Name: Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth Century England, Volume Two
Brand: Tony Hunt
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Tony Hunt

Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth Century England, Volume Two

$110.00

Here at last is the first systematic study of the teaching and learning of Latin in thirteenth century England based on evidence from nearly 200 manuscripts where the text has been glossed in the vernacular. These glosses providethe key to discovering the linguistic competence and interest of students at an elementary level: men and women who needed a working knowledge of Latin for practical purposes. The received view that Latin was the exclusive language of the schoolroom is shown to be mistaken and the exhaustive recording of the vernacular glosses provides a hitherto untapped source of lexical materials in French and Middle English. Teaching and Learning Latin is destined to become an essential source-book for medievalists interested in language, literacy and culture.

Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth Century England, Volume Two

David Llewellyn Dodds

Arthurian Poets

$130.00

`I believe this volume will give to scholars of Williams expanded vistas from which to view his work, and to the general reader glimpses of Camelot'. MYTHPRINT
Includes Taliessin through Logres and The Regionof the Summer Stars - complex and haunting works which constitute the major imaginative writings about the Grail this century in addition to much previously unpublished material.

Charles Williams's two cycles of poems, Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars, constitute the major imaginative work about the Grail of the 20th century. Williams's vision of spiritual reality is expressed through symbols of great originality, and the complex patterns of sound and haunting rhythms make his poems deeply rewarding.In this new edition David Dodds collects together for the first time twenty-four of Williams's earlier poems on Arthurian themes, many never published before. They are from Williams's collection The Advent of Galahad, which both grew into and gave way to the Taliessin cycle. There are also later poems showing this transmutation in process, and fragments, designed to form a sequel to The Region of the Summer Stars, which appear for the first time. Besides the publication of this important new material, the present edition will serve to introduce new readers to the magic of these rich and lyrical pieces, which evoke a spiritual world in keeping with the highest ideals of Arthurian literature.

DAVID LLEWELLYN DODDS, of Merton College, was a Rhodes Scholar and Richard Weaver Fellow. He has lectured in English at Harlaxton College, worked at the Houghton and Regenstein Libraries, and is now Curator of C.S. Lewis's house, The Kilns. He is currently working on a complete critical edition of Charles Williams's unpublished Arthurian poetry and prose. Other poets in this series: Edwin Arlington Robinson; A.C. Swinburne; William Morris & Matthew Arnold.

J.E. Cross, Andrew Hamer

Wulfstan's Canon Law Collection

$110.00

First edition of important but problematic Anglo-Saxon text, with much to say about how later Anglo-Saxon writers used earlier materials.

This volume presents the first edited version of the canon collection associated with two of the key literary figures of the late Anglo-Saxon period: Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham [d. after 1006], and Wulfstan, bishop ofWorcester and archbishop of York [d. 1023]. Although of considerable importance, its textual problems (how many items comprise the collection? When, and by whom, was it composed?) have made proper critical study difficult. This edition aims to answer the need; the texts of the two recensions are edited with full critical apparatus of the five known manuscripts, a detailed study of sources, facing English translation, and an introductory essay on the text and its background.

Dr ANDREW HAMER teaches at the University of Liverpool.

Peter Nicholson

Gower's Confessio Amantis

$110.00

Eleven essays by influential scholars (from C.S. Lewis to A.J. Minnis] provide an introduction for students to Gower's Confessio Amantisand its important criticism.

This collection gathers in one place the essays that have done most to shape the modern critical discussion of the Confessio Amantis, and illustrates, by the choice of the landmarks of Gower criticism, how the study of thepoem has evolved. It also provides representative examples of major approaches to the poem and selected studies of its most important aspects The essays provide a valuable indication of precisely what kinds of challenges the Confessio Amantishas posed for modern readers; they will provide the groundwork for all future study of the Confessio

Essays by: G.C. MACAULAY, C.S. LEWIS, GEORGE R. COFFMAN, J.A.W. BENNETT, DEREK PEARSALL, ARNOBESCH, GEORGE. D. ECONOMOU, GOTÖZ SCHMITZ, DENISE N. BAKER, A.J. MINNIS and KURT OLSSON

Betsy Bowden

Eighteenth-Century Modernizations from the Canterbury Tales

$110.00

This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Tales which appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studying the history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so precise and extensive is available only for Chaucer among English authors. At least seventeen known and anonymous writers produced thirty-two modernised Canterbury tales during the century, plus tale links and adaptations of each other's work. The present collection contains only modernisations that have not seen print since 1796, thus excluding those by Pope and Dryden.
Although most works in this collection may be examined further in several British and American libraries, others cannot. Apparently only one copy has survived of an anonymous Miller's Tale (1791) with a thoughtful preface justifying the tale's overt sexuality published just as William Lipscomb was completing his 1795 edition that, in its preface, justifies exclusion from the pilgrimage of the notorious tales of Miller and Reeve. Such contrasting attitudes illustrate the dangers of generalisation about the usual reception or interpretation of Chaucer during this or any other socio-historic period; instead, the collection provides an untapped reservoir of material with which to investigate anew the rich complexity of his poetry and its enduring appeal.

BETSY BOWDEN is Professor of English at Rutgers University,New Jersey.

Eighteenth-Century Modernizations from the Canterbury Tales

Stephen Knight

Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism

$160.00

The first collection of major scholarly studies of aspects of the Robin Hood tradition.

The legends of Robin Hood are very familiar, but scholarship and criticism dealing with the long and varied tradition of the famous outlaw is as elusive as the identity of Robin himself, and is scattered in a wide range of sources, many difficult of access. This book is the first to bring together major studies of aspects of the tradition. The thirty-one studies take a variety of approaches, from archival exploration in quest of a real Robin Hood, to a political angle seeking the social meaning of the texts across time, to literary scholars concerned with origin, structures and generic variation, or moral and social significance; also included are considerations of theatre and filmstudies, and folklore and children's literature. Overall, the collection provides a valuable basis for further study.

STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales, Cardiff; he is well-known as an authority on the Robin Hood tradition, and has edited the recently-discovered Robin Hood Forresters Manuscript.

Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism

Anne Janowitz

Romanticism and Gender

$105.00

New approaches to women writers and attitudes to women in the Romantic period, principally focused on North America.

Focusing on the period from 1770 to 1830, this collection deploys recent thinking on women in the romantic period to define an agenda which will shape studies in this area into the next century. Investigating issues of class and gender, imperalism and gender identity, and gender and genre, the essays range widely over women and women's affairs during the period, and include pieces on such important writers as Emily Dickinson, Letitia Landon, and Anna Letitia Barbauld. Recent developments in the theory and practice of feminist literary criticism are used to reassess the literature of the period, and to interrogate the notion of romanticism, both as a conceptual model and as a periodbounded by dates and geographical restrictions. As a whole, the volume raises questions about gendered romanticism in America, about the surge of romantic poetics in mid-century, and about the appropriation of gendered romanticism by fin-de-siècle writers.
Dr ANNE JANOWITZteaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. Contributors: GARY KELLY, MARY FAVRET, WILLIAM KEACH, JOSEPHINE MCDONAGH, SONIA HOFKOSH, EMMA FRANCIS, DARIA DONNELLY, BRIDGET BENNETT, IRA LIVINGSTON

Adrian Stevens

Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval Tristan Legend

$130.00

This volume comprises selected papers from a Tristan symposium held at the Institute of Germanic Studies in London. The symposium was conceived by the organizers as an experiment in transatlantic dialogue and the papers representthe views of scholars from a variety of North American and British universities. The main focus of attention is Gottfried's Tristan. Familiar assumptions about the text are questioned and fresh perspectives are offered on many contentious issues: those disagreements which persist are themselves a reflection posed by Gottfried's masterpiece. In addition, new light is thrown on the treatment of the Tristan theme in medieval and modern times.Contributors are:MICHAEL CURSCHMANN, W.J. MCCANN, MARGARET BROWN, C. STEPHEN JAEGER, M.H. JONES, ADRIAN STEVENS, ARTHUR GROOS, THOMAS KERTH, MICHAEL BATTS, MARIANNE WYNN, JANET WHARTON, GEORGE GILLESPIE, JOAN M. FERRANTE, LESLIE SEIFFERT, SIDNEY M. JOHNSON, PETRUS W. TAX, AUGUST CLOSS, H.B. WILLSON, ROY WISBEY.

Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval Tristan Legend

Judith N. Garde

Old English Poetry in Medieval Christian Perspective

$110.00

Dr Garde questions modern interpretations of the nature and purpose of Old English religious poetry.

In this doctrinal appraisal Dr Garde contends that English religious poetry in the early medieval "age of faith" was intended to convey conventional Christian teaching to unlearned audiences. In this reading, Old English religiousverse is dominated by the Christus Victor tradition, the exegetical perceptions often assumed in modern criticism are not justified.
The tradition of Christ's triumphant Descent into hell, regarded as apocryphal by many critics, is discussed in the context of the Resurrection and Christian expectations of eternal life in the Advent lyrics, the Descent poems, Christ II and Phoenix. The Dream of the Rood, Elene and Christ III are seen as describing Christ's Incarnation, death, Descent, Resurrection and Ascension, the Pentecostal phenomenon and the Church in the world. Expectations of judgment, the future resurrection of flesh, and the prospect of eternal bliss for righteous Christians complete the credal sequence.The author suggests that unstated, wholly familiar perceptions of salvation in Christ underlie all Old English religious verse, and that interpreters ignore these traditions at their peril.

JUDITH GARDE's published work includes contributions to the Journal of Literature and Theology and Neophilologus.

Old English Poetry in Medieval Christian Perspective

Jane Roberts, Janet L. Nelson, Malcolm Godden

Alfred the Wise

$130.00

Alfred's life, work and influence studied through writings of his age.

Alfred and the great achievements of his reign are once more at the centre of scholarly discussion, and the studies in this collection make a significant contribution to the continuing debate. Focusing particularly on the writingsof Alfred's age, the contributions, by leading scholars in the field, examine Alfred's life, work and influence: there are accounts of law and morality; examinations of translations and their sources; and investigations of wordsand events, throwing new light on all major aspects of Alfred's reign. As a whole, the volume is an appropriate tribute to Janet Bately, whose writings on the age of Alfred are known and admired by both historians and literary scholars throughout the world.

Professor JANE ROBERTS teaches in the Department of English, King's College, London; Professor JANET L. NELSON, Director of the Centre for Late Antiques and Medieval Studies, teaches in the Department of History, King's College, London; Professor MALCOLM GODDEN is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford.

Contributors and contents: ANDREW BREEZE, J.E. CROSS, ANDREW HAMER, ROBERTA FRANK, ALLEN J. FRANTZEN, M.R. GODDEN, WALTER GOFFART, LYNNE GRUNDY, CYRIL HART, JOYCE HILL, SIMON KEYNES, ANN KNOCK, BRUCE MITCHELL, JANET L. NELSON, BARBARA RAW, JANE ROBERTS, D.G. SCRAGG, ALFRED B. SMYTH, E.G. STANLEY, PAULE. SZARMACH, PATRICK WORMALD

William F. Pollard, Robert Boenig

Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England

$110.00

Essays on the ways in which the mystical writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth century responded to and influenced each other.

Without the theologians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, without the anchoritic writings of the thirteenth century, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe could not have written as they did. Likewise,those who followed them - the Wycliffites, the Bridgeittines, the writers of religious lyrics -responded to those who had gone before. The articles presented here identify major themes and the web of influence that links them; new but solid interpretations are offered of the key figures and their background, and the emphasis is on the rich variety of mysticism these authors and texts embody.

WILLIAM F. POLLARD is Professor of English at Huntingdon College; ROBERT BOENIG is Associate Professor of English at Texas A & M University.

Contributors: THOMAS H. BESTUL, ROBERT BOENIG, RITAMARY BRADLEY, SUSAN DICKMAN, DOUGLAS GRAY, ROGER ELLIS, MICHAEL P. KUCZYNSKI, WILLIAM F. POLLARD, DENIS RENEVEY, ELLEN M. ROSS, ANNE SAVAGE, RENÉ TIXIER.

Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England

Richard Barber, Tony Hunt, Toshiyuki Takamiya

Arthurian Literature VIII

$110.00

Continuing its policy of publishing extended explorations of Arthurian subjects, this eighth volume of Arthurian Literature contains four articles. Elizabeth Archibald addresses the reasons for the insertion of the story of Mordred's incestuous birth into many versions of the Arthurian legend (including Malory's) from the early 13th century on, and follows its development from the Vulgate Cycle to later Arthurian narratives. The use of irony to point up aspects of the Lancelot-Guinevere relationship in the prologue to Le Chavalier de la Charrete is explored by Jan Janssens. The early 13th-century Romance of Fergus is introduced and translated by D.D.R. Owen, who finds it of special interest not just because of its uniquely Scottish setting, but also because its use of parody foreshadows later medieval comedy; Scottish concerns also figure in Edward Donald Kennedy's discussion of the 15th-century chroniclerJohn Hardyng's use of the story of Galahad's grail quest, and the changes he made.

Tony Hunt

Popular Medicine in 13th-Century England

$160.00

'Fills a big gap. It is concerned with recipe collections, perhaps the least studied of all medical documents, and includes - chants, charms and prayers, as well as herbal remedies for a variety of ailments.' 'Popular Medicinesucceeds in two ways: the quality of its philological scholarship confirms the growing academic respectability of an interest in medical history, and the abundance of primary material made available for the first time in print offers a way of reconciling opposing views on medieval English medicine. It forces medical historians to think hard about the diagnostic categories they use, and sanctions a pluralist approach to an equally diverse systemof medicine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
The first study of Anglo-Norman medical prescriptions to appear in print. Six major collections, comprising over 1000 receipts, are analysed and edited. A historical introduction provides the richest and most up-to-date account of popular medicine in the period 1100-1300 yet published. Full botanical glossaries are provided.
TONY HUNTis a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford.

Popular Medicine in 13th-Century England

Hilda Ellis Davidson, Peter Fisher

Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, Books I-IX

$60.00

A major source for the heroic and mythological traditions of northern Europe. '[The translation] is a masterpiece . . . the [Commentary] will doubtless prove of the greatest interest to historians.' ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW

In the early years of the thirteenth century the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus provided his people with a History of the Danes, an account of their glorious past from the legendary kings and heroes of Denmark to the historical present. It is one of the major sources for the heroic and mythological traditions of northern Europe, though the complex Latin style and the wide range of material brought together from different sources have limited its use. Here Hilda Ellis Davidson, a specialist in Scandinavian mythology, together with the translator Peter Fisher, provides a full English edition; each of the first nine books is preceded by an introductory summary, and a detailed commentary follows on the folklore and life and customs of twelfth-century Denmark - including the sources of Hamlet, of which Saxo gives the earliest known account.

HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON's other books include The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England; PETER FISHER is also the translator of Olaus Magnus: A Description of the Northern Peoples.

Saxo Grammaticus: <I>The History of the Danes</I>, Books I-IX

Takami Matsuda

Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry

$110.00

The concept of Purgatory in Middle English didactic writings is explored through examination of visions of the afterlife, sermons, homiletic treatises, and lyrics.

Purgatory has been the focus of much literary and historical attention since Jacques Le Goff's important Naissance du Purgatoire(1981), but this is the first book-length study to trace its development, reception and influence in Middle English literature.Following a survey of the doctrine of Purgatory and its cultural reception, the book explores the two major Middle English genres in which it is discussed, visions of the afterlife, and didactic andhomiletic treatises on death. In a detailed examination of these, along with sermons and lyrics, the author argues that such writings tend to be structured around the dualism of salvation and damnation, heaven and hell, with no intermediary alternative; at the same time the efficacy of intercession in the alleviation of suffering is repeatedly stressed. The book goes on to suggest that the influence of Purgatory was to provide a more pragmatic and optimistic attitude towards death and the afterlife, as reflected in such poems as the Vernon lyrics.
TAKAMI MATSUDAis Associate Professor in the Department of English and American Literature at Keio University.

Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry

Merritt R. Blakeslee

Love's Masks

$110.00

`Love's Masks raises provocative questions about the Old French Tristan poems and their context and provides some suggestive answers.' Donald Hoffman, QUONDAM ET FUTURUS, Vol. I, No 1 Spring 1991 `-a highly readable, useful overview of theTristan corpus, an excellent introduction for students and a suggestive analysis for specialists.' SPECULUM French Tristan poets of the 12th century worked within a self-contained tradition, though they drew on avariety of sources. In the process of retelling and embellishing the Tristan matter they elaborated a significant network of connections among the narrative elements of the French Tristan poems. There have been many studies of therelation of a given text to the traditional body of narrative material, but Dr Blakeslee seeks to do something rather different: he traces the poets' conscious thought processes and unconscious associations as they reworked theirmaterial.
This is achieved through an examination of a single narrative element - the identities of Tristan -in the first generation of French Tristan texts, those versions of the Tristan legend composed in octosyllabic Anglo-Norman or French verse in the latter half of the 12th century and the first quarter of the 13th. Dr Blakeslee studies Tristan's parentage and antecedents, the circumstances of his birth and naming, his education and skills,his physical appearance. He then considers his social identities - knight, musician and hunter -and analyses the narrative function and metaphoric significance of the disguises that he adopts: leper, fool, minstrel, `Nightingale',pilgrim, and wild man; finally he discusses the hero as victim and saviour, identities that bring together in a single unifying metaphor the varied and contradictory elements of Tristan's persona. The meaning of these identitiesis seen to arise from the metaphorical development of narrative detail in an earlier version of the legend or in the broader literary and cultural ethos in which the poem was composed.

Carol Fewster

Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance

$110.00

A tough and determined book bringing new ideas to bear - deserves serious consideration' REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES

Traditionality and Genrelooks for a new approach to romance, a way to assess and interpret individual romances in terms of their shared features of style, structure and implied audience. It identifies these features in theromances in the Auchinleck manuscript before proceeding to a study of romance style as it is employed in Amis and Amiloun, and romance structure in Guy of Warwick. The legendary Guy was adopted by the earls of Warwick as their ancestor, and this, coupledwith the romance's more broadly commemorative intention, is used by the author to demonstrate the essentially conservative appeal of romance generally. The Squyr of lowe degre, a late and sophisticated romance, finally substantiated the author's observations on romance style and structure. These three romances also inter-relate in other ways, borrowing from and alluding to each other in characteristic fashion, and thus providing further opportunities to study the common features of the genre.

Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance

Katharina M. Wilson

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim

$29.95

Selection of the works of Hrotsvit, the first-known woman dramatist, containing legends, dramas, and epics.

Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (c.935 - c.975), almost certainly of noble Saxon parentage, was a canoness of the Saxon imperial abbey of Gandersheim, living and working there during its time of greatest material prosperity and cultural and intellectual pre-eminence. Her importance cannot be overestimated: she is the first poet of Saxony; the first known dramatist of Christianity (indeed the first known woman dramatist of any time); and a woman displaying erudition and wit in an essentially patriarchal age, a female author in a literary field dominated by men who insisted on re-evaluating and redrawing the literary depiction of women. Discovered in the late fifteenth century, her extraordinary oeuvre, written in medieval Latin, comprises a wide variety of genres: eight legends, six dramas, and two epics, organised into three books.
The present volume contains a selection of Hrotsvit's works in Englishtranslation, together with an interpretative essay, critical introduction, and scholarly apparatus.
Professor KATHARINA WILSONteaches at the University of Georgia.

Leslie J. Workman, Kathleen Verduin

Studies in Medievalism VII

$110.00

Twelve essays discuss how the middle ages are reflected in English culture from the sixteenth century to the present day.

Eleven essays, by scholars from America, Australia and the United Kingdom, investigate reinventions of the middle ages in English culture from the end of sixteenth century to the present day. Topics addressed include medievalism in English popular literature; Sir Walter Scott's Sir Tristrem; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Chaucer; George Stephens and Old Northern philology; Anglo-Saxonism and the Franco-Prussian War; Dante and the Victorian historical sense; the Grail paintings of G.F. Watts; heterogeneity and the Kelmscott Chaucer; revivals of the Chester Mystery plays; and the cinematic art of Terry Gilliam.

KATHLEEN VERDUIN is Professor of English, Hope College,Michigan.

Contributors: JOHN SIMONS, DAVID MATTHEWS, ALAN LUPACK, KAREN HODDER, ANDREW WAWN, MARILYNN LINCOLN BOARD, CLARE SIMMONS, ALISON MILBANK, DIANA ARCHIBALD, DAVID MILLS, RICHARD H. OSBERG

Neil Wright

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth V

$160.00

A critical edition and translation of a 13th-century Latin poem from Brittany; a retelling of Geoffrey's History emphasising the tragic side of Britain's decline.

The Gesta Regum Britannie, a Latin poem comprising nearly 5,000 hexameters, is a vital but little known witness to the reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britannie. Written shortly before the middle of the thirteenth century, the poem is dedicated to Cadioc, bishop of Vannes in Brittany, and so testifies to the Breton reaction to and enthusiasm for Geoffrey's popular pseudo-history. The poem also provides important evidence for the literary culture of thirteenth-century Brittany. Much in the poem is original and this new edition will bring it to a wider audience so that it may be read in conjunction with the more familiar vernacular verse versions of Geoffrey's Historia.
NEIL WRIGHTis a SeniorMember of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth V

Peter V. Davies

Rewards and Punishments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry of Medieval France

$110.00

The essays in this volume, a Festschrift for Professor Kenneth Varty, are centred on the relatively unexplored theme of rewards and punishments in French Arthurian romance and the medieval lyric. The Arthurian studies range over verse (Béroul, Chrétien, Jean Renart, the Roman de Silence) and prose (Robert de Boron, the Queste del Saint Graal, Perlesvaus, Lancelot and the Tristan), reflecting a variety of different approaches, from an examination of the legal background to the work of Béroul to an iconographical survey of hitherto undiscussed and unpublished Tristan illustrations to close textual analysis of an episode in Robert de Boron's Joseph and Merlin.

Rewards and Punishments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry of Medieval France

Joseph Harris, Karl Reichl

Prosimetrum

$160.00

Comparative studies of a number of mixed prose-and-verse literatures, from Europe to the Orient, from classical culture to the 19th century.

In virtually all the literary traditions of the world there are works of verbal art that depend for part of their effect on the juxtaposition of prose and verse. This volume takes the first step towards a comparative study of "prosimetrum", the mixture of prose and verse, with essays by leading linguists and literary scholars of a selection of prosimetrical traditions. The nature of what constitutes verse or prose is one underlying question addressed. An outline of historical developments emerges, especially for Europe and the Near East, with articles on classical, medieval and nineteenth-century literatures. Oriental prosimetrical literatures discussed include that of Vedic Indiaand the old literary cultures of China and Japan; also represented are oral and oral-derived folk literatures of recent centuries in Africa, the West, and Inner Asia.

Professor KARL REICHL teaches in the English Department at the University of Bonn; Professor JOSEPH HARRIS teaches in the English Department at Harvard University.

Contributors: KRISTIN HANSON, PAUL KIPARSKY, JAN ZIOLKOWSKI, ARDIS BUTTERFIELD, PROINSIAS Mac CANA, JOSEPH HARRIS, JUDITH RYAN, W.F.H. NICOLAISEN, LEE HARING, STEVEN WEITZMAN, WOLFHART HEINRICHS, DWIGHT REYNOLDS, JULIE SCOTT MEISAMI, KARL REICHL, WALTHER HEISSIG

G.A. Lester

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist II

$105.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist II

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature VI

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Michael Glencross

Reconstructing Camelot

$110.00

Study exploring the treatment of the Arthurian legends by the French Romantic movement.

French Romanticism was a widespread movement, as apparent in the works of historians and scholars as in the works of creative writers. One of its principal characteristics was the cult of the middle ages, and this book examines the treatment of the Arthurian legends in French Romantic medievalism. Taking into account works of historiography and literary history, as well as literary texts proper, it assesses the place of the Arthurian material in French culture in the period up to 1860, the date of publication of Edgar Quinet's Merlin l'enchanteur. In so doing, it reveals key features of French Romanticism and traces the origins of some of the problems and contradictions which still affect the practice of medieval studies. The authorargues that the depiction of Arthurian legends in French Romantic writing discloses some of the underlying ideological positions of the movement and the developing tensions between the interests of a general literary public and the ambitions of scholars seeking to define and promote medieval literature as an emerging field of study. In addition to scholars such as Claude Fauriel, Paulin Paris and Francisque Michel, other important figures in French Romanticism are considered, including Quinet and Michelet.
MICHAEL GLENCROSSis Senior Lecturer in French at the University College of Ripon & York St John.

Maya Bijvoet Williamson

The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner (1439-1440)

$25.95

Eye-witness account of the theft of the crown of St Stephen in 15c Hungary.

Helene Kottanner was servant and confidante of the widowed Queen Elizabeth of Hungary (1409-1442). This is her first-person account of the part she played in the theft of the holy crown of St Stephen from the treasury of the royalstronghold Visegrad on 20 February, 1440, when the crown was smuggled out of the stronghold hidden in a pillow. It was immediately rushed on a sled to the queen, who within hours of its arrival at her castle in Komorn was delivered of a baby boy, Ladislaus Posthumous (1440-1457), who was crowned king of Hungary three months later. Helene Kottanner's account is unconsciously revealing about herself and her ambitions, allowing a rare glimpse into the innerworld of a late-medieval woman.

The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner (1439-1440)

Renee L. Curtis

Le Roman de Tristan en prose I

$110.00

`The publication of this book is an event of some importance in Arthurian studies. The Prose Tristanwas one of the most widely read works in medieval France; written between 1215 and 1235, it continued to be copied until the end of the Middle Ages and its popularity lasted another hundred years in printed editions. It was in fact in prose rather than in poetic form that the legend was known - Dr Curtis is to be warmly congratulated on undertaking this important task.' ERASMUS [BRIAN WOLEDGE]This three volume critical edition of the Prose Tristan, based on a complete collation of all the manuscripts with the Carpentras manuscript (404), is the first edition of this important medieval work ever published. Renée Curtis's three-volume critical edition of the Prose Tristanis the only edition of this very important medieval work ever published; until the first volume (now reprinted with corrections) appeared in 1963, the work was only accessible in the form of a few fragments which had been edited and a summary of the romance made by E. Löseth in 1891. Dr Curtis's edition is based on a complete collation of all the manuscripts, and this led her to choose the Carpentras manuscript (404) as the basis of her edition.
Professor Brian Woledge, the eminent medievalist, wrote of this first volume in Erasmus:`The publication of this book is an event of some importance in Arthurian studies. The Prose Tristanwas one of the most widely read works in medieval France; written between 1215 and 1235, it continued to be copied until the end of the Middle Ages and its popularity lasted another hundred years in printed editions. It was in fact in prose rather than in poetic form that the legend was known -Dr Curtis is to be warmly congratulated on undertaking this important task.'

Neil Wright

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth II

$130.00

A critical edition based on the eight known First Variant manuscripts, the prime source of Wace's Roman de Brut. Geoffrey's `history' of the British from their first colonisation of the island under Brutus to the late 7th century AD was one of the most influential works of the 12th century, and introduced to a wider audience central figures in English literature, including King Arthur and King Lear. `Wright's long introduction is a model of meticulousness and thoroughness...a fine study and edition...In a previous review I called Wright's edition of the vulgate text ``an auspicious beginning'' to a series that promised to become the standard scholarly treatment of Geoffrey's Historia...That promise is being kept.' Lister M. Matheson, SPECULUM April 1991 A critical edition based on the eight known First Variant manuscripts, the prime source of Wace's Roman de Brut. Geoffrey's `history' of theBritish from thier first colonisation of the island under Brutus to the late 7th century AD was one of the most influential works of the 12th century, and introduced to a wider audience central figures in English literature, including King Arthur and King Lear.

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth II

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature IV

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Frances Beer

Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love and The Motherhood of God

$25.95

Frances Beer chooses Julian's first, more intimate, Revelations on which to base this accessible edition and study of her life and work.

Despite the strange and distant nature of her life and subject-matter, the works of Julian of Norwich remain immediate and compelling. Her Revelations are recorded in two versions: the short text, or "first edition", written near the time; and the better-known second version, which is both longer and more complex, completed some twenty years later. The short text, offering personal details edited out in her "second edition", but which allow a bettersense of Julian as a person, is presented here in translation. It includes also those chapters from the long text that describe Julian's doctrine of the Motherhood of God. The volume also contains an introduction, placing Julianin the larger context of the fourteenth-century English mystical tradition, and an Interpretative Essay.

FRANCES BEER is Professor of English at York University, Toronto.

Julian of Norwich: <I>Revelations of Divine Love</I> and <I>The Motherhood of God</I>

M. Teresa Tavormina

Kindly Similitude

$110.00

The imagery of marriage and the family in Piers Plowmanrelated to contemporary social history.

Kindly Similitude is the first study to offer a detailed reading of the many passages in Piers Plowman A, B, and C concerned with marriage and family, and to place them within the frameworks of contemporary social history, law, theology, exegesis, and literature. The author shows how Langland draws on the experiences of familial life both literally and metaphorically to further his expositions of law and love, nature and grace, the image of God in individuals and society, the use of time and material goods, the perversion of right relationships through covetise, and doing well in the active life. For Langland, an unmistakably public poet, the marital householdis inextricably linked to religious, economic, and political institutions. It reflects and transmits a divine exemplar of community, and plays a fundamental role in creating the society in which he and his audience must live. Thisimportant new critical approach complements the strong current attention to the poem's intellectual and ecclesiological contexts.

Professor M. TERESA TAVORMINA is at the Department of English, Michigan State University.

David Wallace

Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio

$130.00

David Wallace's examination of the aims and literary affiliations of Boccaccio's early writings provides an indispensable preface to and context for an informed appraisal of Chaucer's usage of Boccaccio. Previous studies of the relationship between the work of the two poets have tended to consider Chaucer's borrowings without making a thorough study of the traditions which shaped the Italian writer's work. Wallace argues that Boccaccio was not primarily concerned with winning recognition at the Angevin court, but was chiefly concerned with fashioning an identity for himself as an illustrious vernacular author. Chaucer recognised that both the Filostrato and Teseida derived their basic narrative capabilities from popular tradition analogous to that of the English tail-rhyme romance. Following a detailed analysis of Chaucer's translation practice in Troilus and Criseyde, Wallace concludesthat it was Boccaccio's attempt to develop a narrative art occupying the middle ground between popular and illustrious, domestic and European traditions that Chaucer found so uniquely congenial and instructive.

Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio

Alison Adams

The Romance of Yder

$110.00

The Romance of Ydersurvives in a unique manuscript in Cambridge University Library, and has only once been edited; no translation survives. Yet it is a highly interesting work, reflecting a tradition which reaches back to the beginnings of Arthurian romance in the early 12th century; it is linked to the famous Arthurian sculpture on the cathedral at Modena, and contains an episode which foreshadows the temptation scene in Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight, while elsewhere Celtic material is much in evidence as the basis of the tale. It is also close in style and sometimes in content to the work of Chrétien de Troyes. Dr Adams' text provides a clear version of an often corrupt original, and the facing translation serves to illuminate the text further, enabling this neglected work to take its rightful place in the ranks of Arthurian literature.

Jane Chance

Christine de Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector

$29.95

Christine de Pizan (1364-?1430) was the first French woman poet to make her living by the pen, and the first female interpreter of classical myths; she held enormous power in the French court and influenced late medieval culture in France and in England in a number of ways. The Letter of Othea to Hector, her most popular work, is a series of a hundred verse texts about a mythological figure or moment, with prose moral glosses explaining how to readthe myth in order to improve human character. It is translated here with introduction, notes, and interpretative essay.

Christine de Pizan's <I>Letter of Othea to Hector</I>

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski

The Writings of Margaret of Oingt

$29.95

Margaret of Oingt was born around 1240 into a noble family in the French Beaujolais region, and became prioress of the Carthusian charterhouse of Poletains; visionary and mystic, her writings are intelligent and humorous. Includedhere are the Page of Meditations, on sin and salvation; the Mirror, a vision of Christ; the Life of the Virgin Saint Beatrice of Ornacieux, an exemplary text; and letters and stories, including comments on her problems as prioress. They are translated from the Latin and Francoprovencal with an introduction, notes, and interpretative essay.

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski is Chair, Department of French and Italian, and Professorof French, at the University of Pittsburgh.

Derek S Brewer

A Companion to the Gawain-Poet

$160.00

Essays intended as a companion to a reading of the works of the Gawain poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience

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 includetheories 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 later adaptations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Afull bibliography completes the volume.

DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge; JONATHAN GIBSON has worked as a lecturer in the Universities of Exeter and Durham.

Contributors: DEREK BREWER, MALCOLM ANDREW, A.C. SPEARING, JANE GILBERT, MICHAEL J. BENNETT, DAVID AERS, RALPH ELLIOTT, MICHAEL THOMPSON, FELICITY RIDDY, ANNE ROONEY, MICHAEL LACY, A.S.G. EDWARDS, H.N. DUGGAN, ELISABETH BREWER, RICHARD NEWHAUSER, HELEN COOPER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PRISCILLA MARTIN, NICK DAVIS, DEREK PEARSALL, GILLIAN ROGERS, BARRY WINDEATT, DAVID J. WILLIAMS

Glyn S. Burgess

The Spirit of the Court

$160.00

42 papers on all aspects of court-orientated culture, ranging from the period of the earliest troubadour, William of Poitiers, in the twelfth century, to the Renaissance and beyond.

A.J. Minnis

Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity

$110.00

Professor Minnis argues that the paganism in Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Taleis not simply a backdrop but must be central to our understanding of the texts. Chaucer's two great pagan poems, Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale, belong to the literary genre known as the `romance of antiquity' (which first appeard in the mid 12th century), in which the ancient pagan world is shown on its own terms, without the blatant Christian bias against paganism characteristic of works like the Chanson de Roland, where the writer is concerned with present-day rather than classical forms of paganism. Chaucer's attitudes to antiquity were influenced, but not determined, by those found in the compilations, commentaries, mythographies and history books which we know that he knew. These sources illuminate the manner in which he transformed Boccaccio. Much modern criticism has concentrated on the medieval veneer of manners and fashions which are ascribed to the heathen protagonists of Troilus and The Knight's Tale; Dr Minnis examines the other side of the coin, Chaucer's historical interest in cultures very different from his own. The paganism in these poems is not mere background and setting, but an essential part of their overall meaning.

Lesley Smith, Jane H.M. Taylor

Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda's Conference, 1993

$110.00

Papers on women and religion in the middle ages, drawn from archive, manuscipt and early printed sources.

Taking a variety of critical approaches, the papers in Women, the Book and the Godlyanalyse the subject of women and religion, illustrating clearly the wealth of previously untapped material on this topic, whether in archive, manuscript or early printed source. The volume examines writing by women, writing which excludes women, and writing which ignores them, as well as women readers, women patrons, and women who were read to. Archaeology, canon and civil law, and trial depositions are all represented. The common determinants of marital and social status are, of course, explored, but so also are the problems of women and language, women's various roles as creators, recipients, and objects, and women's positions on the sliding scale between the orthodox, the reforming, and the heterodox churches. The essays thus represent something of the variety and range of work being done on medieval women today.
Contributors: ALCUIN BLAMIRES, JACQUELINE MURRAY, WYBREN SCHEEPSMA, ANNEM. DUTTON, ROSALYNN VOADEN, GRACE JANTZEN, ELIZABETH A. ANDERSEN, THOMAS LUONGO, BENEDICTA WARD, GOPA ROY, GEORGES WHALEN, CATHERINE INNES-PARKER, HELENPHILLIPS, SHANNON McSHEFFREY, PETER BILLER

Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda's Conference, 1993

Marion Glasscoe

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England III

$110.00

These papers are the proceedings of the third international Exeter symposium, and promote an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of the medieval mystical tradition in England. This is an area of study which does not fruitfully lend itself to any single academic discipline in isolation; here, theologians, historians, literary crtitics, textual scholars, those engaged in the study of semiotics and those involved in the practice of psychiatric medicine exchange ideas and explore together the differing aspects which engage them in this field of study.

CONTRIBUTORS: R. BRADLEY, R. ALLEN, R. COPELAND, M. MOYES, J. HOGG, F. WOHRER, A. BALDWIN, S. DICKMAN, D. WALLACE

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England III

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature I

$110.00

`[The series] epitomises what is best in Arthurian scholarship today.' ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR ROMANISCHE PHILOLOGIE Since the first volume in 1982, edited by Richard Barber, Arthurian Literaturehas 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 under 5000 words, along with the regular Updates to earlier volumes. All articles are refereed, and ArthurianLiterature has become the year-book of serious Arthurian scholarship. `An indispensable component of any historical or Arthurian library.' NOTES AND QUERIES

Robert R. Edwards

Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative

$110.00

Essays addressing the relation of aesthetic artistry to historical context in medieval English narrative.

A collection of essays offering original arguments in a number of areas. Papers cluster around two topics: the writing of Langland and Chaucer, and writing as historical process. These reflect Frank's own wide-ranging work. The papers contain a refreshing ideological diversity while maintaining coherence of intellectual concerns. There is a discussion of the working of memory in The Knight's Tale. On debt, on Langland's Christology and on revelry, some very interesting ideas are put foward. In addition, literary contexts for the two major poets are usefully and thoroughly mapped out, and three papers illustrate how historical events and processes may be perceived in stimulatingly different ways. Included is an introduction from the editor and bibliography of Robert Worth Frank, Jnr.

Contributors: ELIZABETH KIRK, C. DAVID BENSON, ANNA BALDWIN, M.TERESA TAVORMINA, MONICA McALPINE, MARY CARRUTHERS, KATHRYN L. LYNCH, CAROLYN P. COLLETTE, MARY HAMEL, PAUL STROHM, THOMAS J. HEFFERMAN, PEGGY KNAPP

Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative

James L. Wimsatt

Chaucer and the Poems of `CH'

$110.00

Translation of fifteen lyrics marked "Ch" found in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, along with a detailed inventory of the contents and a study of English and Chaucerian connections.
When Chaucer began his service inthe English courts in the late 1350s, the French lyric in the formes fixes of ballade, rondeau, virelay, and chant royal was the poetry of the court. Chaucer no doubt composed such poetry. Among extant anthologies of lyricsin the fixed forms from that time, University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, comprising 310 poems of which about half are anonymous, seems the most likely to contain works written by Chaucer. To add to the likelihood, fifteen of the best anonymous poems - ten ballades, four chants royaux, and a rondeau - have the intriguing initials "Ch" entered just beneath the rubrics.
Besides editions and translations of the fifteen lyrics, Chaucer and the Poems of "Ch" provides a record of the numerous filiations of the Pennsylvania MS collection with Chaucer and England. This record includes text of a fascinating exchange of poems between Chaucer's early contemporaries, Philippe de Vitry and Jean de la Mote, the text of Granson's Cinq Balades Ensievans in the closest version extant to Chaucer's Complaint of Venus, and an analysis of the contents of the MS as they relate to Chaucer. Chaucerand the Poems of "Ch" concludes with a detailed inventory of this little-studied MS with particular note of Chaucerian aspects of it.

Robert Myles

Chaucerian Realism

$110.00

Myles challenges the convention of the `medieval mind' and perceives new semantic sophistication in Chaucer's language.

NB DSB BLURB ON CERTAIN OCCASIONS What is the difference between saying something and meaning it, and saying something and not meaning it? A modern question. A Chaucerian question. Through his analysis of intentionality and the metaphysics of speech, Robert Myles shows why Chaucer's appreciation of the functioning of language and thought could be `modern'. Through his analysis of Chaucer's works, particularly the Friar's Tale, Myles demonstrates that Chaucer's understanding of these is modern and the myth of the medieval mind as other than our own is exploded. The medieval belief in intentionality, the object-directedness of all beings, allowed appreciationof a fact: thought and language areintentional. On a practical level Chaucer deliberately exploits three-level semantics (signs are simultaneously mind-drected and world-directed) to create `realistic' fiction in the modernliterary sense of the term. Myles also argues that Chaucer is a realist in the philosophical sense, a view which goes counter to the current of much recent criticism. This book will not only be a challenging addition to medievaland Chaucerian studies, but has interesting implications for the historical study of intentionality, semiotics and epistemology.
DR ROBERT MYLESis senior lecturer at the English and French Language Centre, McGill University, and a research fellow at the Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature II

$110.00

The second of these annual volumes contains five wide-ranging pieces. In the medieval field, Neil Wright examines Geoffrey of Monmouth's use of Gildas; Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann contributes an important illustrated essay on the Round Table; and Fanny Bogdanow looks at Chrétien de Troyes' use of troubadour ideals. Mary Wildman contributes to a bibliography of 20th-century creative literature on Arthur. Finally, Toshiyuki Takamiya and Andrew Armour present atranslation of Soseki's Arthurian story 'Kairo-ko: A Dirge', the only known Arthurian novel in Japanese, dealing with the eternal triangle of Lancelot, Guinevere and Elaine. The updating section includes and account of another MSof the 'Vera Historia de Morte Arthuri'.

James P. Carley, Felicity Riddy

Arthurian Literature XII

$110.00

Latest work on Arthur by respected scholars.

This is the first volume of Arthurian Literature to be edited by Professor Carley and Professor Riddy. It has a strong English flavour with papers on Malory, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Awntyrs off Arthure, Hardyng, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and court culture under Edward IV. The new editors introduce Notes, shorter explorations of topics currently under scrutiny by Arthurian scholars, and there will be updates of articles contained in previous volumes.
Contributorsinclude: RICHARD BARBER, FELICITY RIDDY, BONNIE WHEELER, HELEN PHILLIPS, MARTIN SCHICHTMAN, LAURIE FINKE and N.M. DAVIS.

Chrétien de Troyes

Cligés

$160.00

Fully annotated edition, in French, of late 12c Arthurian romance.

Cligés is generally thought to be the second of Chrétien's Arthurian romances, probably written between 1185-87. This critical edition of Cligésis the first since Wendelin Foerster's in (1884) to take account of allthe manuscripts. Based on the Guiot manuscript, it contains many emendations, producing a text closer to that of Chrétien's original. Variant apparatus, notes, glossary, and editorial comment on the manuscripts accompany the text.

STEWART GREGORY is in the Department of French, Leicester University; the late CLAUDE LUTTRELL was formerly in the Department of English at the same university, and is known for his books and articles on 12c French Arthurian romance.

Karl Heinz Goller

The Alliterative Morte Arthure

$110.00

Essays examining a variety of aspects of important Arthurian poem.

The present volume grew from a nucleus of four papers given at the Twelfth International Arthurian Conference at Regensburg in 1971 on the alliterative Morte Arthure, increasingly recognised as one of the great masterpiecesof medieval English literature. These lectures sought to reappraise the poem and its somewhat enigmatic historical and cultural context, and are presented here in a much revised and expanded form. Unlike most volumes of theiskind, the contributions form an integrated whole, the result of lengthy discussions among the collaborating scholars over the past year. The topics range from the poem's place among chronicles and Arthurian romances to the date, audience and attitude to contempary problems, notably that of war. pecific fields such as heraldry and laments for the dead are examined in detail, while the linguistic structure of the poem is the subject of two essays.

A.J. Minnis

Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission

$110.00

11 studies of different types of late-medieval religious literature, in English, French and Latin.

This collection of new essays constitutes the proceedings of the sixth York Manuscripts Conference, held at the University of York in July 1991. Dr Doyle's lively introductory address is followed by eleven studies which range widely over the different types and genres of religious literature which were produced in late-medieval England, paying attention to both verse and prose, and representing the three literary languages of the time, English, French andLatin, though concentrating on texts in English.

Contributors: IAN DOYLE, BELLA MILLETT, O.S. PICKERING, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, THOMAS G. DUNCAN, SUE POWELL, RALPH HANNA III, VINCENT GILLESPIE, ANNE HUDSON, ALAN J. FLETCHER, A.S.G. EDWARDS, JOHN J. THOMPSON

Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission

J.A. Burnley

Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers Tradition

$110.00

This book is designed to explore the various kinds of association found in Chaucer's lexical usage, and so to alert the reader to the wider implications of particular words and phrases. By concentrating on the `architecture' of the language, Dr Burnley offers what is in some respects an antidote to the skilled contextual glossing of the editor, whose activities may often obscure important connections. Such connections are vital to the interpretation of anywork as a whole, and awareness of them is what distinguishes the scholar from the student who can `translate' Chaucer perfectly adequately without being aware of deeper meanings. Even apparently simple words such as cruel, mercy and pity can often carry subtle echoes and overtones. Dr Burnley is particularly concerned with words which carry some conceptual association, and thus with moral stereotypes inherited from classical and earlymedieval philosophy, which formed the currency of both secular and religious ideals of conduct in the Middle Ages. His prime concern is to identify the themes and symbols and their characteristic language, and thus to provide a firm basis for critical investigation in Chaucer's literary use of this material.

Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers Tradition

A.J. Minnis

Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius

$110.00

Chaucer's translation of Boethius' work is related to medieval intellectual culture, with attention to Trevet's Boethius commentary.

This collection seeks to locate the Boece within the medievaltradition of the academic study and translation of the Consolatiophilosophiae, thereby relating the work to the intellectual culturewhich made it possible.It begins with the fullest study yet undertakenof the Boethius commentary of Nicholas Trevet, this being a majorsource of the Boece. There follow editions and translationsof the major passages in Trevet's commentary whereNeoplatonic issuesare confronted, then Chaucer's debt to Trevet is assessed in a detailedreview. The many choices which faced Chaucer as a translator are indicated and the Boeceis placed in a long line of interpreters of Boethius in which both Latin commentators and vernacular translators played their parts. Finally, a view is offered of the Boece as anexample of late-medieval `academic translation': if the Boeceis assigned to this genre, it may be judged a considerable success.

Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius

Kari Anne Rand Schmidt

The Authorship of The Equatorie of the Planetis

$160.00

Detailed examination of the evidence linking the authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis with Chaucer.

The Equatorie of the Planetis, a Middle English text on the construction and use of a planetary equatorium, was composed in 1393. The unique manuscript, which appears to be the author's original, belongs to Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1952 it was brought to general attention by Derek Price who argued that the text was written by Geoffrey Chaucer. Whether the Equatorie is indeed Chaucer's has remained controversial ever since.
Dr Rand Schmidt's book offers a detailed examination of the literary, linguistic and codicological evidence linking the authorship of the Equatorie with Chaucer. She analyses and compares the manuscript with other specimens proposed asChaucer's hand, and evaluates the available methods of testing. The volume includes a new transcription of the Equatorie, accompanied by a facsimile of the MS, and a KWIC-concordance to the text. Diplomatic transcriptions of three Middle English astronomical texts have also been included and are printed here for the first time.

Dr KARI ANNE RAND SCHMIDT is a language specialist, teaching in the Department of English at the University of Oslo.

The Authorship of <I>The Equatorie of the Planetis</I>

Kelvin Everest

Percy Bysshe Shelley

$95.00

Essays on Shelley's achievements and distinctive qualities as a writer covering the whole range of his work.

This volume brings together important new readings of Shelley's poetry by British critics. All of the contributors are aware of Shelley's controversial political views, and assume from the outset an engaged political consciousness which informs every part of his work. But the primary intention in this collection is to provide positive reassessment of Shelley's achievements and distinctive qualities as a writer. Included are detailed readings of the lyricpoetry, the longer visionary narratives, and also the topical literary-political works. There are informed discussions of the local social and cultural circumstances in which some of Shelley's best-known poems were written.
In the poet's bi-centenary year, these readings are offered in a spirit of celebration and appreciation of a writer whose primary importance lies, not in his ideas, or his life, or his contexts, but in his status as a major Englishpoet.

Contributors: VINCENT NEWEY, KELVIN EVEREST, TIMOTHY WEBB, RICHARD CRONIN, EDWARD LARRISSY, BERNARD BEATTY, MICHAEL O'NEILL

Charles A. Owen Jr

The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales

$110.00

Owen investigates what the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales reveal about the way they came into being.

[see revs] This study of the manuscripts of the Canterbury Talescalls into question previous efforts to explain the complexities, the different orderings of the tales and the extraordinary shifts in textual affiliations within the manuscripts. Owen sees the manuscripts that survive, most of them collections of all or almost all the tales, as derived from the large number of single tales and small collections that circulated after Chaucer's death. This theory takes issue with all modern editions of the Canterbury Tales, which in Owen's view reflect the effort of medieval scribes and supervisors to make a satisfactory book of the collection of fragments Chaucer left behind. It is this collection of fragments, the authentic Tales of Canterbury by Geoffrey Chaucer, which reflects the different stages of the plan that was still evolving at his death.
CHARLES A. OWEN Jr is former Professor of English and Chairman of Medieval Studies at the University of Conneticut.

Elizabeth Archibald

Apollonius of Tyre

$110.00

A comparative study of one of the most familiar stories in medieval romance (used by Gower, Shakespeare, etc.), from late Antiquity into the Renaissance.

The Historia Apollonii is a rare Latin example of a genre of literature more fully attested in Greek, the so-called `Greek romance' - popular stories which involve lovers or families separated byshipwreck and misfortune andeventually joyfully reunited. It was one of the most widely and continuously read texts to survive from late Antiquity through the middle ages and into the Renaissance almost unchanged. Elizabeth Archibald's study of the Historia Apollonii, taking a valuable comparative approach, discusses the text's merits and interest, its date and possible origin, the present state of scholarship, and the question of its reception and genre in the middle ages and Renaissance. There follows a complete survey of the medieval and early Renaissance use and knowledge of the Historia Apollonii throughout Europe; and the book is completed with the text and translation of the romance itself. An indispensable work for students of medieval romance.

ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English, Durham University.

F.R.H Du Boulay

The England of Piers Plowman

$110.00

Du Boulay broadens the traditional, literary, view of Langland in this extended study of the poet and his world, the first to be written by a historian this century

Professor Du Boulay's book is both a highly readable introduction to Langland's work and an original contribution to the history of religious thought. It rejects the view that Langland was primarily a political radical or a prophet of doom and sees him as both a great imaginative poet and a preacher of Christian charity. Writing in an age of intellectual subtlety and shifting social frontiers, Langland expressed deep anxieties yet offered to his fellow-Christians a way of interior repentance and practical love, guided by the enigmatic figure of Piers.

C. David Benson, Elizabeth Robertson

Chaucer's Religious Tales

$110.00

These thirteen essays by distinguished Chaucerians deal with the most neglected genre of the Canterbury Tales, the religious tales. Although the prose works are also discussed, the primary focus of the volume is on Chaucer's four poems in rhyme royal: the Clerk's Tale, the Man of Law's Tale, the Second Nun's Tale and the Prioress's Tale.
Almost all of Chaucer's tales are religious in some sense, but these four works deal specifically and deeply with faith and spiritual transcendence. They appeal to qualities, such as pathos, not now in critical fashion, but at the same time they seem extraordinarily contemporary in their special interest inwomen and feminist issues. The time is appropriate to recognise their importance in Chaucer's canon, for he is a religious poet as surely as he is a poet of comedy and secular love. These essays survey past criticism on the religious tales and offer new approaches.

Contributors: C. DAVID BENSON, ELIZABETH ROBINSON, DEREK PEARSALL, BARBARA NOLAN, ROBERT WORTH FRANK, LINDA GEORGIANNA, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, A.S.G. EDWARDS, CAROLYN COLETTE, ELIZABETHD. KIRK, GEORGE R. KEISER, JANE COWGILL.

James Simpson

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist VII

$105.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist VII

Roger Simpson

Camelot Regained

$130.00

`Roger Simpson['s] finds are crisp, detailed, and convincing.' MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW The revival of interest in Arthurian literature in the early part of the 19th century has been largely unremarked until now. Roger Simpson's wide-ranging study of this period, in which he traces the dominant forms adopted by the Arthurian revival and presents a wealth of new material, shows it to have been of critical importance in the development of the legend and to have been a powerful early influence on Tennyson, whose role within the Arthurian revival is accordingly reassessed. His book also contains a complete bibliography of early 19th-century Arthurian poetry, drama and prose fiction, together with catalogues of paintings and illustrated books.

ROGER SIMPSON is Director, Centre for Overseas Student Programmes, at the University of East Anglia

Toshiyuki Takamiya

Aspects of Malory

$110.00

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 onMalory, there is a need for a general survey of recent research, which Aspects of Malory provides. The volume opens with a note by the late Professor Vinaver on Malory's prose, and three essays on Malory's Englishness andhis English sources, including an essay by P. J. C. Field which argues for an English rather than a French origin for the Tale of Gareth. This is followed by two essays on Malory's French sources, by Jill Mann and Mary Hynes-Berry. Terence McCarthy re-exasmines the sequence of the tales, and three further essays look at the scribal and textual tradition of Malory's work, in particular the relationship between the Winchester MS, Caxton's printed version, and the history of the MS. Finally, Richard R. Griffith reconsiders the authorship question, and proposes a long-forgotten Thomas Malory as the most likely candidate. There is a bibliography of recent research compiled byProfessor Takamiya.
.`Full of sound scholarship'. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

W.A. Davenport

Chaucer: Complaint and Narrative

$110.00

`Lively and interesting... Complaint and its interaction with its narrative context is explored across the range of Chaucer's oeuvre from the shorter poems to various Tales.' NOTES & QUERIES

Counters the view of Chaucer's complaints as exercises in a worn-out French tradition by demonstrating how his effort to fuse lyric and narrative modes led him to experiment with complaint. `His analyses give new perspectives on several of Chaucer's works - an intelligent, original and profitable view.'STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER

Roger Ellis

The Medieval Translator

$110.00

These studies of the theory and practice of translation in the middle ages show a wide range of translational practices, on texts which range from anonymous Middle English romances and Biblical commentaries to the writings of Usk,Chaucer and Malory. Included among them is a paper on a hitherto unknown woman translator, Dame Eleanor Hull; a paper which compares a draft translation with its fair copy to show how its translator worked; a paper which shows how the mystic Rolle sought to "translate" his heightened spiritual experiences into words; and so on. In a medieval translation the general priority of meaning over form and style enabled, even obliged, the translator to act more like an author than like a scribe. Consequently, the study of medieval translation throws important light on contemporary, attitudes to, and understandings of, fundamental literary questions: for example, and most importantly, that of the role of the author.

Anne Wilson

Traditional Romance and Tale

$110.00

This stimulating and controversial book suggests an original approach to the study of traditional literature, focussing on medieval romance and on folktale [especially fairytale]. Although a number of new and striking interpretations of such stories are offered, the emphasis is on how they 'work' - how stories mean, rather than what individual stories mean.
Dr Wilson observes that such stories have survived for many centuries, though they are conspicuously lacking in everyday logic. She argues that since the story-telling experience is one of re-creation and creation on the part of both story-teller and audience, and since the process of following the story demands imaginative identification of teller and audience with hero or heroine, then it is possible to examine the story from the protagonist's - and the audience's - own exploratory dream. Dr Wilson then discusses the magical and pictorial structures and processes of such stories.
This is a literary study, relatively short, non-technical, highly condensed, richly suggestive. It concentrates on stories as artistic entities; psychological and psychoanalytical insights are subordinate to the literary aim. Although original, this book takes its place alongside much other work in related fields of literary, psychological, folklore, anthropological and sociological studies, which recognises the supreme imaginative significance of traditional stories and examines the multiple ways in which they convey meaning.

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature VII

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

David Lawton

Chaucer's Narrators

$110.00

The book begins with a brief prefatory discussion of its relation to structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. The first chapter, `Apocryphal Voices', surveys the basis of modern critical approaches to persona and `irony' in Chaucer's poetry, and suggests that such approaches are better suited to unequivocally written contexts. A systematic hesitation between a wholly written and a wholly spoken context requires critical distinctions between types of persona, and a number of distinctions in the range between persona and voice. `Morality in its Context' examines the Pardoner and his tale and argues against a `dramatic' view of the tale itself, while the third chapter, 'Chaucer's Development of Persona', is a study of possible sources for Chaucer's handling of the narratorial '1', looking at the English `disour', the French `dits amoureux', Italian and Latin sources of influence, and the Roman de la Rose. The last two chapters apply the principles outlined so far to Troilus and The Canterbury Tales, with a particular examination of the literary history of the Squire'stale to show that modern interest in dramatic persona has obscured many other important issues and leads to drastic misreading. This is a challenging and lucid work which questions many of the received attitudes of recentChaucer criticism, and offers a reasoned and approachable alternative view.

Peter Brown, Elton D. Higgs

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist V

$105.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist V

Neil Wright

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth I

$110.00

An admirable piece of work that will be welcomed by the many scholars who have long recognised the need for an easily accessible copy of the Historia. English Historical Review

An admirable piece of work that will be welcomed by the many scholars who have long recognised the need for an easily accessible copy of the Historia. English Historical Review

Geoffrey of Monmouth's HistoriaRegum Britannie was one of the most influential literary works of the 12th century. It offered a new and allegedly authoritative history of the British from their first colonisation of the island under Brutus until the late 7th century AD; hence its immediate and lasting popularity. The characters which the author introduced to a wider audience have become central figures in English literature, including the most spectacular of Geoffrey's reshapings, the figure of King Arthur. It is Geoffrey's account of Arthur which lies behind almost all subsequent Arthurian Romance.
It is hardly surprising that no comprehensive edition of the Historia Regum Britannie as yet exists, because over two hundred manuscripts survive, many of which have never been thoroughly examined. In practical terms, this new edition, based on Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MSD. 568, will make this important text readily availableagain; all emendations to correct scribal errors are clearly indicated.

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth I

Marion Glasscoe

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England IV

$110.00

These papers are the proceedings of the fourth international Exeter Symposium. They promote enquiry into, and understanding of, the medieval mystics and the cultural context to which they belong. Here, historians, literary critics, theologians, philosophers and bibliographical scholars explore ways in which the contemplative tradition was mediated and perceived in the very early and very late medieval period, and ask fundamental questions about the natureof contemporary understanding of this subject.

CONTRIBUTORS: GEORGE R. KEISER, SUE ELLEN HOLBROOK, WILLIAM F. POLLARD, JAMES HOGG, SANDRA MCENTIRE, ANNE SAVAGE, PETER DINZELBACHER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PETER MOORE, ROBERT K.FORMAN

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England IV

Renee L. Curtis

Le Roman de Tristan en prose III

$160.00

Renee Curtis's three-volume critical edition of the Prose Tristan is the only edition of this very important medieval work ever published; until the first volume appeared in 1963, the work was only accessible in the form of a fewfragments which had been edited and a summary of the romance made by E. Loseth in 1891. Dr Curtis's edition is based on a complete collation of all the manuscripts and this led her to choose the Carpentras manuscript 404 as thebasis of her edition. This second volume appeared in1976. Professor Brian Woledge, the eminent medievalislt, wrote of the first volume in Erasmus: "The publication of this book is an event of some importance in Arthurian studies. The Prose Tristan was one of the most widely read works in medieval France; written between1215 and 1235, it continued to be copied until the end of the Middle Ages and its popularity lasted another hundred years in printededitions. It was in fact in prose rather than in poetic form that the legend was known.... Dr Curtis is to warmly congratulated on undertaking this important task"

Peter Happe

Complete Plays of John Bale volume I

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Julia C. Crick

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV

$130.00

Catalogue and scholarly consideration of these vital manuscripts.

Following her vital cataloguing of the surviving 200+ manuscripts of the Historia Regum Britanniein Volume III, Julia Crick has been able in Volume IV to present the information which the manuscripts contain both about thetextual development of Geoffrey's History and about its circulation and audience.
Crick begins by exploring the evidence for grouping the manuscripts. External evidence such as associated texts found frequently with the Historiais compared with the internal evidence of textual disruption, the notorious dedications, rubrication and trial passages collated from each manuscript. This information forms the basis for an account of the chronologyand geography of the circulation of the work as a whole, which in turn sheds light on the audience of the Historia, their taste in reading, and their status.JULIA CRICKis a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Arthurian Boydell & Brewer have become the Arthurian publishers par excellence, not simply for their excellent secondary material on the once and future king, but for their commitment to the publication of a largely Cambridge-based inquiry into the primeval sources of the Arthurian story. ENGLISH STUDIES [J.D. Burnley]
Following the cataloguing of the 200 surviving manuscripts of Geoffrey's HistoriaJulia Crick sets out to assesswhat these reveal about the textual development of the work and about its circulation and audience. Her meticulous and scholarly approach prises out information which will prove invaluable to all students of the 12th century.

Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature III

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

Richard Barber

Arthurian Literature V

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

David Dumville

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1 MS F

$110.00

Facsimile edition of an important witness to the impact of the Normans on the ecclesiastical culture of England.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS F [London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A.viii, folios 30-70] is unique in presenting a sustainedly bilingual [Latin and Old English] text. Palaeographicalevidence dates the manuscript to caAD1100; from its script it is clear that it was written at Canterbury. It is a witness - in language and script - to the impact of the Norman regime on the ecclesiastical culture of England and particularly its most important church. The evidence which it provides for the history of the Kentish dialect attests at the same time to the breakdown at Canterbury of the late West Saxon literary standard. In view of its importance in various contexts,the publisher and general editors now issue, as a supplementary volume to the collaborative edition, a complete facsimile of this interesting book as a preliminary to a new edition in the series, with an introduction outlining theproblems posed by the manuscript.

Professor DAVID DUMVILLE is Professor of History and Palaeography at the University of Aberdeen.

Renee L. Curtis

Le Roman de Tristan en prose II

$115.00

Renée Curtis's three-volume critical edition of the Prose Tristanis the only edition of this very important medieval work ever published; until the first volume appeared in 1963, the work was only accessible in the form ofa few fragments which had been edited and a summary of the romance made by E. Lö

Rosemary Morris

The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature

$110.00

Dr Morris examines how the legend grew through the retelling of what medieval writers believed was the story of an historical figure, based not on some lost Welsh biography, but on Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings ofBritain, the `authorised' version of Arthur's career. She looks at his antecedents, the story of his conception and birth, and his accession, moving on to discuss his warfare, his role in peacetime, his relationships with hisfamily, his personal attributes, and his problematical death, showing how Arthur remains a distinct character in medieval literature despite appearing in an infinite variety of guises. Arthur appears in medieval literature in an infinite variety of different guises, yet remains a distinct character. Medieval writers, however freely they treat their sources, respected the traditions of the past, and Dr Morris, in writing the 'biography' of Arthur, isconcerned to show the complex intelinking of different versions of his story. Her approach is through the sequence of events which make up Arthur's career. She looks in turn at his antecedents, the story of his conception and birth, and his accession, the initial 'facts' and the discusses his warfare, his role in peacetime, his relationships with his family, and his personal attributes. The problems surrounding Arthur's death are examined in the finalchapter. Throughout the book, Dr Morris is concerned to 'use Arthur tro find out about the sources rather than vice versa' and in so doing illustrates both how medieval writers retold what they believe to be the story of a real historical figure and how the familiar story of Arthur gradually took shape over the centuries, based not on some lost Welsh biography, but on Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain the 'authorised' version of Arthur's career for almost all medieval writers

The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature

Muriel Whitaker

Arthur's Kingdom of Adventure

$110.00

The setting of medieval Arthurian romance, as typified by Malory's Morte Darthur, plays an important part in the creation of the atmosphere of the stories, and in intensifying the drama of the action. Professor Whitaker looks at the Arthurianworld which Malory inherited form his sources and to which he added his own details, and examines its different aspects: castles and forests, kingdoms and empires, showing how these diverge from reality to meetthe particular requirements of romance, how new political and temporal relationships are set up for the same reason, and how it was shaped by the presence of the Otherworld in the Celtic stories from which many episodes were drawn.

Anna P. Baldwin

The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman

$110.00

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

The Theme of Government in <I>Piers Plowman</I>

Professor Beverly Taylor

Return of King Arthur British and American Arthurian Literature since 1800

$160.00

The revival of interest in Arthurian legend in the 19th century was a remarkable phenomenon, apparently at odds with the spirit of the age. Tennyson was widely criticised for his choice of a medieval topic; yet The Idylls of the Kingwere accepted as the national epic, and a flood of lesser works was inspired by them, on both sides of the Atlantic. Elisabeth Brewer and Beverly Taylor survey the course of Arthurian literature from 1800 to the presentday, and give an account of all the major English and American contributions. Some of the works are well-known, but there are also a host of names which will be new to most readers, and some surprises, such as J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur, rightly ignored as a text, but a piece oftheatrical history, for Sir Henry Irving played King Arthur, Ellen Terry was Guinevere, Arthur Sullivan wrote the music, and Burne-Jones designed the sets.
The Arthurian works of the Pre-Raphaelites are discussed at length, as are the poemsof Edward Arlington Robinson, John Masefield and Charles Williams. Other writers have used the legends as part of a wider cultural consciousness: The Waste Land, David Jones's In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, and the echoes ofTristan and Iseult in Finnigan's Wake are discussed in this context. Novels on Arthurian themes are given their due place, from the satirical scenes of Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court to T.H. White's serio-comic The Once and Future King and the many recent novelists who have turned away from the chivalric Arthur to depict him as a Dark Age ruler.
The Return of King Arthurincludes a bibliography of British and American creative writing relating to the Arthurian legends from1800 to the present day.

Return of King Arthur British and American Arthurian Literature since 1800

Cedric E. Pickford

Arthurian Bibliography II

$110.00

Full indexes by topic, keyword and individual work\author form a complete subject-index, based on the indexes in source bibliographies. This is a complete bibliography of Arthurian literature to 1978, the result of five years' work by Professor Cedric Pickford and Dr Rex Last of the University of Hull. It consists of a complete alphabetical author-listing, with key numbers for each item, of all critical material recorded in the standard Arthurian bibliographies (Bruce, Modern Languages Quarterly, BBSIA and various other minor lists) with full indexes by topic, keyword and individual work,/author. The total is over 10,000 main entries, with all recorded reviews listed after each entry. Where summaries exist in BBSIA, this is indicated in the main entries. The computer programs have been specially devised and written for this bibliography by Dr Last, and programming and editing of the material has taken morethan two years. Updating volumes are planned to appear at five-year intervals.

Jean Wilson

Entertainments for Elizabeth I

$110.00

Edition, with notes and introductions, of the elaborate entertainments offered to Elizabeth by her courtiers.

The entertainments offered by Elizabethan courtiers to their Queen are a central part of the elaborate cult surrounding the figure of Elizabeth. Yet the fascinating literary texts written for these occasions have been comparatively neglected, despite years of growing interest in both "Gloriana" herself and the masques in general. This book presents an extended study of the entertainments by way of introduction to four of the actual texts. The general introduction examines the origins of the entertainments in court spectacles and pageants of the early Tudor period, and shows how they underline the central place of the cult of Elizabethan court life during her reign, as well as considering the literary traditions of chivalry and romance on which the texts of the entertainments rely so heavily. The four major texts edited here are: The Four Foster Children of Desire (1581), and those at Cowdray in 1591,Elvetham (1591), and Ditchley (1592). Two minor texts, on Bisham and Rycote (1592), are also included. Each text is preceded by an introduction and is fully annotated; there are also notes on the music and a full bibliography.

David Wiles

The Early Plays of Robin Hood

$110.00

David Wiles argues that the prolific Robin Hood plays of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the Spring equivalent of the Christmas mumming tradition.

Robin Hood was the subject of many fifteenth and sixteenth century folk-plays, of which only traces remain. As a result, the ballads, many of which have survived, have usually been regarded as the main-spring of traditions about the famous outlaw. David Wiles however, argues that the dramatic tradition was equally, if not more, important. He sees the plays, associated with Whitsun revels, died out much earlier, and so must be reconstructed from fragmentaryscripts and the tantalising glimpses afforded by sources such as churchwardens' accounts. Robin Hood emerges as an emblem both of the Spring and of rebellion; as a Summer king, the player of Robin Hood flouted and parodied regular authority. With such a background, the plays ceased to be an acceptable part of parish life after the Reformation, and the games were suppressed, while the myth of Robin Hood was manipulated and made respectable.

B. A. Windeatt

Chaucer's Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues

$110.00

This volume makes available in translation the texts that lie behind Chaucer's dream poems - The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame and Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. Chaucer's dream poems are now being increasingly studied and appreciated. With their attractively bookish dreamer figure and their graceful use of conventions and traditions, they have their distinctive place in Chaucer's work. But the nodernreader of these medieval poems particularly needs a sense of their literary context in the tradition of comparable narrative poems - largely in OId French - which Chaucer knew and drew upon. None of these French poems has ever been made available in English translation before, and many of the texts are difficult to access, being available only in dated French scholarly editions. The authors represented are Froissart, Machaut and Deschamps, as well as someminor and anonymous poems, and there are also relevant translations from Cicero and Boccaccio. The book gives an idea of what Chaucer's sources were in themselves, and in what ways the English poet was inspired to use and go beyond them, and this presents a picture of the poet at work. Some of the French poems are translated carefully by Chaucer, while with other poems he is selective, interested in certain sections of his sources only. In further cases, the original material can be seen to have provided a more general point of departure for Chaucer's own developments on his work.

Chaucer's Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues

Richard Axton

Three Rastell Plays

$110.00

The three interludes in this volume come from the press of John Rastell, barrister, printer, adventurer, member of parliament, brother-in-law of Thomas More, and one of the first men in England to have a stage built at his own house. The Four Elements is unique in its genre of scientific morality play. Rastell composed it himself to expound the rudiments of natural science and to air his own frustrating experience of venturing to the New World, in 1517. The anonymous Calisto and Melebea is based on the beginning of the notorious Spanish novel, La Celestina, and has an elegance and subtlety in its satirical comedy of manners that is not found elsewhere in earlyEnglish drama. Gentleness and Nobiblitycrisply debates the case of aristocracy against meritocracy in a mocking humanist vein. It is probably by John Heywood, Rastell's son-on-law. The variety of the play testifies to Rastell's enterprise as publisher and their conmon theme of social responsibility to his strength of personality.

John Darrah

Paganism in Arthurian Romance

$38.95

Investigation of literary and archaeological evidence in search of pagan sources for the Arthurian legend.

`Darrah makes the valid point that episodes in the Arthurian romances read like motifs from the ancient mythologies...[he] reconstructs a lost British paganism, grounded in the rivers, hills and woods, and especially those grey monoliths...reminders of a cosmology vanished from this island. NIKOLAI TOLSTOY, DAILY TELEGRAPH
`Contends, with a good deal of evidence, that the impact of pre-Christian Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Cornish and Breton religion is greater than has been previously thought... Extensively researched and well written.' CHOICE

The origins of Arthurian romance will always be a hotly disputed subject. The great moments of the legends belong partly to dimly-remembered history, partly to the poets' imagination down the ages, yet there is another strand to the stories which goes back deeper and further: the traces of ancient pagan religion, found both in Arthurian heroes who have inherited the attributes of gods, and in episodes which reflect ancient religious rituals.
Darrah's careful study of the thematic relationships of, particularly, the more obscure episodes of the romances and his identification of the relative geography of Arthurian Britain as portrayed in the romances will be valuable even to those who differ with his conclusions. His most original contribution to an unravelling of a pagan Arthurian past lies in his appropriation of the fascinating evidence of standing stones and pagan cultic sites. This is dark and difficult territory, but building on elusive clues, and tracing a range of sites, especially in south-west Britain, John Darrah hasadded a significant new dimension to the search for the sources of the legends of Arthur and his court.

JOHN DARRAH has also written The Real Camelot.