These first volumes of the series Arthurian Archives present the Old French verse texts devoted to Tristan and Iseut. Authoritative critical editions are complemented by parallel translations, with introduction, variants and rejected readings, and critical notes. The Tristan tradition in medieval France is dominated by two longer poems by Beroul and Thomas, both included in these volumes; the full contents of the two volumes are: I. Beroul, The Romance of TristranNORRIS J. LACY; Les Folies Tristan: La Folie Tristan (Berne) and La Folie Tristan (Oxford) SAMUEL N. ROSENBERG II. Thomas, Tristan...

Many aspects of Malory's Morte Darthur reflect contemporary literary and social issues, and it is this topic which forms the focus for the eight essays in the volume, all by leading Malory scholars. Terence McCarthy suggests that the Morte was a book that came at the wrong time, and which we have admired for the wrong reasons. Andrew Lynch and D. Thomas Hanks Jr argue that Malory questions his culture's ideology of arms; Karen Cherewatuk and Kevin Grimm discuss the manuscript and printed contexts of the Morte. Robert Kelly examines some of the political elements of the Morte; Ann Elaine Bliss...

The Morte Darthur is both a representative of the traditions of Arthurian literature, and a complex response to its stock themes and motifs. This book offers a new reading of the principles by which the Morte Darthur is structured, looking at the ways in which Malory deploys the Arthurian tradition and received narratives as both redactor and translator. The sources are considered in particular detail, and the additions and deletions which Malory makes to them: central to the investigation is the ways in which the fifteenth-century work on the one hand conserves thirteenth-century narratives...

Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet, written around the turn of the thirteenth century, has long intrigued scholars both within and outside German studies: the only remaining trace of a Lancelot legend free of the adulterous affair with Guinevere, it has been seen both as a precursor of classical Arthurian romance in Germany, and as a post-classical imitation, and attempts to interpret it have often run foul of its contradictions. This new study takes a fresh look at its place in the history of German romance, arguing that Ulrich placed his work firmly in the Arthurian romance tradition,...

The question of how far the society in which Malory lived reflects that depicted in the Morte Darthur has always been hotly debated. While many critics have considered it a work of anachronistic escapism, more recently it has been argued that the romanticised world of chivalry and the reality of the gentry community revealed in contemporary letter collections represent complementary but irreconcilable aspects of fifteenth-century aristocratic life. This book challenges both assumptions, arguing that behind the chivalric facade of Malory's work lie the anxieties and aspirations of the -real-...

The Arthurian legends have had an immense and enduring appeal in America, influencing both America's own mythologies and its literature, film, social history, and popular culture. This is the first full-length study to focus exclusively on American re-interpretations of Arthuriana, and it offers detailed treatments of major authors traditionally associated with the legends, including Mark Twain, Edwin Arlington Robinson, T.S. Eliot, and John Steinbeck; it also explores the important use of Arthurian material by authors not usually considered in an Arthurian context, and by lesser-known...

Eleven essays by leading Arthurians lead off with an overview of the field suggesting directions that Arthurian studies must take to remain vital. Other essays contain innovative approaches, overviews of specific areas of Arthurian studies, and suggestions for new ways to approach Arthurian material; they range over Malory, Latin Arthurian literature, Gawain and the Green Knight, Merlin in the twenty-first century, Tennyson's Idylls, Arthur in African-American culture, current trends in criticism, Arthurian fiction, and Arthurian film. Contributors: ROBERT BLANCH, DEREK BREWER, P.J.C. FIELD,...

King Arthur in Music is the first book to be devoted to the subject. The range of musical material is too wide for a single author to tackle satisfactorily, and the nine contributors to this volume are experts in the very different fields involved. The first essay, by Robert Shay, deals with the late seventeenth century semi-opera King Arthur, while the final essay by William Everitt looks at the appearances of Arthur on stage and screen and the scores that have accompanied these. Between these two extremes, the main body of the book deals largely with opera as we now understand it, from...

The Book of Lancelot is a study of the highly intriguing Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation, a collection of ten Arthurian verse romances, compiled around 1320. Although the compilation is one of the most important Middle Dutch works, and has important implications for Arthurian studies, it is not well-known outside the Low Countries. This monograph, the first full-length English study of the compilation, aims to bring it to a wider audience, analysing the Middle Dutch work and comparing it to French narrative cycles, Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, and Ulrich Fuetrer's Buch der Abenteuer. The...

It is hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances in the development of the legend of the Holy Grail and in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole. They give a crucial new impetus to the story of the Grail by establishing a provenance for the sacred vessel - and for the Round Table itself - in the Biblical past; and through the controlling figure of Merlin they link the story of Joseph of Arimathea with the mythical British history of Vortigern and Utherpendragon, the birth of Arthur, and the sword in the stone, and then with the knightly adventures of...