International Arthurian Society Research Articles

The Japanese Branch of The International Arthurian Society. Part One. General Issues and English

Abstract Presentation of the Japanese Branch of the International Arthurian Society, including a discussion of the contribution of its members to international Arthurian scholarship, especially on Malory studies, in English Arthuriana.

XXVIIth International Arthurian Congress, Aix-en-Provence, France, 11–18 July 2024

Article XXVIIth International Arthurian Congress, Aix-en-Provence, France, 11–18 July 2024 was published on September 1, 2022 in the journal Journal of the International Arthurian Society (volume 10, issue 1).

In Memoriam: Dr. Roger Simpson (1938–2022)

In Memoriam: Dr. Roger Simpson (1938–2022) Alan Lupack, Director Emeritus, Barbara Tepa Lupack, and Kevin J. Harty, Professor of English Click for larger view View full resolution It is with great sadness that we report the recent death of Dr. Roger Simpson, a member of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, but a great supporter and friend of the North American Branch and a frequent contributor to Arthuriana as an author and as a submissions and book reviewer. Roger had a truly amazing academic career. After earning a BA in English Language and Literature in 1960 from Wadham College, Oxford, he completed a Diploma in Education at Oxford two years later. From 1962–1963, he was Assistant English Master at Verdin Grammar School in England. From 1963–1965, he was Senior English Master at Old Kampala Senior Secondary School in Uganda. From 1965–1966, he returned to England and served as Assistant English Master at Aylesbury Girls High School. From 1966–1968, he was Senior English Master at Momenshahi Cadet College in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). From 1969–1982, he was Senior Lecturer and Head of English at Gulf Polytechnic in Bahrain. He returned to England in 1982 to take up a position at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he taught and remained until 2003. In 1988, he completed [End Page 75] his doctorate at the University of East Anglia with a thesis on The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800–1849. In 1998, he was a visiting scholar at the National Museum of Ethnography in Osaka, Japan. Roger authored two important Arthurian monographs: Camelot Regained: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson, 1800–1849 (1990) and Radio Camelot: Arthurian Legends on the BBC, 1922–2005 (2008). His other publications include dozens of essays and reviews on multiple aspects of Arthuriana. Roger was a scholar’s scholar who took immense joy in the painstaking work of unearthing forgotten Arthurian works and authors. He was able to present his research in a comprehensive and compelling way and to infect others with his enthusiasm for his discoveries. As his two books and many essays attest, Roger was interested in, and made contributions to, the study of Arthuriana in both ‘high’ and popular culture. Whether responding to questions at a conference from an established colleague or from beginning graduate students, Roger was always the model of earnestness, grace, and courtesy. He was the gentlest of gentlemen. To those who knew him, Roger was a convivial colleague, a charming host, and the most generous of scholars. Like Chaucer’s Clerk, gladly did he learn and gladly teach. Survivors include his wife, Paddy, and their son, Dr. St. John Simpson, Assistant Keeper for Iran, Central Asia, and Arabia at the British Museum. [End Page 76] Alan Lupack, Director Emeritus The Robbins Library, University Of Rochester Barbara Tepa Lupack Rochester, New York Kevin J. Harty, Professor of English La Salle University Copyright © 2022 Arthuriana

Miroirs arthuriens entre images et mirages: Actes du XXIVe Congrès de la Société Internationale Arthurienne ed. by C. Girbea et al

Reviewed by: Miroirs arthuriens entre images et mirages: Actes du XXIVe Congrès de la Société Internationale Arthurienne ed. by C. Girbea et al Amy E. Brown c. girbea, m. voicu, i. panzaru, c. anton, and a. popescu, eds., Miroirs arthuriens entre images et mirages: Actes du XXIVe Congrès de la Société Internationale Arthurienne. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Pp. 434. isbn: 978–2–503–57991–7. €85. This collection represents several important, and sadly infrequent, developments in the field of Arthurian studies and of medieval studies more broadly. It comprises the conference proceedings from the 2015 Congress of the International Arthurian Society in Bucharest: a conference that is rarely held outside of Western Europe and North America. In addition, it is truly bilingual in English and French, with French contributions slightly outnumbering English ones, rather than the more common obverse, and a significant number of contributors in both languages are from institutions in neither Anglophone nor Francophone locations. The volume, which runs to over four hundred pages, covers a breadth of Arthurian fields including literature, historical analysis, archaeology, folklore studies, and art history, albeit with a substantial majority of literary contributions. Within the literary studies presented, a majority focus on French literature, with English, German, and Spanish medieval Arthuriana also represented, rounded out by essays examining a Polish film (Lukasz Neubauer), Romanian folklore (Mihaela Voicu), and Italian poetry (Corina Anton). The volume’s key strengths, then, are its catholicity on many axes. Regrettably, that same breadth and inclusiveness have produced a volume that lacks cohesion. The opening section, ‘Iconographie des manuscrits arthuriens,’ is the most well-knit, and it includes several notable contributions: Alison Stones’ resumé of recent Arthurian art exhibitions and recently discovered art objects strikes me as particularly useful, both to art historians interested in digging into Arthuriana and to Arthurian scholars seeking to brush up on art historical developments. Alicia Servier’s analysis of images of Élizabel in manuscripts of Lancelot du Lac will be of particular interest to literary scholars of that text, as she shows that the images associated with the Corbenic episode represent a distinct interpretation of events. Unfortunately, the other sections are far less coherent, and there seems to be no uniting theme throughout—even the title, ‘Miroirs Arthuriens,’ is not explored. This would be reasonable for a smaller conference and smaller proceedings, but in the case of an event so large as the Congress of the IAS, and as substantial a volume as this, the book missed an opportunity to define a special thematic thread and produce a volume that invited greater conversation among contributions. [End Page 170] A key thread throughout the volume is the number of contributions that take a survey approach. A good example is Mihaela Voicu’s article, in which she posits resonances of themes between Romanian folk traditions, especially carols, and Arthurian literature. Voicu is straightforward about her aims, namely to make available to scholars outside Romania some aspects of these folk traditions and note axes on which they may be of interest to scholars of Arthuriana more broadly; in this she succeeds. Amongst the many contributions which take a thematic or symbolic approach to French Arthuriana, Anne Berthélot’s survey of approaches to the Grail in both French and English sources stands out for clarity and insight; unfortunately, some others primarily synthesize pre-existing scholarship on symbolism and Arthurian motifs. Finally, and this aspect could have been most easily remedied, the collection sets no basic standards for citation and style. To have slightly different styles for French and English would make sense, but in fact no consistency has been applied: some contributions use footnotes, some endnotes, and some in-text. Some have bibliographies, but some do not. Most disappointingly, one contribution contains no bibliography, citing only by surname and citing only direct quotations (one of which I have been unable to trace); it engages no scholarship later than the mid-twentieth century at all, nor does it offer quotation and analysis of primary sources. Here, what appears to be an editorial policy of maximum inclusion has done a disservice to contributors. Amy E. Brown University of Bern Copyright © 2021 Arthuriana

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society on Arthurian Medievalism

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the <i>Journal of the International Arthurian Society</i> on Arthurian Medievalism

Preface

Preface Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack Kevin J. Harty has a long and distinguished record of highly respected publications in a number of areas. His books on business writing have long been standard texts in the field; his Strategies for Business and Technical Writing, first published in 1980, is still (many editions later) widely used today. But his expertise is multi-faceted, and it is in literary and film studies that he has made his most significant contributions. His essays on Chaucer and on adaptations of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales after the Middle Ages are of great scholarly interest and importance, as are his essays on the Chester Mystery Cycle. Kevin's 1993 Casebook on that cycle remains a seminal text for those interested in medieval drama. Given his extensive knowledge of the history of drama, it is not surprising that he was the obvious choice to be the literary advisor to Films for the Humanities, a well-known and widely distributed resource, when they created their series on The History of World Drama. But it is his work in another field—Arthurian Studies—that is unparalleled. In 1991, when Kevin edited a collection of essays on films based on the Arthurian legends, he was a true pioneer. It was almost unheard of to consider these films as a group with interconnections and with significant cultural insights to offer, but he recognized what scores of medieval scholars and film historians had failed to see. He coined the phrase 'cinema Arthuriana' for these films and—in his many lectures, articles, and books on the subject—essentially created a new field of scholarly inquiry. All the while, he has been incredibly generous to those who have followed in his footsteps, sharing with them his expertise and resources. A simple recitation of Kevin's publications, however, does not do justice to their impact, especially on an entire generation of academics, scholars, and students. It is difficult to overemphasize just how influential his scholarly vision has been on the development of Arthurian scholarship. Over the past two decades, through his writing, editing, and lecturing, Kevin has continued his pioneering research and expanded the field of Arthurian cinema even further. He never ceases to amaze his colleagues with his ongoing discoveries of little-known or neglected Arthurian films. A testament to his standing among Arthurian scholars is his election to a three-year term as president of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society, and his position as Associate Editor and board member of Arthuriana, the leading journal in Arthurian studies. [End Page 3] Kevin has also broadened his interests to include all films with medieval themes. His landmark study The Reel Middle Ages, one of those classic and groundbreaking books that provide the research on which others build, is a comprehensive survey of virtually all films in all languages that deal with the Middle Ages, on such topics as the Crusades, the Black Death, the Vikings, Joan of Arc, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Beowulf, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and others. His scholarship brought many of these often overlooked films to the attention of those working in medieval studies and medievalism. Obviously the result of years of diligent and meticulous research in film archives in various countries, The Reel Middle Ages is precisely the kind of creative, far-sighted, interdisciplinary scholarship that inspires generalists, students, and other scholars. Kevin has never rested on his laurels: he continues to build on his vast knowledge of cinema based on medieval themes. Vikings in Film, a book that he recently edited, grew out of his research for The Reel Middle Ages and has in turn opened up new areas for scholarly discourse. He is also currently at work on a volume about Robin Hood and Joan of Arc in film that will certainly have the same long-term impact. Kevin has been—and obviously will continue to be—not just a productive and prolific scholar, but one of the most respected experts in the field. On a more personal note: we have contributed essays to some of his collections, just as he has to ours, and we have seen firsthand what high standards he has...

Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden. Tristan and Isolde: Medieval Illustrations of the Verse Romances. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016. 462 pp., 538 Ill.

Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden’s prodigious volume on illustrations of the Tristan materials fills a gap in research on the Tristan illustrations by providing a single, authoritative resource for them. As the author explains, its purpose is quite simply “to list all the extant manuscripts, artefacts, and objets d’art, and to describe all the scenes depicted on them” (3). Building upon previous studies of illustrations by literary critics and art historians over the past century, including works by Hella Frühmorgen-Voss, Norbert H. Ott, and Robert Sherman and Laura Hibbard Loomis, as well as the exhibition of Arthurian art and literature in Leuven at the XVth Congress of the International Arthurian Society in 1987, Van D’Elden collected over 500 images from the broad span of Tristan sources, identifying them according to the manuscripts or objects which they adorn, as well as categorizing them by the specific scenes in the Tristan materials they depict. Van D’Elden’s efforts to organize and catalogue over 500 items, reproduced clearly and cleanly in fine detail, will serve as a valuable contribution for decades to come to our cross-disciplinary understanding of Tristan, one of the most important tales of the European Middle Ages.

Gwerzio� for all! A look at the field

North American journal of Celtic studies Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2018) Copyright © 2018 by The Ohio State University REVIEW ESSAY Gwerzioù for all! A look at the field MATTHIEU BOYD Constantine, Mary-Ann, & Éva Guillorel. 2017. Miracles & murders. An introductory anthology of Breton ballads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978–0–19–726619–9. 250 pp. $80.00 (hardback). The occasion of this essay is the publication of Miracles & murders. An introductory anthology of Breton ballads by Mary-Ann Constantine & Éva Guillorel (2017). Every Celtic language has its particular treasures; among the treasures of Breton are the hundreds of ballads called gwerzioù (sg. gwerz, from Lat. versus). One can further distinguish the gwerz of oral tradition from the more literary broadsheet gwerz, although there was some degree of cross-pollination. Miracles & murders is concerned with the former. As explained in the preface (xv–xvi), the book is an opportune collaboration between Constantine, who identifies as a literary scholar, and Guillorel, who identifies as a historian; their combined expertise exceeds these two areas and embraces almost every aspect of the gwerzioù. Miracles & murders has the text and translation of 35 songs, and an audio CD with performances of 22 of them. This is much more than what was previously available in English: nine songs in the appendix of Constantine’s Breton ballads (1996: 209–250), and a few in Jacqueline Gibson & Gwyn Griffiths’ anthology of Breton literature in translation (2006). For many years, Constantine’s fine book Breton ballads (1996) was just about the only secondary literature in English on the subject; to this has been added a book and some Matthieu Boyd [mwboyd@​ fdu​ .edu] is Associate Professor of literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University; an associate of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University; a contributing editor to the Broadview anthology of British literature; and a past member of the executive or advisory boards of the Celtic Studies Association of North America, the International Arthurian Society (North American Branch), the International Marie de France Society, and the MLA Discussion Group on Celtic Languages and Literatures. 180 North American journal of Celtic studies articles by Natalie Franz (2011), a little of my own work, and now Miracles & murders. I will not be able to do justice in this space to Guillorel’s monumental study La complainte et la plainte (2010), so I will not try. Suffice it to say that it is a milestone in the study of Breton oral literature, with important theoretical implications; if you work in this area, you need to read it. Its main contribution is to assess the value of the gwerzioù as historical evidence by comparing the songs to pre-Revolutionary court records and other archival sources. Overall, the songs are impressively accurate: only when the singers considered that there had been a miscarriage of justice do they vary significantly from the documentary record established centuries earlier. Miracles & murders is almost the perfect book within the scope it sets itself, being an ‘introductory anthology’. If you read only one book about gwerzioù (and if you are in any branch of Celtic studies whatsoever, you should), this is it. The introduction is in three main parts: ‘Song collecting in Brittany. From the early 19th century to the present day’, ‘The nature of the gwerz tradition’, and ‘Ways of “reading ” gwerziou’. ‘Song collecting in Brittany’ covers Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué’s romantic and somewhat embellished Barzaz-Breiz (1839), the more scientifically-minded Gwerziou Breiz-Izel of François-Marie Luzel (1868–74), and various collectors since. No single collection has stature equivalent to Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish popular ballads (1882–1898) for the Anglo-Scottish tradition, though Luzel is probably the best approximation of such. There is a catalogue of Breton-language folksongs by Patrick Malrieu that covers nearly 2000 items, not all of them gwerzioù; this was an unpublished dissertation (Malrieu 1998), familiar and accessible to specialists, but not to the general public. However , it has been further developed on-line: the sites https://​ to​ .kan​ .bzh/​and https://​ fv​ .kan​ .bzh/​cover orally-transmitted and broadsheet songs, respectively. ‘The nature of the gwerz tradition’ is comparable to the...

Review Essay: &lt;em&gt;Gwerzioù&lt;/em&gt; for all! A look at the field

North American journal of Celtic studies Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2018) Copyright © 2018 by The Ohio State University REVIEW ESSAY Gwerzioù for all! A look at the field MATTHIEU BOYD Constantine, Mary-Ann, & Éva Guillorel. 2017. Miracles & murders. An introductory anthology of Breton ballads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978–0–19–726619–9. 250 pp. $80.00 (hardback). The occasion of this essay is the publication of Miracles & murders. An introductory anthology of Breton ballads by Mary-Ann Constantine & Éva Guillorel (2017). Every Celtic language has its particular treasures; among the treasures of Breton are the hundreds of ballads called gwerzioù (sg. gwerz, from Lat. versus). One can further distinguish the gwerz of oral tradition from the more literary broadsheet gwerz, although there was some degree of cross-pollination. Miracles & murders is concerned with the former. As explained in the preface (xv–xvi), the book is an opportune collaboration between Constantine, who identifies as a literary scholar, and Guillorel, who identifies as a historian; their combined expertise exceeds these two areas and embraces almost every aspect of the gwerzioù. Miracles & murders has the text and translation of 35 songs, and an audio CD with performances of 22 of them. This is much more than what was previously available in English: nine songs in the appendix of Constantine’s Breton ballads (1996: 209–250), and a few in Jacqueline Gibson & Gwyn Griffiths’ anthology of Breton literature in translation (2006). For many years, Constantine’s fine book Breton ballads (1996) was just about the only secondary literature in English on the subject; to this has been added a book and some Matthieu Boyd [mwboyd@​ fdu​ .edu] is Associate Professor of literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University; an associate of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University; a contributing editor to the Broadview anthology of British literature; and a past member of the executive or advisory boards of the Celtic Studies Association of North America, the International Arthurian Society (North American Branch), the International Marie de France Society, and the MLA Discussion Group on Celtic Languages and Literatures. 180 North American journal of Celtic studies articles by Natalie Franz (2011), a little of my own work, and now Miracles & murders. I will not be able to do justice in this space to Guillorel’s monumental study La complainte et la plainte (2010), so I will not try. Suffice it to say that it is a milestone in the study of Breton oral literature, with important theoretical implications; if you work in this area, you need to read it. Its main contribution is to assess the value of the gwerzioù as historical evidence by comparing the songs to pre-Revolutionary court records and other archival sources. Overall, the songs are impressively accurate: only when the singers considered that there had been a miscarriage of justice do they vary significantly from the documentary record established centuries earlier. Miracles & murders is almost the perfect book within the scope it sets itself, being an ‘introductory anthology’. If you read only one book about gwerzioù (and if you are in any branch of Celtic studies whatsoever, you should), this is it. The introduction is in three main parts: ‘Song collecting in Brittany. From the early 19th century to the present day’, ‘The nature of the gwerz tradition’, and ‘Ways of “reading ” gwerziou’. ‘Song collecting in Brittany’ covers Théodore Hersart de la Villemarqué’s romantic and somewhat embellished Barzaz-Breiz (1839), the more scientifically-minded Gwerziou Breiz-Izel of François-Marie Luzel (1868–74), and various collectors since. No single collection has stature equivalent to Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish popular ballads (1882–1898) for the Anglo-Scottish tradition, though Luzel is probably the best approximation of such. There is a catalogue of Breton-language folksongs by Patrick Malrieu that covers nearly 2000 items, not all of them gwerzioù; this was an unpublished dissertation (Malrieu 1998), familiar and accessible to specialists, but not to the general public. However , it has been further developed on-line: the sites https://​ to​ .kan​ .bzh/​and https://​ fv​ .kan​ .bzh/​cover orally-transmitted and broadsheet songs, respectively. ‘The nature of the gwerz tradition’ is comparable to the...

Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate ed. by Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith (review)

HOLLY A. CROCKER AND D. VANCE SMITH, eds., Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 534. isbn: 978-0-415-66789-6 (cloth), 978-0-415-66790-6 (pbk). $125 (cloth), $55.95 (pbk).Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate is a powerful collection for long-standing professionals and graduate students alike. Unlike most essay collections consisting entirely of new scholarly work, Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate (MLCD) provides a rich contextual slice of medieval studies over the past twenty five years. While most essays were first published after the millennium, a few notable essays from the 1990's are also included (David Lawton's iconic essay, for example, 'Dullness and the Fifteenth Century,' first published in 1987), signaling the way in which these earlier essays have continued to exert significant influence in the field of medieval literary studies well into the 21st century. There are essays here from David Wallace, Bruce Holsinger, Patricia Clare Ingram, Christine Chism, the hardworking duo of Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, well-known to Arthurian scholars, and many other fine scholars of medieval literature. Re-published essays from esteemed colleagues are worth reading for the first or fourth time. The resulting collection is akin to aggregating the best plenary lectures of Kalamazoo, Leeds, The New Chaucer Society, The International Arthurian Society, and the MLA all into one volume. For graduate students, the volume is essential reading as a means of entering the conversations that have shaped and are currently shaping the field of late-medieval studies, and each chapter offers suggestions for further reading that includes other important essays published in the last 25 years. The majority of the volume, however, consists of newly-commissioned work across a provocative range of constructs, grouped together to spark critical dialogue.Editors Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, both contributors to the volume, attribute their inspiration for their methodological approach to medieval debate poetry. As the editors assert, 'Scholastic method . . . is a mode of critique, a testing of the possibility of what is being asserted, and an analysis of how it is thought about' (4). In this spirit, MLCD does not have one theoretical perspective but provides, instead, a spirited (rather than 'bloodless' [5]) celebration of polyphonic voices and debate. The volume is thus organized 'around a series of counter-posed topics' with the goal of enacting 'the capacious dynamism that is present from the outset of the medieval disputation' (3).Essays are grouped so as to enhance dialectical exchange within conceptual categories such as 'Form and History,' 'Belief and Thought,' 'Gender and Sexuality,' 'Memory and Matter,' 'Nation and Language,' 'Time and Place,' 'Science and Embodiment,' 'Period and Politics,' and 'Desire and Performance.' Within these groupings are essays on chronicles, ballads, romance, Chaucer, religious texts, conduct books, the Pearl Poet, the Ancrene Wisse, Hoccleve, fabliau, Mandeville's Travels, Malory, Christian-Jewish relations, and more. …

Arthurian Literature XXX ed. by Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson (review)

elizabeth archibald and david f. johnson, eds., Arthurian Literature XXX. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2013. Pp. xi, 169. isbn: 978-1-84384-362-7. $90.This latest volume in Boydell and Brewer's Arthurian Literature series offers expanded versions of eight papers delivered at the 23rd Triennial Congress of the International Arthurian Society. Together, these papers cover a wide-range of texts-from early Welsh romances through nineteenth-century editions of Geoffrey of Monmouth- and testify to Arthurian scholarship's flourishing interdisciplinarity as the field continues to build on traditional methodologies, such as philology and manuscript studies, while integrating postcolonial theory, cultural studies and ecocriticism.The collection begins with two essays that ask us to reconsider earlier readings of narratives in light of historical and cultural context. Helen Fulton's argument that Celtic magic is a 'fundamentally English colonialist identity whose strategy is to construct the alterity of Wales and Ireland as subaltern cultures' (3) clears the way for her examination of 'magic naturalism,' characterized by the 'agentless occurrence of wonders' (1) in medieval Welsh narratives. Her analysis of Culhwch and Olwen and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy centers on Arthur's relationship to this supernatural landscape in light of the political concerns of a people battling acquisitive Norman neighbors. While Cuhlwch and Olwen glorifies a Welsh past, a 'world with a legitimate king, who ...proves his supernatural credentials through his success in battles and challenges of the most challenging kind' (15), Breuddwyd Rhonabwy presents a parody of Arthur's sacral kingship in which the king 'has lost control' of both the supernatural world and 'the past as a narrative of Welsh greatness' (22). In the next essay, Michael Twomey revisits the perceived binary between civilization and the forest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, asserting that the forest and park surrounding Hautdesert depict 'a settled, managed environment-part of civilization rather than apart from it' (38). Thus, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight does not valorize a wild nature in opposition to Arthur's court but rather offers a nostalgia for a vanishing institution and a 'culturally determined and ultimately anthropocentric point of view toward the forest as a resource to be managed, controlled, and exploited by the few' (52).The next two essays examine what Richard Barber calls 'the greatest of the unread Arthurian romances,' Perceforest (55). …

Arthur of the North: Histories, Emotions, and Imaginations: Introduction

Arthur of the North: Histories, Emotions, and ImaginationsIntroduction Bjørn Bandlien, Stefka Georgieva Eriksen, and Sif Rikhardsdottir The articles in this special issue are based on papers presented at the First International Conference of the Nordic Branch of the International Arthurian Society, which took place at the University of Oslo in May 2013. The aim of the conference was to mark the establishment and thus inaugurate the newly formed branch. Its primary goals were (1) to map the state of the field of Arthurian studies in the North, and thus lay the groundwork for future activities and collaboration among the members of the network, and (2) to introduce the Nordic branch to the International Arthurian Society as a whole by inviting to the conference prominent scholars representing other linguistic and cultural communities of the society, such as Latin, French, German, English, Dutch, and Welsh. The objective of the conference was therefore to promote international collaboration and comparative research, and to foreground the nature and potential of the studies of the transmission of Arthurian literature in medieval Scandinavia. The main goals of this special issue are closely related to the main objectives of the conference, that is, to present current innovative scholarly work on the Nordic Arthurian material and thereby emphasize the relevance of this material for Arthurian studies in general. The conference, as well as this publication, may certainly be seen as a part of a recent trend that promotes the value of cross-cultural research of Arthurian material and that seeks to highlight the significance of [End Page 1] Nordic Arthurian literary material for gaining a better understanding of the development of indigenous literary traditions.1 The papers presented at the conference covered a wide variety of topics, including literary transmission, cultural adaptations and social contexts, feelings and cognition, senses and the psyche, and identity and the self. The conference concluded with a roundtable discussion with invited scholars representing the various literary traditions. The roundtable discussions addressed the relevance of cross-cultural research for Arthurian studies. To paraphrase some of the scholars’ ideas: Frank Brandsma emphasized the nature of texts as agents of cultural transmission, and the dynamics and continuity of this transmission process across the artificial borders created by modern languages and cultural and historical contexts. Keith Busby focused on the role of manuscripts when studying the transmission process, and touched upon some of the problematic issues related to varying editorial practices. Cora Dietl argued that by focusing on the process of translatio, our research contributes to an increased sense of European political, cultural, and didactic history. Siân Echard emphasized the dual nature of all individual literary traditions, including Latin: that is, their centrality in certain contexts and simultaneous invisibility and peripherality with regard to others. It is therefore crucial to combine detailed knowledge of the specific with comparative and collaborative endeavors in order to reach a better understanding of how the various traditions feed into each other. While the conference papers reflected a wide array of topics, revealing a vibrant research community in Nordic Arthurian studies, the present issue focuses on three thematic strands that seemed to stand out as overarching themes. The editors furthermore consider these themes to represent fertile, new, and innovative approaches to Nordic Arthurian literature, which moreover have significant theoretical or critical relevance beyond the borders of Nordic studies. Unfortunately, many very promising papers and topics therefore had to be excluded to maintain thematic coherence of the special issue. The thematic strands are conveyed in the title of this special issue, and of this introduction, and focus on the making and transmission of histories, emotions, and imaginations. The concept of history here conveys the yet unexplored [End Page 2] territory of the reception history of medieval Nordic Arthurian literature, the representation of history in the extant stories, and finally the history of the manuscript variants and textual representation. Emotion and imagination are interlinked in their foci on the internal senses and cognition, while the approaches adopted here by the authors are very varied and range from linguistic analysis of emotive representation to landscape studies from a cognitive (or emotive) perspective. In the first article, Marianne Kalinke, in her plenary address, directs...

Where Are the Emotions in Scandinavian Arthuriana?: Or: How Cool Is King Arthur of the North?

INTRODUCTION In the North, King Arthur is so cool, that he is hot. That was the answer Keith Busby provided during the discussion of this topic at die Oslo conference on Arthur of the North held in May 2013. And he was right, the study of Scandinavian Arthurian literature was given a great boost by the conference, and also by the Etat present article in the first issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society (Sif Rikhardsdottir and Eriksen 2013), and emotions are a hot topic in many different fields of historical research after the affective turn. Medieval Arthurian literature is one of those fields, as evidenced by papers in the Bristol and Bucharest conferences of the International Arthurian Society (IAS) and a forthcoming book on Arthurian Emotions. (1) From a transnational, comparative viewpoint, it is interesting to look at the way emotional passages are translated in the various adaptations of French texts like Chretien's romances. Do, for instance, Scandinavian and Dutch poets deal differently with emotional passages? As a brief exploration of these issues, the presentation of emotions by minor characters and a protagonist in two episodes from Chretien's romances and their Old Norse adaptations will be discussed here. The minor characters appear in Chretien's Erec et Enide, the protagonist in his Conte du Graal. All of them show emotions by means of tears, called forth by joy or despair. (2) Hartmann von Aue's Erec, the Norse Erex saga, the Middle Dutch Perchevael, and the Norse Parcevals saga will also be used in the comparison. ATTRACTIVE EMOTIONS The manuscript of the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation, now in the Royal Library in The Hague, was probably the second volume in a set of two. It is therefore somewhat remarkable that it has a brief prologue. After the usual prayer for guidance from God and the Virgin Mary, the narrator refers to the first volume and promises that the second book will also be worthwhile to read and hear. The Middle Dutch text (Besamusca and Postma 1997, 11. 8--16) states: Hier voren hebbic u verplecht Van vele scoenre avonturen, Mar wildi vort int lesen duren, Ghi suit nu horen scone die jeesten, van rouwen ende van feesten, Van ridderscape groete daet, Van selsieneheden menich baraet, Die dese partie hevet in. Nu hort hier int begin. (Before this I have told you many beautiful adventures, but if you will continue reading, you will hear beautiful stories, sad and joyful, of many chivalrous deeds, [you will hear] many entertaining stories of astonishing things, which this section contains. Now hear its beginning.) (3) The key phrase is right in the middle: both sad and It translates the Middle Dutch words Bede van rouwen ende van feesten. There is an interesting concoction of events and ensuing emotions in this translation. The word feesten could be translated as festivities, indicating that the stories describe courtly feasts. But in this context, combined with the word rouwen, which cannot in a parallel way be translated as a noun, it seems better to use an alternative translation for feesten, that is: the adjective joyful. The effect--the experience of sorrow and joy--that the stories will have on the audience is what the narrator advertises here. His narrative will contain astonishing and entertaining adventures, but first and foremost, it will move its audience. Announcing the expected emotional impact of a narrative is a standard element in medieval prologues. Rhetorical handbooks state that the exordium (prologue) should have the three functions of delectare, docere, and movere (to entertain, to teach, and to touch the audience). (4) And in many Arthurian prologues, from Chretien to Caxton, we find references to these functions of prologue and narrative. The finest example is Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, where the poet speaks at length to the noble hearts of his intended audience. …

Stephen Shepherd: Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte Darthur, ed. by P. J. C. Field. Arthurian Studies LXXX. 2 vols. Cambridge (D. S. Brewer), 2013. $340.00.

Article Stephen Shepherd: Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte Darthur, ed. by P. J. C. Field. Arthurian Studies LXXX. 2 vols. Cambridge (D. S. Brewer), 2013. $340.00. was published on November 28, 2014 in the journal Journal of the International Arthurian Society (volume 2, issue 1).

Eminent Arthurian: P.J.C. Field

Eminent Arthurian: P.J.C. Field K.S. Whetter All Malory scholars, and a good many Arthurian scholars in general, are familiar with the work of Professor P.J.C. Field. Peter is a former President of the International Arthurian Society, former host of a successful Society congress, winner of the North American Branch’s Lacy Award and, most significantly, author of an impressive array of publications exploring various aspects of many different Arthurian (and non-Arthurian) texts and topics. He is certainly an eminent Arthurian. The photograph that accompanies my tribute to Peter was taken at the formal launch of his edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, a launch that took place at the September 2013 meeting of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, by happy coincidence held at Bangor University, where Peter has made his home for the past fifty years.1 The appearance of this much-anticipated edition is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon Peter’s many accomplishments and his deserved eminence, not just in terms of his scholarly achievements, but also in the regard and affection of those who know him, worldwide. Peter has published interesting and convincing studies of (inter alia) Nennius, Arthur’s battles, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the alliterative Morte Arthure, Chaucer, and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. Obviously, however, it is Peter’s work on Malory and the text of the Morte which has won him the most renown. Many of Peter’s textual studies were revised and published together in his Malory: Texts and Sources, but other Malorian highlights include his Romance and Chronicle, a well-regarded monograph on Malory’s prose style, an edition of Tales VII and VIII of the Morte published initially in 1977, the revision of Vinaver’s three-volume critical edition, and the authoritative biography, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory.2 It is a testament to Peter’s integrity that he revised Vinaver’s text in accordance with Vinaver’s principles; that is, he confined himself to correcting manifest errors and updating the notes but refrained from modifying the text or apparatus in any of the substantial ways Peter’s own scholarship had revealed should be done. Thus for many years Malory scholars could glean Peter’s textual-critical conclusions from his own publications, but it is only now, with [End Page 5] the much-anticipated complete edition of the Morte before us, that the scholarly community can at last see the text as Peter reconstructs it. In my opinion, that reconstruction is marvelous. For one thing, the edition itself is very attractive, including the endpapers with the arms of King Arthur juxtaposed against those of Thomas Malory. For another, we have the entire text in one very clean volume, with none of Vinaver’s various brackets detracting from Malory’s words. Finally and most substantially, there is the text itself. Peter has not been shy of modifying readings in either Winchester or Caxton; this is especially so in the contentious Roman War section. Not all textual scholars will agree with such emendation, just as not all scholars agree that the Newbold Revel Malory penned the Morte Darthur; but anyone who disputes the authorship question must rebut the considerable and convincing evidence marshalled by Peter. Likewise, there are also those who still feel that the Caxton Morte Darthur is at least as valid as the text contained in the Winchester manuscript—but anyone who upholds this view must deal with the collective weight of Works, Texts and Sources, and Peter’s introduction to the new edition. The apparatus and commentary are equally authoritative, detailing significant variant readings or scribal corrections, and—to take but one example—managing to offer a clear path through, and some new insights about, the critical debate regarding possible sources for the ‘Healing of Sir Urry.’ Peter’s text of the Click for larger view View full resolution P.J.C. Field with his New Edition of Malory. Photograph Courtesy of Samantha Rayner. [End Page 6] Morte is convincing, even Malorian, and I believe it will rightfully become the standard edition for scholars now and long into the...

Degrees of Veracity in the Morte Darthur: Elements of Malory’s Chronicle Style*This article began as a contribution to the round table in honour of Edward Donald Kennedy on the topic ‘Chronicles and Romance’, which took place at the XXIIIrd Triennial Congress of the International Arthurian Society in Bristol (2011), and remains dedicated to Professor Kennedy both for his scholarship and

Abstract: Within his masterful use of the chronicle style, which imparts at least a provisional truth value to the subject, Sir Thomas Malory’s prose implies varying and shifting levels of veracity. The Morte Darthur’s famous incipit ‘Hit befell’ – a characteristic feature of the chronicle style – may suggest the matter’s historical veracity on the one hand, even if, on the other, it may signal an unhistorical tale imitating an historical one. Again, Malory consistently backs up the authority, or veracity, of a statement with reference to ‘the French book’. Elsewhere he purports to relate only ‘auctorysed’ events. However, when he is narrating King Arthur’s death, Malory must distinguish the truth value of his account from that of ‘men in many parts of England’ who say that Arthur will return from Avalon and ‘he shall wynne the Holy Crosse’. Malory’s own historiography requires that he reject such hearsay. This, however, is a most cherished piece of hearsay; as I argue, Malory’s prose reflects the care with which he must proceed to its rejection. By what standard, in a text founded overwhelmingly on romance traditions, does Malory sort out the ‘real’ story of Arthur’s death and burial from the ‘false’ one? More generally, at what point before Arthur’s death did we enter a self-consciously historical or unhistorical representation of history? What consistency can we impute any particular level of truth in the Morte? The rhetorical conventions Malory uses are those of a chronicler, but, as I shall argue, the romance-nature of his material keeps him, and his reader, alert to just such questions.

Middle High German Arthurian Romance: New Readings

When Bonnie Wheeler approached me with the idea of assembling a special issue on the Middle High German Arthurian romances, I immediately became interested in the project. Indeed, as a long-time reader of Arthuriana I had often lamented that so few articles on the German romances appear in the journal, and this despite the large size of the German corpus and its centrality to the medieval European Arthurian tradition. I also realized that the scarcity of German pieces in Arthuriana was but a symptom of a larger phenomenon. Thus despite the relatively large number of North Americans working on German Arthurian romance, those scholars tend to present their findings in conference and print venues devoted narrowly to German Studies. And unlike colleagues in English, French, and Dutch, for example, North American scholars of German Arthuriana both participate less in interdisciplinary organizations like the International Arthurian Society and seem ever more detached from doing collaborative work with Arthurian researchers outside German. All this seems to have contributed to a declining awareness of German Arthuriana by colleagues working in the other Arthurian national traditions, a trend that decreasing German-language literacy among humanities scholars has only exacerbated. While the ability to read scholarly German well is still fairly common among the generation of Arthurian experts who are at retirement age, such proficiency is now rare among scholars under sixty. This means that few young scholars outside German Studies ever even consider venturing into the thorough and generally excellent-but notoriously dense, often awkwardly written, and sometimes repetitive-research on medieval Arthuriana that appears voluminously every year in the German language. Arthuriana's current editor, Dorsey Armstrong, and I hope that this special issue helps to remedy, albeit in a very small way, some of these issues. By presenting essays in English, we intend both to give colleagues outside German Studies an idea of the types of innovative research scholars of German Arthuriana are currently pursuing as well as to encourage those colleagues to revisit the German Arthurian romances and to incorporate them into their research and teaching. Further, we hope that this volume will motivate German Arthurian scholars to publish more of their findings in English so as to make them accessible to scholars outside German Studies. And lastly, we hope that this special German issue will encourage more North American researchers of German Arthuriana to contribute their scholarship to this journal and to interact more greatly with Arthurian scholars outside German Studies. The articles appearing in this issue, by five North American scholars at very different stages in their careers, represent a variety of approaches to medieval Arthuriana. James H. Brown, for instance, investigates the use of ekphrasis in a work that was enormously successful in the Middle Ages but which is today strangely underappreciated, namely, Wirnt von Gravenberg's Wigalois. As Brown deftly illustrates, the author employs ekphrasis to establish a message of religious toleration that is unusually progressive for the time. Straddling both medieval German and Old French traditions, Stephen Mark Carey's contribution is a piece of philological detective work that uses the average time of delay in reception for Old French works into Middle High German to date the romances of Chretien de Troyes. …

From the Cradle. . . The Rise of Romance Philology in American Academia (1900–1970)

Romance philology in American academia started out very much as the enterprise of a handful of individuals and a series of unconnected casual events: Lorenzo da Ponte, who was teaching Italian at Columbia as early as 1825, had failed as a merchant and grocer in Pennsylvania; (1) Aaron Marshall Elliott, before becoming the founder of the Department of Romance Philology at Johns Hopkins, had been a private teacher for eight years and was an autodidact who'd studied all sorts of languages all over Europe. He could have very well taught any kind of language when he was appointed associate professor for languages--and not Romance languages--to the newly founded University of Johns Hopkins in 1876. (2) It took time for the discipline to emerge. Gradually, between 1875 and 1915, things got organized. (3) Departments of Romance philology were founded all over America, first on the East Coast, then, with the turn of the century, in the Midwest and at Berkeley. A new community of scholars separated from the original flock of classical philologists, first as modern philologists--dealing with English, German, Romance languages etc.--then as a tribe of their own, Romance philologists. Modern Language Notes, the first journal devoted to modern philology--as opposed to classical philology--was launched in 1884 in Baltimore, followed, one year later, by the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, published by the newly founded association of the same name, and Chicago's Modern Philology in 1903. But by 1910, the Romanic Review, as the first journal entirely devoted to the study of Romance languages and literature, marked the advent of specialisation. (4) By and large, this evolution is no different from what had happened in Europe a few decades earlier, where national philologies had emerged, subsequently leading to the creation of specific departments, university positions and journals for Romance philology. (5) Once the discipline was established in the United States, its evolution continued in a very similar manner on both sides of the Atlantic, and medieval studies, including French literature, on which we will be concentrating here, developed in a parallel way. (6) A look at the number of doctoral dissertations in the field of medieval French and Occitan philology is very revealing: in the thirty years from 1880 to 1910, about forty dissertations were written in a few universities on the East Coast. (7) This considerable number is partly due to the fact that linguistics and philology were at that time not hermetically separated and thus many dissertations in historical linguistics were written and supervised by medievalists. Today, between 1995 to 2000, approximately sixty doctoral dissertations were published in the field in the USA and Canada, a number six or seven times higher per annum than one century ago. (8) This increasing output in the field of French literature of the Middle Ages is of course strictly arithmetical: it reflects the growing number of universities with French and Medieval departments, and, thus, the greater number of medievalists active in that area rather than a greater involvement in medieval studies than one hundred years ago. But the numerical increase is undeniable: when the International Arthurian Society and the Societe Rencesvals were established in the 1950s, the members from the USA and Canada could be counted on the fingers of two hands. (9) Today, there are hundreds of us. These figures show the North American landscape being gradually covered by a constantly growing number of citadels of knowledge and teaching of Romance philology, not unlike the famous white cloak of Cistercian abbeys spreading over twelfth-century France. Of course, exactly the same expansion could be registered, simply a little earlier, all over Europe, and the whole phenomenon could thus be dismissed as part of the progression regarding higher education in the western world over the last century. …

Bewnans Ke/The Life of St Kea: A critical edition with translation ed. by Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams (review)

GRAHAM THOMAS and NICHOLAS WILLIAMS, ed. and trans., Bewnans Ke/The Life of St Kea: A critical edition with translation. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, in association with The National Library of Wales, 2007, Pp. lxxxviii, 488. Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies. ISBN: 978-0-85989-800-3. £60. Bewnans Ke first came to the attention of the scholarly world when it was announced by Graham Thomas (formerly of the Department of Manuscripts and Records, National Library of Wales), that two previously unknown Cornish plays, about St Ke(/Kea) and about King Arthur, had been discovered in papers from the late Emeritus Professor J.E. Caerwyn Williams ('Two Middle Cornish Plays: A Note,' National Library of Wales Journal, 32.1 (2002 for Summer 2001), 121-22). Since then, it has been realized that there is in fact a single play, incompletely preserved. The manuscript (now National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, MS 23849D), has been the subject of a group of temporary websites (see Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society, LVII, 2005, 230). In 2006 Ken George published his edition (Bywnans Ke. Callington: Kesva an Taves Kernewek (Cornish Language Board), 252 p.), presenting the manuscript text, plus a rendering in Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish), and an English translation, with annotations and appendices including a translation of Albert Le Grand's seventeenth-century French 'Life of St Ke,' a work which, like the newly discovered play, deals both with the confrontation of the saint with the Cornish tyrant Teudar, and with the Roman challenge to Arthur and the Arthur-Modred-Guinevere triangle. Now at last we have the long-awaited critical edition by Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams (Associate Professor of Celtic Languages at University College Dublin). The edited text is presented with a facing English translation, with uncorrected text at the foot of each page. There is substantial introductory and glossarial matter, which pays attention to the multilingual nature of the work: Middle English and French appears among the Cornish, and stage directions are in Latin. The editors emphasize the many difficulties presented by a manuscript that has been under attack by everything from mice to a scribe whose 'inability to write Cornish correctly is paralleled by his barbarous spelling of Latin' (p. xlvii). Whole leaves are missing, some with particularly important scenes; in addition it is clear that the surviving text-a mid- or late-sixteenth-century copy-had an already damaged and defective exemplar. In its present state, the manuscript lacks the crucial link between the St Ke/Teudar scenes and those at Arthur's court, plus everything that happens after the queen has been brought the news of Arthur's return to Britain and his initial rout of Modred. Both Le Grand's 'Life of St Ke' and Bewnans Ke are summarized and compared (the editors outline the complex bibliographical history of Le Grand's work), to reveal striking similarities and differences in both the Cornish and the Arthurian sections, the latter largely based on Geoffrey of Monmouth but, in Bewnans Ke, containing a small number of interesting references to Welsh and Cornish tradition. The possible content of the manuscript's lacunae is considered, and it is proposed that the play originally consisted of three sections, acted on three separate days, the surviving material representing fragments of the first and second days' performance only. Motifs found in the legend of St Ke are then compared with other saints' lives, and the saint-still the patron of Kea parish-is set in his Cornish topographical context, with attention to place-names and folklore. References in Bewnans Ke to St Ke's voyage on a stone supports tradition not previously attested before 1838! The editors propose that the play is, like another Cornish play on the life of a saint, Beunans Meriasek, probably a production of Glasney College, Penryn, and tentatively date composition to the period 1453-60 on political grounds and on the basis of evidence for the pronunciation of Middle English unstressed -e. …

Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur edited by K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu (review)

REVIEWS119 it delivered. As the sun sets on the wotld of the Round Table at the end of Camelot, so the sun sets on yet another comer ofrhe Empire at the end ofthe film. Futther Wah-Wah ends on a note ofhope—there has been a once, and there will be a future. In the film's final scene, sporting his father's pith hat, Ralph stands atop a hill overlooking the breath-taking Swazi landscape where Wah-Wah was entirely shot. Like Tom ofWarwick, Ralph has a message to deliver about the importance of the past and about independence for rhe future—joining Ralph is his own Guinevere, his girl friend Monica. While Wah-Wah's screenplay is populated with stock types, the actors are uniformly excellent, and Grant is able to coax sympathy out of us for everyone in the film except Lauren—and Princess Margaret, who snubs her majesty's subjects by leaving the musical at the interval. The location shots are again breath taking—and the costumes ate just fab! KEVIN J. HARTY La Salle University ?. s. WHETTER and raluca l. radulescu, eds., Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur. Arthurian Studies Ix. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. Pp. x, 165. 158^1-84384-035-9.£4o/$75. The International Arrhurian Congress held at Bangor, Wales in the summer of2002 was dominated by papets on Malory's Morte Darthur. The omnipresence ofMalory was not surprising given that the congress was hosted at the home univetsity of P.J.C. Field, the distinguished Malorian and currenr president of the International Arthurian Society. The essays in Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur were first presented ar Bangor, and appropriately, the volume is edited by one ofField's students, K. S. Whetter, and by Raluca L. Radulescu who replaced Field upon his recent retirement. Re-Viewingopens with a succinct introduction by Field, which excitedly reminds us of Oakeshott's discovety of the Winchestet Manuscript and the birth ofVinaver's magisterial and controversial edition. Field claims that the ten essays in the volume stem from Vinaverean controversy, bur each contributor's foornotes testify to Field's subsequent shaping ofMaloty studies. In terms ofquestions reviewed, the volume is tripartite, trearing textual issues, the context ofpolitics and geography, and themes and gentes. The section on textual issues opens with Takako Kato's essay on 'Cotrecred Mistakes in the Winchester Manuscript,' in which she describes both scribes A and B correcring an error made by predecessors and thus 'playing editor' Through her painsraking argument, Kato cotrects Vinaver's claim rhar the scribes were only able to introduce error by showing them in the process ofcorrection, proves the necessity of an archetype between Winchestet and Malory's holograph, and gestures towatd the kind of editorial principles we will all need to observe when the digital Malory becomes available. In his 'Textual Harassment,' D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. works in an opposite manner comparing only two sites ofdifference, the opening page and the May passage, while arguing 'that all Middle English texts misrepresent theit authots' 120ARTHURIANA works' (p. 28). To be sure, Hanks overstates the case, but he successfully highlights the cavaliet attitude with which Malory s first two editots, Caxton and de Wotde, introduced changes to the 'lexical' and 'bibliographic' text (the latet meaning 'page lay-out'). Many Malorians, myselfamong them, would welcome from Hanks a more nuanced and detailed, pethaps book-length, study on editorial change. The final essay in this section, Thomas H. Croft's on 'Historia and arguementum in Caxton's Preface' locates the editot's prologue within fifteenth-century views of history (the historia of the title being 'what happened') and moral exemplum (the argumentum being' what might have'), while examining the editor's cagy rhetorical effects. Crofts corrects a too mercantile view ofCaxton but occludes his sharp insights by a Detridean indefiniteness and unnecessarily negative phrasing. Essays treating the second topic, politics and space, are the strongest in the volume. Meg Roland elegantly explains changes that Caxton brings to Winchester's version of the Roman war in terms of East—West relations after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1482. Robert L. Kelly analyzes political geography in rhe 'Tale of King...