Sir Bevis of Hampton is one of the most widespread and important Middle English romances. This book - the first ever full-length study to be devoted to it - considers it in its historical and literary
How was Alexander the Great - controversial king, conqueror, explorer, and pupil of Aristotle, the subject of histories, romances, epic poetry, satires, and sermons in most of the languages of Europe
Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous, antisocial or even downright sinister
Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has be
Popular romance was one of the most wide-spread forms of literature in the middle ages, yet despite its cultural centrality, and its fundamental importance for later literary developments, the genre h
The essays here reconsider the protean nature of Middle English romance. The contributors examine both the cultural unity of romance and its many variations, reiterations and reimaginings, including i
Romances were immensely popular with medieval readers, as evidenced by their ubiquity in manuscripts and early print. The essays collected here deal with the textual transmission of medieval romances
The idea of the Orient is a major motif in Chaucer and medieval romance, and this new study reveals much about its use and significance, setting the literature in its historical context and thereby of
In Middle English romances many memories are created, stored, forgotten, and rediscovered by both the characters and audience; such memory work is not, however, either simple or obvious. This study ex
As the point of origin, both real and imagined, of English law and group identity, the Anglo-Saxon past was important in the construction of a post-Conquest English society that was both aware of, and
Guy of Warwick is England's other Arthur. Elevated to the status of national hero, his legend occupied a central place in the nation's cultural heritage from the Middle Ages to the modern period. Guy
Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous, antisocial or even downright sinister
The cultural and social power of women in the middle ages is perhaps hard to trace, with evidence for it scarce. This book argues that medieval romances provide a central, but under-explored, source f
Medieval romance narratives glitter with the material objects that were valued and exchanged in late-medieval society: lovers' rings and warriors' swords, holy relics and desirable or corrupted bodies
