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The Female Reader at the Round Table: Religion and Women in Three Contemporary Arthurian Texts by Kristina Hildebrand

2002; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.2002.0015

1934-1539

Elizabeth S. Sklar,

Linguistics and language evolution

REVIEWS135 kristina hildebrand, The FemaU Reader at the Round TabU: Religion and Women in Three Contemporary Arthurian Texts. Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 115. Ed. Rolf Lundén, Marja Kyto, and Monica Correa Fryckstedt. Uppsala, 2001. Pp. 174. isbn: 91-554-5093-8. Poignantly dedicated to the memory ofMaureen Fries, 'who has reached her Sarras,' The FemaU Reader at the Round Table. Religion and Women in Three Contemporary Arthurian Texts is a timely contribution to modern Arthurian studies. The volume's rather modest subtitle masks its considerable scope. Hildebrand discusses nine late twentieth-century novels: MaryStewart's trilogy, The CrystalCave, TheHollowHHb, and The LastEnchantment, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Muts ofAvalon; and five volumes of an on-going series by Stephen Lawhead, Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur, Pendragon, and Grail. Methodologically, this study (the author's doctoral dissertation) invokes three interrelated theoretical templates: reader response theory, narratology, and gender studies, the latter with an emphasis on feminist critical theory in general and the work ofPatrocinio P. Schewikart in particular. Hildebrands readings offer a feminist Christian perspective on the representation of religion and gender in each ofthe subject texts. The book is divided into five chapters ending with a briefsummary conclusion. Chapter one serves as a general and theoretical introduction to Hildebrand's study. Chapter two looks at the two seminal medieval Arthurian texts that comprise the fundamental sources for the Matter ofArthur as represented by the contemporary writers under discussion, Geoffrey ofMonmouth and SirThomas Malory. Chapters three, four, and five turn to the authors and texts in question, and are ordered (roughly) chronologically, starting with Stewart and ending with Lawhead. Chapter one, 'Introduction: Religion and Women in Contemporary Arthurian Texts,' covers a considerable amount ofterritory, as it establishes the terms for the complex of Hildebrand's philosophical and theoretical models and lays the groundwork for the discussion that will follow. This chapter contextualizies her position in relation to contemporary religious and feminist studies. By contrast, chapter two, 'The Medieval ArthurianTradition: Questing Knights and Unnamed Women,' has a rather narrow purview, focusing on but two ofthe many medieval Arthurian texts in the canon: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Brittaniae and SirThomas Malory's Morte Darthur. The choice ofthese two texts is not as arbitrary as it might at first seem. Together Geoffrey and Malory represent the foundational sources for much modern Arthurian fiction, and they comprise the 'two medieval works to which Stewart's, Bradley's and Lawhead's texts are most indebted' (49). Hildebrand's analysis ofthese texts foregrounds the essential elements ofher thesis as a whole: the authors' treatments ofreligion and gender. In Geoffrey's narrative, she sees a 'persistent interweaving ofpower and religion' (56) embedded in an androcentric matrix, 'a society for and ofmen' (54). Malory, on the other hand, represents 'a layman's Christianity, embodied not in the king but in the virtuous knight' (57). The tension between religious and worldly concerns, the 136ARTHURIANA unresolvable 'dichotomyofsecularandspiritual desires' (58) in Malory, shecontends, has remained a popular theme in modern Arthurian literature, especially in the narratives she examines here. With respe« to issues of gender, Hildebrand argues that Malory's text, unlike Geoffrey's, is 'remarkably free, for its time, ofmysogynist depictions ofwomen' (59). Chapters three, four, and five represent the core ofHildebrand's study, providing detailed comparative analyses ofArthurian fiction byStewart, Bradley, and Lawhead. Such a process, by its very complexity, risks losing the reader in a welter ofdetail, but the chapters are carefully organized in parallel structure. Beginning with an overview, each then discusses the reader's relationship to the events and central figure(s) ofeach volume, followed by units on gender and religion, in that order, and concludes with a concise summary. While this unvarying pattern may be perceived by some readers as rather mechanical, it is reasonably effective from a mnemonic standpoint. Hildebrand has selected these authors for the variety oftheir representations of religion and gender and for the consequent responses their works elicit from the Christian feminist standpoint. 'Stewart's, Bradley's, and Lawhead's novels portray different religious traditions: respectively, an ede«ic monotheism, Neo-PaganWicca, and Christianity' (Abstraa). As to gender, Hildebrand describes Stewarts Merlin as 'gender neutral,' while Bradley's overt attack on patriarchal...