / Catherine A.M. Clarke --
P.D. James reads Beowulf / John Halbrooks --
Ban Welondes : Wayland Smith in popular culture / Maria Sachiko Cecire --
Overlord of the M5 : the superlative structure of sovereignty in Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns / Hannah J. Crawforth --
The absent Anglo-Saxon past in Ted Hughes's Elmet / Joshua Davies --
Resurrecting Saxon things : Peter Reading, "species decline", and Old English poetry / Rebecca Anne Barr.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Thor: Myth to Marvel--Coming Soon from Continuum
Thor: Myth to Marvel
by Martin Arnold
Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 21 Jul 2011
ISBN: 9781441135421
256 Pages, paperback
World rights
Translation Rights Available
$29.95
An exploration of how the legend of Thor has been adopted, adapted and transformed through history.
Description
The myths of the Norse god Thor were preserved in the Icelandic Eddas, set down in the early Middle Ages. The bane of giants and trolls, Thor was worshipped as the last line of defence against all that threatened early Nordic society.
Thor’s significance persisted long after the Christian conversion and, in the mid-eighteenth century, Thor resumed a symbolic prominence among northern countries. Admired and adopted in Scandinavia and Germany, he became central to the rhetoric of national romanticism and to more belligerent assertions of nationalism.
Resurrected in the latter part of the twentieth century in Marvel Magazine, Thor was further transformed into an articulation both of an anxious male sexuality and of a parallel nervousness regarding American foreign policy.
Martin Arnold explores the extraordinary regard in which Thor has been held since medieval times and considers why and how his myth has been adopted, adapted and transformed.
Table of Contents
Introduction:Reverberations throughout History \ 1. The Giant Killer: Thor in Old Norse Mythology \ 2. Damnation and Resurrection: Thor from the Christian Conversion to the Enlightenment \ 3. The Romancing of Thor \ 4. Distant Thunder: Thor and the Nationalists \ 5. The God of War: Thor and the Fascists \ 6. Marvellous Thor \ Appendix \ Bibliography \ Index
Author(s)
Martin Arnold is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at Hull University. He is the author of The Vikings (Continuum, 2006).
by Martin Arnold
Imprint: Continuum
Pub. date: 21 Jul 2011
ISBN: 9781441135421
256 Pages, paperback
World rights
Translation Rights Available
$29.95
An exploration of how the legend of Thor has been adopted, adapted and transformed through history.
Description
The myths of the Norse god Thor were preserved in the Icelandic Eddas, set down in the early Middle Ages. The bane of giants and trolls, Thor was worshipped as the last line of defence against all that threatened early Nordic society.
Thor’s significance persisted long after the Christian conversion and, in the mid-eighteenth century, Thor resumed a symbolic prominence among northern countries. Admired and adopted in Scandinavia and Germany, he became central to the rhetoric of national romanticism and to more belligerent assertions of nationalism.
Resurrected in the latter part of the twentieth century in Marvel Magazine, Thor was further transformed into an articulation both of an anxious male sexuality and of a parallel nervousness regarding American foreign policy.
Martin Arnold explores the extraordinary regard in which Thor has been held since medieval times and considers why and how his myth has been adopted, adapted and transformed.
Table of Contents
Introduction:Reverberations throughout History \ 1. The Giant Killer: Thor in Old Norse Mythology \ 2. Damnation and Resurrection: Thor from the Christian Conversion to the Enlightenment \ 3. The Romancing of Thor \ 4. Distant Thunder: Thor and the Nationalists \ 5. The God of War: Thor and the Fascists \ 6. Marvellous Thor \ Appendix \ Bibliography \ Index
Author(s)
Martin Arnold is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at Hull University. He is the author of The Vikings (Continuum, 2006).
Vikings Comics on Film Coming Soon from McFarland
Edited by Kevin J. Harty
ISBN 978-0-7864-6044-1
illustrations, filmography, bibliography, index
softcover (7 x 10) 2011
Price: $38.00
Not Yet Published, Available Spring/Summer 2011
Description
Factual and fanciful tales of the Nordic warriors known as Vikings have proven irresistible to filmmakers for nearly a century. Diverse, prominent actors from Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier to Tim Robbins and John Cleese, and noted directors, including Richard Fleischer, Clive Donner and Terry Jones, have all lent their talents to Viking-related films. These fourteen essays on films dealing with the Viking era discuss American, British and European productions. Analyzed in detail are such films as The Vikings (1958), The Long Ships (1964), Alfred the Great (1969), Erik the Viking (1989) and Outlander (2008), as well as a pair of comic-strip adaptations, the live-action Prince Valiant (1997) and the animated Asterix and the Vikings (2006). A comprehensive filmography is also included.
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.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Hagar the Horrible Reprint Continue
Titan Books has recently released the second volume of The Epic Chronicles of Hagar the Horrible. The first volume (9781848562332), published last year, reprinted the daily strips from 1973 to 1974, and volume two (9781848562349) concludes the strips for 1974 and moves into 1975. As with the earlier volume, volume two features a number of supplementary texts, including a foreword by cartoonist Sergio Aragones and an introduction by cartoonist Brian Walker.
New Beowulf Graphic Novel
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Thor Gifts at The Official Marvel Shop
Saturday, October 16, 2010
THOR Feature Film Update from Comicon
A belated posting, here is the Thor feature film session from Comicon in July as well as an additional video. Additional details on the film can be found at Wikipedia. The official site is active as well but no content has been posted as of yet.
Thor Comics Interview with Writer Matt Fraction
Apparently, Matt Fraction is the new writer on Thor and gave a brief interview for Marvel.com as follows:
Thor featured on AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES!
Marvel Comics' Thor and his fellow gods of Asgard are featured on Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!, the upcoming animated series for Disney XD. Episodes premiere on 20 October, but a trailer and webepisodes have been released prior to the launch of the series proper, which is designed to introduce the masses to the concept of the Avengers and its heroes in preparation for Marvel's Avengers-related feature films Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers due out in 2011 and 2012.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Help with Hellboy
I am seeking the assistance of someone who would be willing to read and provide a summary of 2 essays in Spanish devoted to the Hellboy comic. The summaries will be included the bibliographic guide to medieval comics scholarship designed to accompany The Medieval Comics Project/The Arthur of the Comics Project.
The two articles can be accessed at the following links:
Hernández, Santiago Cortés. "de Roberto el Diablo narrativa de un héroe de la Edad Media al cómic"
López, Jose Luis Cardero. "Hellboy y las Presencias de Otros Mundos.(El Chico del Infierno frente a los Dioses Primordiales)"
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