By Nick Dlugos (Fall 2022) The idea of a perfect hero, especially in medieval literature, often manifests itself in the ideas of knights like Sir Lancelot or many of the other knights of the roundtable. However, one knight of the roundtable, Sir Gawain, isn’t the same as his peers. When […]
medieval
By Melissa DeFabritiis (Fall 2022) The fourteenth-century poem The King of Tars by an unknown author tells the tale of religious and racial tensions between the white Christians of Tars and the Black Muslims of Damascus, and details the white Tarsians expressing feelings of superiority over their Black Damascan counterparts. […]
By Julia Dantzler (Fall 2022) In the 12th century, Marie de France wrote the lai “Bisclavret,” which is the story of a man who changes forms and disappears for days at a time from his wife and civilized life to be a wolf in the forest. This lai is one […]
By Ian Quinn (Fall 2022) It is only through time the most staggering warnings are proved to be perceived as such. And while The King of Tars is mere fiction among real-world events dealing with the same issues, its presentation of them successfully displays a story that is as grim […]
By Ella Incantalupo (Fall 2022) Oftentimes, predominantly white nations use descriptors of what they are not, in order to define what they are. The result is othering different nations, cultures and religions, in order to be described as more English. This phenomenon is as prevalent today as it was over […]
By Claire Davies (Fall 2022) The Old English poem Judith is an adaptation of the Book of Judith, located in the Old Testament of Catholic Bibles as well as the Septuagint. Judith’s author is unknown; however, the poem is found in the same manuscript as Beowulf, so the two texts’ […]
By April Chronowski (Fall 2022) There is an assumption that discussions of gender in literature are limited to modern conversations surrounding contemporary pieces and that archaic works of literature do not contain any representation of nonbinary gender identities. A text like Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance, originally written by Heldris […]