Michael Twomey (Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts, emeritus, Literatures in English) recently published an article on Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur and co-edited a volume of the medieval encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties of things).
The article, “Moonlight in the Nocturnal Typology of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” appears in the British journal, Arthurian Literature 37 (2022): 67-87. Examining Malory’s addition of moonlight scenes to French and English antecedents of Arthurian narrative, the article argues that Malory used moonlight scenes to contrast the tragedy of King Arthur with the hagiographic romance of Lancelot. As such, the article calls for a recognition that the Morte Darthur’s weaves two genres into one coherent narrative.
The book is volume three of a projected seven-volume edition of the Latin encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum (On the properties of things) compiled by Bartholomaeus Anglicus (ca. 1240). The book was copied into hundreds of manuscripts in Latin and vernacular languages, then printed many times over until the seventeenth century. It was used so often by Shakespeare that it is sometimes called “Shakespeare’s encyclopedia.” Besides Twomey, the chief editorial team comprises scholars from Belgium, Germany, and Italy. Volumes I and VI were published in 2007, with Twomey contributing the edition of the first section, De deo et eius nominibus (Concerning God and his names). Volume III covers the topics of human life, the heavens, and time. The publisher is Brepols, in Turnhout, Belgium.