Profs and Pints Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Green Knight and Medieval Yule,” a look at the Arthurian holiday legend and pre-Christian belief in “green men,” with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, visiting faculty at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and former professor of medieval literature.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/gawain/ .]

The fourteenth-century Arthurian tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures the festive spirit of the Christmas season in a distinctly dramatic way, with the arrival at the court of King Arthur of a striking green visitor with holly branch in one hand and an ax in the other. Told in verse form, it’s a story full of references to holiday festivities, hunts, and romantic intrigue, and it’s rooted both in Christianity and pre-Christian ideas of green men with plant features.

Start your holiday season on a magical note by coming to Baltimore's Guilford Hall Brewery for a talk that will immerse you in the strange tale of the Green Knight and the beliefs and symbols it draws upon.

Dr. Larissa Tracy, a medievalist who has extensively researched Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, will discuss how the poem set at Yuletide traces the pre-Christian calendar as Gawain waits a year and a day to face his Otherworldly opponent at the mysterious Green Chapel.

To provide broader cultural context, she’ll discuss how the image of the Green Knight has its roots in the Green Man, a pre-Christian figure that co-existed with Christianity—as seen in the dozens of examples carved into the stonework of Rosslyn Chapel, outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. Scholars have wondered at the seemingly contradictory presence of these images in a Christian site, but the Green Man is not at odds with medieval Christianity. It often figures as a facet of it—an embodiment of similar religious sentiments that intertwined over the centuries.

Whether you are a fan of Arthurian legends, enjoyed The Green Knight film released in 2020, or simply have an interest in how pagan nature beliefs live on in our culture, you’ll be glad you planted yourself down in the audience for this talk. Christmas trees and wreaths will wish they could be there. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Talk begins at 4:30. Attendees may arrive any time after 3 pm.)

Image: A Green Man in the woodwork of England’s Lincoln Cathedral. Photo by Richard Croft / Creative Commons. (Green tint added.)

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Gothic Ghosts of Christmas,” a look at the old English tradition of telling terrifying tales at Yuletide, with Marianne Noble, professor of Literature at American University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://profsandpints.ticketleap.com/alcott/ .]

The ghosts who visited Scrooge had plenty of company. In fact, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is just one of many ghost stories from the Victorian English tradition of telling frightening tales during the dark nights of the winter holidays. Whereas today we might read—or watch on television—tales of elves or reindeer or snowmen, those gathered around a fire on Christmas Eve in old England would tell each other stories of ghosts, graves, dead bodies, and murders.

Come to Baltimore's Victorian-era Guilford Hall to become immersed in this long-lost literary art and learn about its origins and evolution. Your guide on this scholarly journey, Dr. Marianne Noble, writes and teaches courses on nineteenth-century Gothic literature.

She’ll look at how the Christmas ghost story is rooted in the ancient human tradition of telling tales to pass cold, dark winter nights and results from the grafting of a religious holiday onto a secular practice. Shakespeare and Marlowe discussed the practice in the play “A Winter’s Tale,” and in the Arthurian legend the otherworldly Green Knight appeared to Sir Gawain at Christmas time.

Interest in the genre was especially keen in Victorian England, when increased literacy stemming from the rise of the middle class generated more demand for literature. It was a period in which seances were popular, spiritualist societies formed, and people picnicked in cemeteries. Add to that the era’s fantasies of destabilizing the powerful, and it’s easy to see why tales of spiritual visitation and of comeuppance from the beyond held such appeal. A ghost story was commonly featured in the low-cost anthologies of short fiction, known as “Christmas annuals,” published in England this time of year.

We’ll become familiar with major figures in the genre, such as the medievalist scholar M.R. James, who is regarded as one of its best writers, Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and, more recently, contemporary authors like Stephen King.

Dr. Noble will tackle the question of why the practice has waned over time and never really caught on as much in the United States as it did across the pond. She’ll talk about efforts to revive it, and then regale us with a ghost story or two. You’ll find yourself hoping for a chance to tell a tale that frightens others gathered by the fireplace during the holiday season. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. The talk begins at 6:30.)

Image from Pixabay.