Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann's study of Arthurian verse romance was first published in German in 1985, but her radical argument that we need urgently to redraw the lines on the literary and linguistic map of medieval Britain and France is only now being made available in English. Updated with a new foreword and a supplementary bibliography, this study serves as a contribution to both reception history, examining the medieval response to Chretien's poetry, and genre history, suveying the evolution of Arthurian verse romance in French over two centuries.

The second of these annual volumes contains five wide-ranging pieces. In the medieval field, Neil Wright examines Geoffrey of Monmouth's use of Gildas; Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann contributes an important illustrated essay on the Round Table; and Fanny Bogdanow looks at Chretien de Troyes' use of troubadour ideals. Mary Wildman contributes to a bibliography of 20th-century creative literature on Arthur. Finally, Toshiyuki Takamiya and Andrew Armour present a translation of Soseki's Arthurian story 'Kairo-ko: A Dirge', the only known Arthurian novel in Japanese, dealing with the eternal triangle...