Böcker av David F. Johnson

First English translation of the Dutch version of the Old French Fergus, with accompanying text.

The continued influence and significance of the legend of Arthur are demonstrated by the articles collected in this volume.The rich vitality of both the Arthurian material itself and the scholarship devoted to it is manifested in this volume. It begins with an interdisciplinary study of swords belonging to Arthurian and other heroes and of the smithswho made them, assessed both in their literary contexts and in "e;historical"e; references to their existence as heroic relics. Two essays then consider the use of Arthurian material for political purposes: a discussion of Caradog's Vita Gildae throws light on the complex attitudes to Arthur of contemporaries of Geoffrey of Monmouth in a time of political turmoil in England, and an investigation into borrowings from Geoffrey's Historia in a chronicle of Anglo-Scottish relations in the time of Edward I, a well-known admirer of the Arthurian legend, argues that they would have appealed to the clerical elite. Romance motifs link the subsequent pieces: women and their friendships in Ywain and Gawain, the only known close English adaptation of a romance by Chretien, and the mixture of sacred and secular in The Turke and Gawain, with fascinating alchemical parallels for a puzzling beheading episode. This is followed by a discussion of the views on native and foreign sources of three sixteenth-century defenders of Arthur, John Leland, John Prise and Humphrey Llwyd, and their responses to the criticisms of Polydore Vergil. In twentieth-century reception history, John Steinbeck was an ardent Arthurian enthusiast: an essay looks at the significance of his annotations to his copy of Malory as he worked on his adaptation, The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. The volume moves to even more recent territory with an exploration of the adaptations of Malory and other Arthurian writers that occur in the comic books by Geoff Johns about Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman, King of Atlantis. The book is completed by a reprint of a classic essay by Norris Lacy on the absence and presence of the Grail in Arthurian texts from the twelfth century on. ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; DAVID F. JOHNSON is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Richard Barber, Mary Bateman, Christopher Berard, William J. Fowler, Natalie Goodison, Norris Lacy, Andrew Rabin, Carl Sell, Elaine Treharne, Usha Vishnuvajjala

The continued influence and significance of the legend of Arthur are demonstrated by the articles collected in this volume.The enduring appeal and rich variety of the Arthurian legend are once again manifest here. Chretien's Erec et Enide features first in a case study of the poet's endings and medieval theories of poetic composition. Next follows an essay that comes to the rather surprising-but- convincing conclusion that the "e;traitor"e; spoken of in the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is neither Aeneas nor Antenor, but Paris. Another essay dealing with Sir Gawain, this time in Malory's Morte Darthur, offers among other things an answer to the question of how Gawain knows the exact hour of his death. Few native Irish Arthurian tales have come down to us: a discussion of "e;The Tale of the Crop-Eared Dog"e; shows it to be both bizarre and popular, as witnessed by the many manuscripts in which it is preserved. The materiality of the Arthurian legend is represented here by a detailed treatment of the lead cross supposedly found in the grave of King Arthur at Glastonbury Abbey in 1191. Finally, this volume continues Arthurian Literature's tradition of publishing unfamiliar or previously unknown Arthurian texts, in this instance an original Middle English translation of the story of the sword in the stone, from the Old French Merlin. ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of StCuthbert's Society; DAVID F. JOHNSON is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Lindy Brady, David Carlton, Neil Cartlidge, Nicole Clifton, Oliver Harris, Richard Moll, Rebecca Newby.

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTThe essays collected here put considerable emphasis on Arthurian narratives in material culture and historical context, as well as on purely literary analysis, a reminder of the enormous range of interests in Arthurian narrativesin the Middle Ages, in a number of different contexts. The volume opens with a study of torture in texts from Chretien to Malory, and on English law and attitudes in particular. Several contributors discuss the undeservedly neglected Stanzaic Morte Arthur, a key source for Malory. His Morte Darthur is the focus of several essays, respectively on the sources of the "e;Tale of Sir Gareth"e;; battle scenes and the importance of chivalric kingship; Cicero's De amicitia and the mixed blessings and dangers of fellowship; and comparison of concluding formulae in the Winchester Manuscript and Caxton's edition. Seven tantalizing fragments of needlework, all depictingTristan, are discussed in terms of the heraldic devices they include. The volume ends with an update on newly discovered manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth's seminal Historia regum Britanniae, the twelfth-century best-seller which launched Arthur's literary career. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contibutors: David Eugene Clark, Marco Nievergelt, Ralph Norris, Sarah Randles, Lisa Robeson, Richard Severe, Jaakko Tahkokallio, Larissa Tracy

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTA wide range of Arthurian material is discussed here, reflecting its diversity, and enduring vitality. Geoffrey of Monmouth's best-selling Historia regum Britannie is discussed in the context of Geoffrey's reception in Wales and the relationship between Latin and Welsh literary culture. Two essays deal with the Middle English Ywain and Gawain: the first offers a comparative study of the Middle English poem alongside Chretien's Yvainand the Welsh Owein, while the second considers Ywain and Gawain with the Alliterative Morte Arthure in their northern English cultural and political context, the world of the Percys and the Nevilles. It isfollowed by a discussion of Edward III's recuperation of his abandoned Order of the Round Table, which offers an intriguing explanation for this reversal in the context of Edward's victory over the French at Poitiers. The final essay is a comparison of fifteenth- and twentieth-century portrayals of Camelot in Malory and T.H. White, as both idea and locale, and a centre of hearsay and gossip. The volume is completed with a unique and little-known medievalGreek Arthurian poem, presented in facing-page edition and modern English translation. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Christopher Berard, Louis J. Boyle, Thomas H. Crofts, Ralph Hanna, Georgia Lynn Henley, Erich Poppe

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTThe studies collected in this volume demonstrate the enduring vitality of the Arthurian legend in a wide range of places, times and media. Chretien's Conte du Graal features first in a study of the poem's place in its Anglo-Norman context, followed by four essays on Malory's Morte Darthur. Two of these deal with the significance of wounds and wounding in Malory's text, while the third explores the problematic aspects of sleep and the "e;slepynge knight"e; in that same romance. The fourth considers "e;transformative female corpses"e; as, quite literally, the embodiment of critical comment on the chivalric community in the Morte Darthur. There follow two studies of the Arthurian legend captured in material objects: the first concerns the early twelfth-century images on a marble column from the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, the second a twentieth-century tapestry created by Lady Trevelyan for the family home at Wallington Hall. The volume closes with an essay that brings us into the twenty-first century, with an assessment of Kaamelott, an irreverent French Pythonesque television series. ElizabethArchibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Karen Cherewatuk,Tara Foster, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Erin Kissick, Irit Ruth Kleiman, Megan Leitch, Roger Simpson, K.S. Whetter.

The romances translated here are contained in the so-called Lancelot Compilation. Compiled in the early fourteenth century by five scribes, its 241 extant folios contain the lion's share of Arthurian romance in Middle Dutch, no fewer than ten texts. The core of this compilation is comprised of translations into rhymed couplets of the Lancelot-Queste-Mort, into which seven additional romances have been inserted. The result is a compilation that successfully transforms a number of disparate texts into an ordered sequence of ten Arthurian romances, a project that rivals similar ones in better known European vernaculars, and bears comparison with Malory's Morte Darthur. Parallel text with notes and an introduction.< The romances are: the Wrake van Ragisel (Vengeance of Raguidel), the Ridder metter mowen (Romance of the Knight of the Sleeve), Lanceloet en het hert metde witte voet (Lancelot and the Hart with the White Foot), Walewein ende Keye, and Torec. David F. Johnson is Professor of English, Florida State University; Geert H.M. Claassens is Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.