A fine collection...an excellent introduction to Chretien's world and work. Highly recommended. CHOICE

For the past fifty years, debates about which text of Malory scholars and teachers should prefer have sparked much controversy: which is the most authentic or authoritative, Caxton, the Winchester version, or a mixture of both (as proposed by Vinaver)? The papers in this volume represent the most important contributions to the dialogue; previously published articles have been updated where relevant and new issues are presented in several original essays, while the introductions place the argument in its theoretical and historical contexts. Professor BONNIE WHEELER teaches at the Southern...

A dramatic archaeological find at Windsor Castle reveals Edward III's 'House of the Round Table', designed to show off Edward's power and prestige at a crucial moment in his attempts to lay claim to the throne of France.

The theme of the quest in Arthurian literature - mainly but not exclusively the Grail quest - is explored in the essays presented here, covering French, Dutch, Norse, German, and English texts. A number of the essays trace the relationship, often negative, between Arthurian chivalry and the Grail ethos. Whereas most of the contributors reflect on the popularity of the Grail quest, several examine the comparative rarity of the Grail in certain literatures and define the elaboration of quest motifs severed from the Grail material. An appendix to the volume offers a filmography that includes all...

This imaginative history of the Britons, written in the twelfth century, is the first work to recount the woes of Lear and the glittering career of Arthur. It rapidly became a bestseller in the British Isles and Francophone Europe, with over 200 manuscripts surviving. Here, an authoritative version of the text is presented with a facing translation, prepared especially for the volume. It also contains a full introduction and notes. MICHAEL REEVE is Kennedy Professor of Latin Emeritus at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge; Dr NEIL WRIGHT is a Senior Language Teaching Officer at...

It is arguably the tragic end to Arthur's kingdom which gives the myth its exceptional resonance and power. The essays in this volume explore the presentation of death and dying in Arthurian literature and film produced in England and America from the middle ages to the modern day. Authors, texts and topics covered include Geoffrey of Monmouth, the chronicle tradition, and the alliterative Morte Arthure; Gawain and the Green Knight, Ywain and Gawain, the stanzaic Morte Arthur, and Malory's Morte Darthur; Tennyson's Idylls, Pyle's retelling of the myth for American children, David Jones, T.H....

-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,...

The early thirteenth-century French prose Lancelot-Grail Cycle (or Vulgate Cycle) brings together the stories of Arthur with those of the Grail, a conjunction of materials that continues to fascinate the Western imagination today. Representing what is probably the earliest large-scale use of prose for fiction in the West, it also exemplifies the taste for big cyclic compositions that shaped much of European narrative fiction for three centuries. A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle is the first comprehensive volume devoted exclusively to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and its medieval legacy....

The intricate structure and the many different narrative threads of the Prose Lancelot are here skilfully analysed, showing them to be a major new development in literary technique.

The essays collected here on the Gawain-Poet offer stimulating introductions to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience, providing both information and original analysis. Topics include theories of authorship; the historical and social background to the poems, with individual sections on particularly important features within them; gender roles in the poems; the manuscript itself; the metre, vocabulary and dialect of the poems; and their sources. A section devoted to Sir Gawain investigates the ideas of courtesy and chivalry found within it, and explores some of its...