Presentation Schedule
Arthur’s Fate and Fate’s Artoria: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King in Japanese Pop Culture (91643)
Session Chair: John Griffith
Wednesday, 14 May 2025 18:00
Session: Session 5
Room: Room 704 (7F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
King Arthur has a long history in Japanese literature and pop culture, a testament to the atemporal and trans-cultural elements of the Arthur story. In the early twenty-first century, the game-manga-anime series "Fate" explores tensions -- between self and society, between inevitable social change and a desire to conserve the best of the past -- that Sōseki was sensitive to in the early twentieth century, when he was inspired by his reading of Tennyson’s "Idylls of the King" to write "Kairo-kō", the first Japanese version of the Arthur story. This paper examines the echoes of Tennyson’s Arthur and Lancelot in "Fate", where Lancelot and a female version of Arthur (Artoria) are transported from medieval England to modern day Japan. I discuss how this example of modern medievalism – that is, a modern work which refashions medieval stories – is particularly fascinating because it is a cross-cultural medievalism, illuminating the elements of the Arthur story which sustain its after-life, beyond its time and well beyond its original European borders. Exploring themes such as the conflict between friendship and anger, between social order and private desires, a pop culture text like "Fate" can be a way for teachers of Western medieval literature and culture to engage modern students and lead them back to a meaningful experience with older literary works and writers (such as, in this case, Tennyson and his Idylls) still deserving of serious attention and close-reading.
Authors:
John Griffith, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan
About the Presenter(s)
Professor John Griffith is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at National Taipei University of Technology in Taiwan
See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule
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