Ithaca College

On May 12, Michael Twomey (Dana Professor of Humanities and Arts, English Department) presented a paper titled “Environmental Justice in Arthurian Romance” at the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (May 11-14).

Environmental justice is an environmental movement that seeks protection both of a specific ecology and of the human beings living in or near it.  It is recognized, for example, in t environmental pollution, such as discharging carcinogenic pollutants into the water supply upstream from where people take their drinking water.  

Literary critics have long recognized that justice is the narrative goal of literary romance, but Twomey’s paper argued that there is often an environmental correlative for the transgressions that drive romance narratives toward justice. 

Twomey’s paper examined forests not as symbolic proving grounds for chivalric adventure or as projections of the courtly psyche’s dark side onto nature—both of which are widely-accepted views—but as metonyms of environmental justice in a culture that recognized, more than we do, its direct dependence on nature for survival.

Focusing particularly on Yvain and Perceval by the 12th century French romancer Chrétien de Troyes, Twomey’s paper argued that the forests of medieval romances are more often presented as sustainably managed but fragile environments, as they were under medieval French and English kings, the violation of which is correlated to social ills and abuses in society.  The point of view of these romances, however, is that of the ruling class that controlled the forests.

Image:  The Forest of Paimpont, Brittany, known as Broceliande in the romance Yvain. (Photo:  Michael Twomey, 7/08.)