Select annotated bibliography entry
Calkin, Siobhain Bly. “Marking Religion on the Body: Saracens, Categorization, and the King of Tars.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104, no. 2 (2005): 219–38.
Explores anxieties about racial typologizing and miscegenation through a 14th century English romance. The essay argues that the romance in question, The King of Tars, engineers scenarios in which characters’ racial and religious identities are subject to ambiguity or failed categorizations, which in turn demands somatic transformations within the narrative itself to provide clarity. The work engages discussions in the fields of conversion, typology, and medieval English literature.
