The whole subject is brought up to date - Arthurian buffs will want this book. DAILY TELEGRAPHWho was the real Arthur? Why were his knights so famous? Was he buried at Glastonbury? Richard Barber takes the story from the anonymous 8th century chronicler who first listed his battles to the novelists of the 20th century. A clear and readable account of the development of the stories about Arthur and his court from the earliest times to the present day.

Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, known as the Black Prince, is one of those heroes of history books so impressive as to seem slightly unreal. At sixteen he played a leading part in the fighting at Crecy; at twenty-six he captured the king of France at Poitiers; and eleven years later he restored Pedro of Castile to histhrone at the battle of Najera. His exploits were chronicled by Jean Froissart, but Froissart was writing three or four decades after the events he describes. There are other sources much closer to events, and it is on these that the present volume draws. Most...

Pilgrimage, the journey to a distant sacred goal, is found in all the great religions of the world. It is a journey both outwards to hallowed places and inwards to spiritual improvement; it can express penance for past evils, or the search for future good; the pilgrim may pursue spiritual ecstasy in the sacred sites of a particular faith, or seek a miracle through the medium of god or saint. Throughout the world, pilgrims move invisibly in huge numbers among the tourists of today, indistinguishable from them except in purpose. In England each year 000 pilgrims make the journey to Canterbury...

A dictionary? No, this is really an astonishing ark filled with beasts from a fabulous zoo far more varied and entertaining than anything from ordinary natural history. From Abaia and Abath/ to Ziz and Zu, from the microscopic Gigelorum that nests in a mite's ear to the giant serpent Jormungandor who encircles the whole globe, there are beasts from every corner of man's imagination: the light-hearted Fearsome Critters of lumberjack tales find a place alongside the Sirrush of Babylon and the Winged Bulls of Assyria. Some of the fabulous beasts turn out to be real creatures in disguise - a...

The image of Arthur has haunted the poets and writers of western Europe for nearly nine centuries, and there is no sign of an end to the reign of the -once and future king- in the world of literature. The Arthurian epic is as popular a subject now as it was when it was first fashioned, and the stories about Arthur and the heroes associated with him come in a bewildering number of guises. The sheer variety of the legends, both in style and content, is extraordinary; and this collection attempts to present, in a small space, something of this diversity. Sir Thomas Malory, half a millennium ago,...

(The series) epitomises what is best in Arthurian scholarship today.' ZEITSCHRIFT FUR ROMANISCHE PHILOLOGIE Since the first volume in 1982, edited by Richard Barber, Arthurian Literature/has appeared annually. Its original purpose was to offer a forum for long scholarly articles on all aspects - literary, historic, and artistic - of the Arthurian legend in Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, and bibliographical studies of all periods. Under new editors, whose first volume is Arthurian Literature 12 (1993), that original intention has been expanded to include shorter items of...