The Book of the Perfect Life crystallizes the mystical experience of the late Middle Ages, but still speaks to seekers today. Martin Luther wrote of this fourteenth-century devotional work that "next to the Bible and St Augustine, no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned-and desired to learn-more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are." Theologia Deutsch-the title this work has most commonly appeared under-has been through 190 editions in ten languages throughout its six hundred-year history. Drawing on the latest German critical edition of the work,...

Wolfram's Parzival is one of the great medieval romances, but the complexities and obscurities of source, language and the Grail symbol have led to a virtual neglect by scholars of the problems of structure and characterisation. Medieval characterisation tended towards idealisation, symbolism and the view that the individual could be considered a member of a class or type; in Wolfram however the beginnings of individual characterisation can be seen. This 1966 book studies the types and techniques of character-portrayal in Parzival and of the emergence of the idea of individuality. Dr Blamires...