A comprehensive and objective study of Layamon's sources is long overdue. As a first step Francoise le Saux investigates the English poet's handling of his main source, Wace's Roman de Brut, to determine what principles guided the composition of the English Brut. These established, she is able to distinguish between different sorts of variation from the Roman, thereby providing norms against which to gauge the probability of further, secondary sources. Additional sources are then identified, in the various fields suggested by the poem: historical; literary; and religious writings (or tales)...

This volume comprises selected papers from a Tristan symposium held at the Institute of Germanic Studies in London. The symposium was conceived by the organizers as an experiment in transatlantic dialogue and the papers represent the views of scholars from a variety of North American and British universities. The main focus of attention is Gottfried's Tristan. Familiar assumptions about the text are questioned and fresh perspectives are offered on many contentious issues: those disagreements which persist are themselves a reflection posed by Gottfried's masterpiece. In addition, new light is...

Roger Simpson('s) finds are crisp, detailed, and convincing.' MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW The revival of interest in Arthurian literature in the early part of the 19th century has been largely unremarked until now. Roger Simpson's wide-ranging study of this period, in which he traces the dominant forms adopted by the Arthurian revival and presents a wealth of new material, shows it to have been of critical importance in the development of the legend and to have been a powerful early influence on Tennyson, whose role within the Arthurian revival is accordingly reassessed. His book also contains a...

I believe this volume will give to scholars of Williams expanded vistas from which to view his work, and to the general reader glimpses of Camelot'. MYTHPRINT Includes Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars - complex and haunting works which constitute the major imaginative writings about the Grail this century in addition to much previously unpublished material. Charles Williams's two cycles of poems, Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars, constitute the major imaginative work about the Grail of the 20th century. Williams's vision of spiritual...

The intertextuality of this brilliant poem can be more fully understood through Elisabeth Brewer's presentation of modern English versions of themes familiar from Gawain and the Green Knight --beheading, seduction and other traditional material -- from a range of medieval writings. Her book is a delightful and unusual small anthology of medieval literature; but its greatest success lies in providing a context for a fuller understanding of Sir Gawain, through its presentation of extracts and poems (including translation from Celtic and French originals) illustrating the tradition in which the...

This volume investigates the problems with which the contemporary reader of Layamon's Brut is faced: To what extent is the archaic feel of the Brut part of a deliberate aesthetic strategy of Layamon's? For what sort of audience could it have been written? How can one define its relation to older or more recent texts and traditions? What ideological stance (if any) is to be deduced from the work? The seventeen articles in this book tackle the different issues from a variety of fields: codicology and palaeography; Linguistics, stylists and syntax; the socio-political dimension of the work and...

French Romanticism was a widespread movement, as apparent in the works of historians and scholars as in the works of creative writers. One of its principal characteristics was the cult of the middle ages, and this book examines the treatment of the Arthurian legends in French Romantic medievalism. Taking into account works of historiography and literary history, as well as literary texts proper, it assesses the place of the Arthurian material in French culture in the period up to 1860, the date of publication of Edgar Quinet's Merlin l'enchanteur. In so doing, it reveals key features of...

This study of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur centres on its main narrative interest and expressive medium, armed combat. In the analysis of the discourse of fighting, some repeated descriptive preoccupations --to do with name, vision, blood, emotion and gesture -- are examined as needs of meaning' with relevance for the whole text, and related to political, religious, genealogical, sexual and medical views of Malory's period. Andrew Lynch's exploration of the powerof name' as public reputation in the Mortechallenges the usual reading of Malory's adventures, and he goes on to survey...

This collection of original essays by an international group of distinguished medievalists provides a comprehensive introduction to the great work of Sir Thomas Malory, which will be indispensable for both students and scholars. It is divided into three main sections, on Malory in context, the art of the Morte Darthur, and its reception in later years. As well as essays on the eight tales which make up the Morte Darthur, there are studies of the relationship between the Winchestermanuscript and Caxton's and later editions; the political and social context in which Malory wrote; his style and...

During the last thirty years, the study of Malory's text and sources has given rise to hotly contested issues and spectacular discoveries, as well as fundamental questions about the nature of his Morte Darthurand how we should read it. The debate has given rise to hotly contested issues and spectacular discoveries, even requiring forensic examination of the unique manuscript of Malory's great book; it has also thrown fresh light on Malory's art, politics, revisions, tastes, reading, knowledge of Europe, and sense of history. Professor Peter Field is a leading authority on these questions, and...