Essays in this fascinating and important collection examine the lifestyles and attitudes of the gentry in late medieval England. They consider the emergence of the gentry as a group distinct from the nobility, and explore the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. Studies of the gentry's literacy, creation and use of literature, cultural networks, religious activities...

This book sets Malory's Morte Darthur in the context of the political concerns that he shared with the fifteenth-century gentry readers for whom he wrote his book; the author draws widely on their correspondence and reading material, but looks particularly at the political content of contemporary miscellanies owned, commissioned and read by the gentry. She shows how the themes of political governance and royal succession, which are of primary importance in contemporary historical chronicles and genealogies, informed the political thinking of Malory's readers; and demonstrates how debates over...

The essays in this collection present a range of new ideas and approaches in Malory studies, looking again (as the title suggests) at several of the most debated critical points. A number of articles focus closely on the implications of the production of the text, ranging from the repercussions of the working habits of the Winchester scribes, as well as of Malory's printers and editors, to a reassessment of Caxton's Preface. There are also nuanced readings of geography and politics in the Morte Darthur and its fifteenth-century contexts, and analyses of text and context in relation to the...

The purpose of the Bibliography of the International Arthurian Society (BIAS) is, year by year, to draw attention to all scholarly books and articles directly concerned with the matiere de Bretagne. The bibliography aims to include all books, reviews and articles published in the year preceding its appearance, an exception being made for earlier studies which have been omitted inadvertently.

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Medieval miscellanies are multi-text manuscripts, made up of varied contents, often in a mixture of languages. They might be the work of one compiler or several, and might have been put together over a short period of time or over many years (even over several generations). Such mixed manuscripts are much more common that we might imagine and indeed are a typical environment for the survival of medieval texts.
Two novel and ambitious avenues for investigation form the core of the present volume. First, how can we define the miscellany and best engage with and exploit the complex questions...