This volume of essays is aimed at advancing the appreciation of Malory, an author who has always been enjoyed by the common reader, but is still sometimes underestimated by the critics. Despite an increasing number of articles on Malory, there is a need for a general survey of recent research, which l> Aspects of Malory /l> provides. The volume opens with a note by the late Professor Vinaver on Malory's prose, and three essays on Malory's Englishness and his English sources, including an essay by P. J. C. Field which argues for an English rather than a French origin for the l>Tale of...

This collection of essays makes available a wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. Opening essays address the issues of "Chaucerian representation" and "Chaucerian poetics," arguing for the multiplicity and complexity of what Chaucer "represents" and for the importance of his dual Anglo-French background in enabling him to articulate that complexity. Chaucer's use of Ovidian and Ciceronian sources and ideas is examined, and his pursuit of simplicity and suspicion of "delicacy"; the potent issues of sexuality and spirituality, and money and death (with Chaucer's own ending and his...

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...

The eleven essays in this volume are studies of specific instances of the influence and impact of the middle ages on Western life and culture from the sixteenth century to the present day. They cover a wide range of topics -literature, stylistics, lexicography, art, the cinema, philosophy, history and myth-making, oral traditions, feminist issues - and reflect the enduring influence of the middle ages on European art and life. Dr MARIE-FRANCOISE ALAMICHEL is lecturer in English at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne; the late DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English, University of...

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...

In this completely re-written edition, Professor Brewer has taken into account recent literary criticism, both challenging new ideas and using them to analyse Chaucer's work. He has also included a more detailed account of The Book of the Duchess.