King Arthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema ed. by Kevin J. Harty (review)

REVIEWS137 Further examples underline the many times that Raffel condenses or eliminates at will. Sometimes he even adds. For example, Perceval is confessing his behavior at the castle: Et del Graal que ge i vi Ge ne sai cui l'an an servi, S'an ai puis eü si grant duel Que morz eusse esté mon vuel. (6379-82) And when I saw a holy Grail, I had no idea For whom it was meant, and said nothing, And ever since, I've felt Such sadness that I wished to die. The grail, a bowl, is discussed with the indefinite article once at its first appearance; thereafter Chrétien uses only the definite article, and never is it described as 'holy.' Such changes irritate the knowledgeable reader, and though Raffel would counter that such changes are not relevant, they tend to take the reader farther away from Chretien's purpose and his achievement. In his preface Raffel comments: 'The final eight hundred lines or so, in my judgment, show a consistent and significant decline in Chretien's poetic skills, his ability fully to focus on what he was creating. Aged or ill, he was still immensely superior, as a poet, to the "learned cleric" who finished Lancelot. But he was not entirely himself, and I have tried to allow the translation (like the last portion of Lancelot) to reflect this diminution in verse quality.' But Raffel's translation shows no 'diminution in verse quality,' the closing lines following the same pattern of the entire translation. In Perceval Raffel relies on a modern French translation to aid his own; as a consequence, he gives a readable but far from accurate translation of Chretien's romance, substituting for the original octosyllablic couplets a formless free verse. DAVID STAINES University of Ottawa kevin j. harty, ed., KingArthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. Pp. xi, 275. isbn: 0-7864-0152-4. $39.95. Kevin Harty's King Arthur on Film, like his earlier volume on Cinema Arthuriana (1991), contains a series ofessays by various scholars as well as a complete filmography and selective bibliography by Harty himself. The films that are studied range from the earliest cinematic treatments of Arthurian themes to the most recent, from the serious to the comic; and the book is enhanced by a generous use ofstills. The reader of this volume is immediately struck by the variety ofapproaches that it contains. Harty's overview, which opens the volume, provides a fine survey of Arthurian film. It is complemented nicely by Michael Saldas study, which surveys Arthurian animation and proves that animation is indeed a subject worthy ofserious 138ARTHURIANA scholarship. Comprehensively researching an area virtually ignored by Arthurian bibliographers and scholars, Salda uncovers a host of animated films and cartoons with Arthurian themes. This in itself is a valuable contribution; but Salda goes even further, compiling his findings inro a witty, astute, and highly readable essay. In addition to these historical surveys by Harty and Salda, there are a number of essays that discuss gender in Arthurian film. JacquelineJenkins, one ofthe few critics to treat First Knight seriously, takes this recent rendition of the rescue of Guinevere motif found as early as the Modena archivolt and Chretien's Lancelot and places it within the context of the modern men's movement codified by Robert BIy. And the late Maureen Fries, in her essay on Morgan at the movies, examines the 'gendetprejudicial ' treatments of Morgan Ie Fay in modern films like Knights ofthe Round Table and Excalibur. The volume also includes an essay focusing on the medievalism of the language of Arthurian movies, an original and worthwhile idea—even if the authors, Richard H. Osberg and Michael E. Crow, take the silly medievalism of a film like the 1949 Connecticut Yankee a little too seriously at times. Some essays in the volume attempt to update the study ofmovies that treat similar themes or that explore a particular character. In her analysis of three recent remakes of Connecticut Yankee, Elizabeth Sklar points out interesting parallels between the Keshia Knight Pulliam Connecticut Yankee and The Wizard of Oz; but more importantly, Sklar demonstrates the ultimate incompatibility between...

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