“King Arthur in the Middle Ages: A Storyworlds Approach”
A storyworld is an ever expanding and changing fictional realm in which stories are adapted and agglomerate over time in different media, cultures, and languages around a set of well-known and familiar central events, characters, images, and themes. Applying the notion of storyworld to the medieval Arthurian tradition reveals three different Arthurian storyworlds: Gaint-killer Arthur, General Arthur, and Chivalric King Arthur. This talk explores these three medieval Arthurian storyworlds as a preamble to understanding the unique characteristics of the medieval Arthurian tradition in German-speaking lands.