Michael Twomey (Dana Professor/English Department, emeritus) gave the Loomises Lecture on June 14 at the International Arthurian Society Mini-Conference during the Tenth Annual Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St. Louis University. The Loomises Lecture honors a family of early twentieth century scholars whose research made the study of literature about King Arthur a serious academic subject. Twomey’s talk, “Arthurian Literature’s Natural Environment,” discussed previously unnoticed instances of environmental realism in medieval Arthurian romances that are correlated with major moments of character development.
Twomey has also published an article, “Moonlight in the Nocturnal Typology of Malory’s Morte Darthur” in Arthurian Literature 37 (2022): 68-87, about Sir Thomas Malory’s use of moonlight to illuminate crucial scenes of the Morte Darthur (‘Death of Arthur,’ written ca. 1470) in order to contrast the tragic career of King Arthur with what Twomey calls the “hagiographical romance” of Lancelot.