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The Female Reader at the Round Table
Religion and Women in Three Contemporary Arthurian Texts

By Kristina Hildebrand
October 2001
Uppsala University Press
ISBN: 91-554-5093-8
175 pages
$42.00 paper original

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In a close reading of three modern Arthurian texts, Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, Marion Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, and Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, this Ph.D. thesis focuses on two of the genre's motifs: religion and gender. The reading centers on the female reader's identification as moderated by her faith, and aims to demonstrate that the female readers response will inevitably be colored by the objects of identification offered by the text, by their portrayal of women as religious actors, and by the degree of feminization of evil that is apparent in them.

English Literature; Women's Studies
Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, No. 115