South Atlantic Review Summer 2016 Volume Number 2 81 Journal of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Editor R. Barton Palmer About South Atlantic Review Associate Editor [email protected] Marta Hess ince its founding in 1935 as the newsletter for the South SAtlantic Modern Language Association, the South At- lantic Review has become a premier academic quarterly Reviews Editor publishing research in the modern languages and litera- Daniel Marshall tures, as well as in associated fields such as film, cultural studies, and rhetoric/composition. The journal welcomes submissions of essays, maximum length 8,000 words, that are accessible, and of broad interest, to its diverse reader- Foreign Language ship across a number of disciplines. Submissions may be Reviews Editor made electronically directly to the managing editor at the Michael Rice address above. SAR also welcomes proposals for special is- sues and special focus sections. Additional information regarding submission require- ments and book reviews can be found on our website at Foreign Language http://samla.memberclicks.net/sar. Reviews Assistants In Appreciation. South Atlantic Review wishes to ac- Theresa McBreen knowledge the generous contributions and support Ann McCullough provided by Ashley Cowden Fisk, Michael LeMahieu, and the Pearce Center for Professional Communication at Clemson University, by the Clemson University Depart- Managing Editor ment of English chaired by Lee Morrissey, and by the Col- Christina Baswell lege of Arts, Architecture, and the Humanities. About SAMLA www.samla.gsu.edu [email protected] embership. Annual membership dues for SAMLA: M$35 for a student membership; $40 for an adjunct, lecturer, emeritus, or independent scholar membership; The views contained herein represent the opinions of the authors whose names appear and $50-70 for a full-time faculty membership. All mem- on each submission and not the Board of berships are annual with terms running from October 1 to Regents of the University System of Georgia, September 30. Institutional subscriptions are $80 per year. Georgia State University, Clemson University, the editors of South Atlantic Review, or the Membership forms are available on the SAMLA website Executive Committee Members of SAMLA. above. All inquiries may be directed to [email protected]; SAMLA, PO Box 3968, Atlanta, GA, 30302-3968; or 404- Copyright ©2016 by the South Atlantic 413-5816. Modern Language Association SAMLA Annual Convention. Information regarding the annual convention is available on the SAMLA website. The 2016 annual convention will be held in Jacksonville, FL at the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Waterfront from No- vember 4-6, 2016. The 2016 conference theme is “Utopia/ Dystopia: Whose Paradise is It?” Contents Special Cluster: Medieval Literature and its Scholarship: Continuity, Transmission, and Relevance 1 Introduction Kathryn L. Smithies, Guest Editor 14 Gender and Comedy in the Early Irish Tale Fled Bricrenn Jennifer Dukes-Knight 33 Burnellus Speaks: Beast Books and Beastliness in Late Twelfth-century Canterbury Diane Heath 55 Victories Foretelling Disgrace: Judicial Duels in the Prose Lancelot David S. King 72 A “Foreign” Queen in King Uther’s Court: Fifteenth- Century Insular Xenophobia and Malory’s Portrayal of Arthur’s Mother Sheri Chriqui 93 Immersive Environments for Medieval Languages: Theory and Practice Lynn Ramey and Steven Wenz 111 Constructing Identity in Anglo-Saxon Literature: Review of Current Scholarship Lindy Brady 128 New Directions for the Old French Fabliaux: Updating Harry F. Williams’s 1981 Review Kathryn L. Smithies Special Cluster: T. S. Eliot and Asia 149 Introduction Roderick B. Overaa, Guest Editor 151 “The Lotos Rose, Quietly”: T. S. Eliot, Asia, and the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis Roderick B. Overaa Contents 173 Feeble Translations: Failure, Global Modernism, and The Waste Land Christopher McVey 191 The Indic Eliot in “The Hollow Men” Tatsuo Murata Review Essay 210 The Passages of Jacques Derrida: Between Philosophy and Biography Joseph G. Kronick Book Reviews 232 Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways. Edited by David A. Davis and Tara Powell; Foreword by Jessica B. Harris. Reviewed by Trudier Harris 234 Prophetic Remembrance: Black Subjectivity in African American and South African Trauma Narratives. By Erica Still. Reviewed by Lisa Hinrichsen 236 Drawing the Line: The Father Reimagined in Faulkner, Wright, O’Connor, and Morrison. By Doreen Fowler. Reviewed by Anna Ioanes 239 Martin Luther King, Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature. By Trudier Harris. Reviewed by Jason Miller 242 Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization. By Michael Dowdy. Reviewed by Michele Shaul 245 Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny: Adaptation and ElasTEXTity. By Julie Grossman. Reviewed by Nancy M. West From the Guest Editor Special Cluster: Medieval Literature and its Scholarship: Continuity, Transmission, and Relevance Introduction Kathryn L. Smithies Putting the Cluster Together edieval societies produced myriad genres—for example, the Mroman, the lais, hagiographies, chivalric literature, beast epics, fabliaux, and sagas—throughout the period’s long durée and geo- graphical expanse; from Byzantium in the east to Scandinavia in the far northern most reaches of medieval Europe. Where then to begin to showcase the wealth of medieval literature? When I was invited to edit this cluster my remit was comparatively broad in that I was asked to assess the current state of scholarship for various genres of medieval literature. My own paper is a very literal take on that notion in that it is a review of fabliau scholarship that takes up from where Harry F. Williams’s 1981 review article left off; his article was also published in South Atlantic Review. Of course I am certain that a series of literature reviews might not be the most interesting way to showcase the current state of medieval literature’s scholarship. Thus with virtual free rein I set out to make this cluster as eclectic as possible and to reflect the scholarly scope of medieval literature on many levels. In this special cluster, then, there are seven essays that feature a va- riety of medieval literary genres: early Irish; medieval travel literature; old English; the old French Fabliaux; bestiary and other animal tales; and Arthurian literature. Chronologically, they cover virtually half of the medieval period, featuring works that were produced between the ninth and fifteenth centuries.1 They are also geographically diverse, al- though there is undeniably a strong focus on the north-western area of medieval Europe. Thematically and theoretically the essays are equally 1 Kathryn L. Smithies distinct covering a range of topics such as identity, humour, law and order, and virtual reality; whilst the scholarship examines these topics through such lenses as post-colonialism, gender theory, and language acquisition. Likewise the authorship is as diverse, with contributions from established, early career, and emerging scholars, who are dis- persed across three continents. With no specific theme in mind for this cluster the next question that arose was how to link the articles and present them in a coherent and cohesive way. When every essay has, for instance, the crusades as its theme, then methodology, gender, or military leadership perhaps becomes the significant marker; such an approach evidently would not work for this cluster. Rather, I decided to rely on questions that have piqued my interest throughout my academic career and have been posed time and again. Those questions are: why medieval, what relevance does it have for today’s society, and can literature be a his- torical source? Thus notions of continuity, transmission, and relevance became the links that connect and bind the articles in this cluster. For me, as a medieval historian interested in the intersection of me- dieval society and culture through its vernacular literature, I find that a society’s literature often reveals issues that concern that particular so- ciety at a given moment in time and place; yet these are issues that can also transcend time and place and thus occur time and again through- out history. Take, for instance, the fabliau Le Villain mire, in which a peasant poses as a doctor and successfully cures the king’s daughter of her ailment after many real physicians have failed. The fabliau’s plot is replicated in Molière’s play, Le Médecin malgré lui. Arguably then, in some circles of thirteenth- and seventeenth-century France respective- ly, the practice and practitioners of medicine were a source of mirth.2 Other literary examples expose a continual disquiet amongst societ- ies concerning the maintenance of social order. As medieval European society understood itself through the paradigm of Christianity, it is unsurprising that Christian morality pervades its literature. Many fa- bliaux, despite their comedic form, warn against the vices that hindered a Christian’s ultimate salvation. For instance, the tale of the partridges, Les Perdrix, serves as a warning against the vices of lust, gluttony, and greed (Helsinger, Pearls 93–105). Similarly, J. Meade Faulkner’s nine- teenth-century smugglers novel, Moonfleet, also features the morality of greed. In this novel a young boy experiences a series of adventures, in which he must make morally just or unjust decisions and then deal with the contingent circumstances. The main character only finds suc- cess in his life when