Ithaca College

Michael Twomey publishes essay in new anthology about Arthurian literature.

Michael Twomey, Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts, English Department, has published an essay titled "'Hadet with an aluisch mon' and 'britned to nought': Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Death, and the Devil," in The Arthurian Way of Death: The English Tradition, ed. Karen Cherewatuk and K. S. Whetter (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer), 2009, pp. 73-93.  The anthology focuses on the tragic theme of death as a disturbing presence in medieval Arthurian romances.  Twomey's essay illuminates Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 's "bodily spirituality," highlighting late medieval fears both about the devil as a trickster and about anxieties regarding the physical condition of the soul in the afterlife.