This three-volume set of editions and translations celebrates the literary and cultural connections between the Nordic countries and France that helped to bring Tristan and the Arthurian romances northward... thus the entire set of texts can be read as a study in Norse literary patronage, of literary renewal and transformation... A major contribution, not only to the Old Norse field, but to the broader world of medieval literature and culture. Norse Romance will endure for years to come. SPECULUM Norse Romances comprises a three-volume set, making available for the first time critical...

Some time in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Guillaume le clerc composed the story of Fergus, the homo silvaticus who develops into a formidable knight; he was playing a literary game with Chretien de Troyes, especially with his Conte du Graal, and he created a romance in which the main character features as a -new- Perceval in a realistically depicted Scottish landscape. Shortly thereafter, perhaps as early as 1250, the story was translated into Middle Dutch. The Ferguut, however, is an adaptation of the Old French Fergus, rather than a slavish translation: although the...

This is the first critical edition with English translation of the prose compilation Tristano panciatichiano, preserved in a unique manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence (MS Panc. 33); it is the first time the Italian text has been published in its entirety in any form. Assembled by the mid-fourteenth century, the manuscript is an original compilation in Italian based on several French models: the Queste del San Graal, Joseph d'Arimathie, the Mort Artu, and notably, the Roman de Tristan en prose. While the edition itself will be of great interest, the translation into English is...

This is the first English translation of the earliest Italian Tristan romance, the Tristano Riccardiano, preserved in MS 2543 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence. In Italy, Tristan was more popular than any other Arthurian hero; the French prose Tristan gained great currency, soon yielding Italian prose translations / adaptations. The Riccardiano, dating from the late 13th century, is notable for representing an early branch of the French prose Tristan, now lost. The translation offers new evidence for the development of the Tristan story in Europe, particularly in the changes it rings...

Iwein, or The Knight with the Lion, is a free Middle High German adaptation of Chretien de Troyes' Old French Arthurian romance, Yvain. Written c.1200 by a Swabian knight, Hartmann von Aue, Iwein charts the development towards maturity of a young knight who falls into error, neglecting his hard-won wife by devoting himself excessively to chivalric pursuits. This parallel-text edition, offering the first English translation, is based on one of the two earliest complete manuscripts, Giessen, University Library, no. 97 (Iwein B), dating from the second quarter of the thirteenth century. It...

The lay was a flourishing genre in the French courts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, related to romance rather as the modern short story is to the novel. Its most famous exponent is arguably Marie de France, but in addition to her twelve lays, a number of others, mainly anonymous, have also come down to us, usually referred to as Breton lays or simply as narrative lays. The eleven anonymous lays presented in this volume show the varied nature of the genre. First brought together as a collection by Prudence Tobin in 1976, they have been freshly edited from the manuscript sources. They...

Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, dating from the end of the twelfth century, is a verse translation into Middle High German of what was probably an Anglo-Norman romance, now lost. It presents the story of Lanzelet (Lancelot), but in quite a different version from Chretien de Troyes' Chevalier de la charrette. The first half of the tale concerns Lanzelet's knightly and romantic exploits on his way to discovering his true identity, while at the same time winning the beautiful Iblis as his wife. The second half revolves around Lanzelet's efforts to defend the honor of the Arthurian court and...

This is the first in a set of three volumes making available for the first time critical editions and translations of important medieval Arthurian texts from Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Devoted to the Tristan legend. It contains Geitarlauf and Janual, Old Norse translations of the French lais Lanval and Chevrefeuil; Tristrams saga ok Isondar, Brother Thomas's Old Norse translation of Thomas's Tristan, dated 1226 and commissioned by King Hakon Hakonarson the Old of Norway; -Tristrams kvaedi-, a fourteenth-century Icelandic -Tristan- ballad; and the Saga af Tristram ok Isodd, a...

13-14c Norse versions of French narratives of Arthur's knights, with modern prose translations.

Haerra Ivan (Sir Ivan, the Knight with the Lion) is the first major work of fiction in Swedish, and an important Scandinavian example of Arthurian romance. The translation from the French original was carried out at the request of the German-born Queen Eufemia of Norway, a country with a richer literary culture than Sweden at the time: Haerra Ivan thus brought Continental, courtly culture to the then recently formalised Swedish feudal class. Last edited in 1931, the poem has been unjustly neglected in recent years; this edition and English translation, with introduction, will make it widely...