Work in Progress: Corey Sparks, "Delivering Malory," Friday, September 4th, PAC 113, noon

Announced on: Tuesday, Sept. 01, 2026

Work in Progress: Corey Sparks, "Delivering Malory," Friday, September 4th, PAC 113, noon

This talk examines Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur in terms of imprisonment and liberation, situating the text within the material and administrative realities of late medieval carceral practice. The work's concluding colophon pleads, "praye for me…that God sende me good delyveraunce," providing an appeal for release from imprisonment. Malory, a long-time prisoner held in London's Newgate Prison, develops the concept of "delivery," I argue, to transform the medieval prison from mere static enclosure into a dynamic space of movement. This interpretation draws on the historical practice of "gaol delivery," a judicial procedure that oversaw prisoner transfer and discharge. This talk uses Malory and his text as a case study for the suggestive conceptual and material connections between medieval carceral practice and literary imagining and production. My attention to Malory, his monumental Arthurian text, and Newgate Prison constitute a key piece of a larger project titled Willful Confinement. This book project studies a series of confining spaces such as birdcages, towers, anchorholds, ships, and besieged cities to shed light on the spatial imaginaries implicated in medieval prisons. My juxtaposition of these real and imagined spaces founds a reassessment of the much understudied "pre-history" of the prison in relation to the evolving literary, social, and carceral practices of late-medieval England.

For more information regarding the Humanities Center, please contact director Erin Kelly at ekkelly@csuchico.edu or visit www.https://www.csuchico.edu/academics/college/humanities-fine-arts/events/humanities-center/index.shtml.