The XXIIIrd meeting of the International Arthurian Society—organized by Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter—took place in Bristol, England in July 2011. Over the course of a week, hundreds of participants presented papers, attended sessions, enjoyed excursions to Arthurian sites, and connected with scholars and colleagues from all over the world.

At the suggestion of the editors of Arthurian Literature (Elizabeth Archibald and David Johnson) it was decided that Arthuriana and Arthurian Literature should join forces and publish the best of the papers presented at the conference. This issue of Arthuriana marks the culmination of over a year of collaborative work on the part of the editors of the respective journals. This year, the annual Arthurian Literature will feature articles that originated as papers presented at the conference, and all four issues of the quarterly Arthuriana will do the same. In other words, for both publications the year 2013 will be ‘the best of Bristol.’

This first of the four special issues of Arthuriana features articles that are concerned in some way with eco-criticism, the natural world, landscapes, and geography.

THE ARTICLES:

Arthur Pendragon, Eco-Warrior
By Laurie A. Finke, Martin B. Shichtman

This essay explores the environmental agendas and ambitions that motivate John Timothy Rothwell, ‘a mad biker chieftain wielding an axe,’ who, claiming to be a ‘post-Thatcher’ King Arthur, changes his name and links his political struggles against the state to myths that mourn the lost original purity of ancient Britain. This article looks backward to authoritarian values his ecocriticism should interrogate.
Arthuriana 23.1 (2013): 5 – 19
DOI: 10.1353/art.2013.0010

The Eco-Tourist, English Heritage, and Arthurian Legend: Walking with Thoreau
By Kathleen Coyne Kelly

This article examines natural sites connected to Arthurian legend in the context of their construction as tourist sites and their designation as ecologically significant. Reading these sites through the works of Henry David Thoreau, it connects his strategic medievalism to a modern, nostalgic tendency to locate ‘nature’ in the past, paradoxically existing once (the vanished wilderness) and future (the restored wetland).
Arthuriana 23.1 (2013): 20 – 39
DOI: 10.1353/art.2013.0010

Reading Ruins: Arthurian Caerleon and the Untimely Architecture of History
By Robert Rouse

This article considers the literary deployment of the ruins of Caerleon within the Itinerarium Cambriae of Gerald of Wales. In describing the city, Gerald significantly notes both its Galfridian status as an Arthurian rival to Rome and the Roman origins of the city itself. Read in the context of Gerald’s own re-reading of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, the episode reveals Gerald’s deployment of an Arthurian past and place as commentary upon the present colonial space of Wales.
Arthuriana 23.1 (2013): 40 – 51
DOI: 10.1353/art.2013.0003

‘The Wilderness of Wirral’ in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
By Gillian Rudd

This brief discussion of Sir Gawain’s journey across the Wirral seeks to open up questions of how literature ‘thinks’ landscape, and how that might feed into eco-critical debates. It deals with lost geographies and invented ones, and touches on notions of the otherworld as underpinning our responses to this one.
Arthuriana 23.1 (2013): 52 – 65
DOI: 10.1353/art.2013.0005

Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2013