Written in the 1130s, Geoffrey's imaginative history of the Britons from Brutus to Cadwallader, the first work to recount the woes of Lear and the glittering career of Arthur, rapidly became a bestseller in the British Isles and Francophone Europe, with over 200 manuscripts surviving. Yet no critical edition of the main version has appeared since 1929. This new text, for which 14 manuscripts have been collated in full, rests on a survey of the entire tradition; it is accompanied by a facing English translation, prepared especially for this volume. A comprehensive introduction discusses the...

NEW LOWER PRICE The image of King Arthur's Round Table is well-known, both as Thomas Malory's portrayal of a fellowship of knights dedicated to the highest ideals of chivalry, and as the great wooden table at Winchester castle. Now a dramatic archaeological find at Windsor castle sheds new light on the idea of a round table as a gathering: the 'House of the Round Table' which Edward III ordered to be constructed at the conclusion of his Windsor festival of 1344. The discovery of the foundation trench of a great building two hundred feet in diameter in the Upper Ward of Windsor castle, allows...

Vast in its scope, incomparably dense in its imagery, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival ranks alongside Dante's Divine Comedy as one of the foremost narrative works to emerge from medieval Europe. This book is a new translation of Parzival, together with the fragments of the Titurel, an elegiac offshoot of Parzival, and the nine love-songs attributed to Wolfram. Parzival is the greatest of the medieval Grail romances. In its depth and complexity of characterisation this work of the early thirteenth century anticipates the modern novel. It encompasses deeds of chivalry, tournaments and sieges,...

Chrtien de Troyes is arguably the creator of Arthurian romance, and it is on his work that later writers have based their interpretations. This book offers both crucial information on, and a comprehensive coverage of, all aspects of the work of Chrtien de Troyes - the literary and historical background, patronage, his influence on other writers, manuscripts and editions of his work and, at the heart of the volume, major essays on his themes, techniques and artistic achievements in each of his compositions; the contributions, all from leading experts in Chrtien and related studies, have been...

The essays in this volume offer a general overview and a number of detailed examinations of Arthur's fortunes, in two senses. First is the role of Fortune itself, often personified and consistently instrumental, in accounts of Arthur's court and reign. More generally the articles trace the trajectory of the Arthurian legend - its birth, rise and decline - through the middle ages. The final essay follows the continued turning of Fortune's wheel, emphasizing the modern revival and flourishing of the legend. The authors, all distinguished Arthurian scholars, illustrate their arguments through...

This book offers the first comprehensive and analytical account of the development of Arthurian scholarship from the eighteenth century, or earlier, to the present day. The chapters, each written by an expert in the area under discussion, present scholarly trends and evaluate major contributions to the study of the numerous different strands which make up the Arthurian material: origins, Grail studies, editing and translation of Arthurian texts, medieval and modern literatures (in English and European languages), art and film. The result is an indispensable resource for students and a...

The Grail legends have been appropriated by novelists as diverse as Umberto Eco and Dan Brown yet very few have read for themselves the original stories from which they came. All the mystery and drama of the Arthurian world are embodied in the extraordinary tales of Perceval, Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad in pursuit of the Holy Grail. The original romances, full of bewildering contradictions and composed by a number of different writers, dazzle with the sheer wealth of their conflicting imagination. In Nigel Bryant's hands, this enthralling material becomes truly accessible. He has constructed...

Marriage in the middle ages encompassed two crucial but sometimes conflicting dimensions: a private companionate relationship, and a public social institution, the means whereby heirs were produced and land, wealth, power and political rule were transferred. This new study examines the concept of marriage as seen in the Morte Darthur, moving beyond it to look at adulterous' and other male/female relationships, and their impact on the world of the Round Table in general. Key points addressed are the compromise achieved in the Tale of Sir Gareth' between natural, youthful passion and the...

There has long been a need for an index of the themes in the French Arthurian verse romances. E.H. Ruck's analysis includes not only therecognised literary themes - the Unspelling Quest, the FaithlessWife -of the verse romances from Wace's Brut to Froissart'sMeliador, but also the other, less obvious, motifs of equalsignificance to the researcher, hawthorns, for example, and weaponry. Dr Ruck's index encompasses the Arthurian part of Wace's Brut; all of the works of Chretien de Troyes; all four Tristan poems together with Marie de France's Chevrefoil and Lanval; the lais of Tyolet, Melion,...

The first book-length study of the sources of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur since 1921 and the first comprehensive study since that of Vinaver's three-volume edition, Malory's Library/I> collects the results of over one hundred years of scholarship, providing new discussions of the major sources of the eight tales recognised in the standard edition. It also, for the first time, explores possible minor sources of the Morte Darthur, evaluating the case for them to see what conclusions may be drawn of Malory's life, work, and mental furnishings. In so doing, it clarifies the process by which...