Some time in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Guillaume le clerc composed the story of Fergus, the homo silvaticus who develops into a formidable knight; he was playing a literary game with Chretien de Troyes, especially with his Conte du Graal, and he created a romance in which the main character features as a -new- Perceval in a realistically depicted Scottish landscape. Shortly thereafter, perhaps as early as 1250, the story was translated into Middle Dutch. The Ferguut, however, is an adaptation of the Old French Fergus, rather than a slavish translation: although the...

The influence and significance of the legend of Arthur are fully demonstrated by the subject matter and time-span of articles here. Topics range from early Celtic sources and analogues of Arthurian plots to popular interest in King Arthur in sixteenth-century London, from the thirteenth-century French prose Mort Artu to Tennyson's Idylls of the King. It includes discussion of shapeshifters and loathly ladies, attitudes to treason, royal deaths and funerals in the fifteenth century and the nineteenth, late medieval Scottish politics and early modern chivalry. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor...

Edition with English translation of Middle Dutch version of the adventures of Gawain.

Some time in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Guillaume le Clerc composed the story of Fergus, a romance in which the main character features as a -new- Perceval in a realistically depicted Scottish landscape. Shortly thereafter, perhaps as early as 1250, the story was translated into Middle Dutch. The Ferguut, however, is an adaptation of the Old French Fergus, rather than a slavish translation. The result is a romance which possesses all the appeal of the Old French Fergus, but at the same time reveals something of the Middle Dutch romancer's tastes and techniques. This volume...

The romances translated here are contained in the so-called Lancelot Compilation. Compiled in the early fourteenth century by five scribes, its 241 extant folios contain the lion's share of Arthurian romance in Middle Dutch, no fewer than ten texts. The core of this compilation is comprised of translations into rhymed couplets of the Lancelot-Queste-Mort, into which seven additional romances have been inserted. The result is a compilation that successfully transforms a number of disparate texts into an ordered sequence of ten Arthurian romances, a project that rivals similar ones in better...

Available for the first time in paperback for the student, scholar or interested general reader, these acclaimed volumes from D.S. Brewer's Arthurian Archives series enable access to key texts - often for the first time - by the non-specialist. This specially-priced set includes Roman van Walewein, Ferguut and five interpolated romances from the Lancelot Compilation. Scholars of Arthurian romance who wish to add Middle Netherlandic texts to their scholarly discussion, or anyone simply wanting the pleasure of reading a good medieval story, will welcome these volumes... each translation reads...

The studies collected in this volume demonstrate the enduring vitality of the Arthurian legend in a wide range of places, times and media. Chretien's Conte du Graal features first in a study of the poem's place in its Anglo-Norman context, followed by four essays on Malory's Morte Darthur. Two of these deal with the significance of wounds and wounding in Malory's text, while the third explores the problematic aspects of sleep and the "slepynge knight" in that same romance. The fourth considers "transformative female corpses" as, quite literally, the embodiment of critical comment on the...

A wide range of Arthurian material is discussed here, reflecting its diversity, and enduring vitality. Geoffrey of Monmouth's best-selling Historia regum Britannie is discussed in the context of Geoffrey's reception in Wales and the relationship between Latin and Welsh literary culture. Two essays deal with the Middle English Ywain and Gawain: the first offers a comparative study of the Middle English poem alongside Chretien's Yvain and the Welsh Owein, while the second considers Ywain and Gawain with the Alliterative Morte Arthure in their northern English cultural and political context, the...