This research assesses the significance and distinctiveness of the work of four women writers of Arthurian literature in the early nineteenth century: Anne Bannerman, Louisa Stuart Costello, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. This is a relatively unexplored field of study, though pioneering critics such Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack's have done much to expose the impressive literary contributions female authors have made to Arthuriana and the paucity of critical attention they have received in Arthurian Literature by Women (1999). While I use the Lupacks' work as a starting point I move beyond it, to show how the critical model they advance inadvertently further marginalises women's literary contributions rather than writing them into the Arthurian literary mainstream, as first appears. My research demonstrates that a more nuanced and inclusive approach is required if we are to understand how women authors contributed to our modern Arthurian canon formation. Each author featured here responds to numerous Arthurian literary influences which inform and mould her creative response. This research considers the work of each author in relation to her sources, and influences, and reveals her work to be formative, rather than a reaction against an authoritative male 'tradition' of Arthuriana. In doing so I can show how female contribution has been instrumental to the development of the nineteenth-century Arthurian revival. This research contributes to the field of Arthurian studies in three key areas. It subjects the chosen authors to deeper critical analysis of their interest in Arthuriana, than has hitherto been undertaken; it adds previously overlooked works to the body of recognised Arthurian works by women authors; and finally, it proposes a new critical paradigm for the study of the women Arthurianists, by replacing the prevailing orthodoxy of 'mainstream and margin' in terms of 'tradition' with a more subtle approach based on canon formation and recognition of the mercurial nature of the Arthurian corpus
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:590301 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Lister, Katie |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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