Molly Martin – författare

'Part how-to guide, part manifesto - a gentle exhortation that encourages us to reconnect with our damaged belongings and ourselves.' TOAST magazineFor Molly Martin, it all started with a pair of socks. Her favourite pair. When the heels became threadbare, her mother got out her darning mushroom and showed her how to reinforce the thinning stitches and bring them back to life. She has been stitching and darning ever since.In The Art of Repair, Molly explores the humble origins of repair and how the act of mending a cherished item carefully by hand offers not just a practical solution but nourishment for the soul. Using her own beautiful illustrations, she guides us through the basics of the craft - from piecing and patching to the ancient Japanese art of Sashiko.This book will stay with you long after you put down your needle and thread. It offers an antidote to our increasingly disposable lifestyle, encouraging us to reconnect not just with the everyday objects in our environment but also with ourselves.

Fresh study of the intricate roles played by gender, visibility, and the idea of romance in Malory's Morte.Skilfully blending analysis of medieval ideas of optics and vision with careful close readings of the text and deft use of modern critical theory, the author offers a fresh, exciting and insightful reading of the Morte. Of interest to all medievalists, and particularly fascinating for those working in the fields of Arthurian literature, medieval science and philosophy, and gender studies. Dorsey Armstrong, Purdue University.This first book-length study of vision in the Morte Darthur examines the roles played by sight - seeing and being seen - in the Morte's construction of gender, highlighting also the influence of the romance genre in this process. The discussion addresses several key figures: Gareth provides a paradigm of visible romance masculinity; Launcelot's and Trystram's adulteries introduce competing needs for both visibility and invisibility; Palomydes and other less acclaimed knights, and reactions to their shortcomings, confirm the model of visible gender; grail knights and Malory retain secular romance ideas of vision and gender on the religious quest; and the two Elaynes and Percivale's sister prove femininity more variable and less rigid than masculinity in the text. The book argues that visibility is crucial to Malory's conception of gender identity and, further, that masculinity and femininity are determined throughout the Morte by the romance genre.MOLLY MARTIN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Indianapolis.