The expression of cultural differences in medieval courtly literature explored. Cultural differences in medieval European literary practice are reflected in many different ways, as this volume illustrates. The essays cover a whole range of courtly topics, in particular questions of context, genre and poetic voice. The five sections explore contexts for courtliness, especially the position of the vernacular poet at or near the court; the ways in which courtly values and political aspirations are reflected in the work of medieval chronicle and romance writers; questions of register, convention, gender, and narrative technique; problems of literary production and reception, particularly the transmission of courtly and quasi-courtly texts among widely differing medieval audiences; and broader issues such as the clues to the courtly mentality provided by peripheral narrative details, the blurring of conventional courtly boundaries, and the perennial fascination of tales with strong folklore or fabliau elements. Dr EVELYN MULLALLY and Dr JOHN THOMPSON are Senior Lecturers at the Queen's University of Belfast. Contributors: GEAROID MAC EOIN, NOLLAIG O MURA-LE, RUPERT T. PICKENS, FRANCOISE LE SAUX, CATHERINE LEGLU, BARBARA N. SARGENT-BAUR, AD PUTTER, MICHEL ZINK, DONALD MADDOX, JEANBLACKER, SARA STURM-MADDOX, MICHELLE SZKIILNIK, THEA SUMMERFIELD, HELEN COOPER JOHN SCATTERGOOD, JUNE HALL MCCASH, JOAN BRUMLIK, LESLIE C. BROOKMAUREEN BOULTON, JESSICA COOKE, DIANE M. WRIGHT, G. KOOLEMANS BEYNEN, LORI J. WALTERS, SYLVIA WRIGHT, FRANK BRANDSMA, CARTER REVARD, A S G EDWARDS, HEATHER COLLIER, TERENCE SCULLY, CHRISTOPHER KLEINHENZ, SARA I. JAMES, WILLIAM MACBAIN, SARA I. JAMES, MARY B. SPEER, YASMINA FOEHR-JANSSENS, CAROL J. HARVEY, BART BESAMUSCA, KEITH BUSBY

Carter Revard's newest collection, From the Extinct Volcano, A Bird of Paradise, sings through poetry and prose "to celebrate our creatural selves." Revard draws from a lifetime of experience that started on the Osage reservation during the Depression era and has continued through his role as a distinguished student, teacher, scholar, and poet. In this book, he illustrates how culture, which is not restricted to the human species, has survived through the practice of singing. In showing us this, Revard skillfully blends narratives of nonhuman animal behavior, scientific studies on the nature of language, and literary allusions. From the Extinct Volcano, A Bird of Paradise demonstrates how survival ultimately depends on song.

Revard's poems are more like those of Seamus Heaney than those of Paul Muldoon - more like Robert Frost than Wallace Stevens, more like Mark Twain than Henry James. They are true stories, some from time on the Osage Reservation during Dust Bowl days, some from the Isle of Skye in Hippie Time, others from Creation Time in Las Vegas with Trickster, at the Hotel Empire in Manhattan with Dante, under dragons flying over St. Louis, dodging bullets while stealing watermelons, listening to humpbacked whales and wine-throated hummingbirds in Bellagio, parading with the Veterans of Foreign Wars to publicize some powwow in the old Indian-fighter headquarters at Jefferson Barracks on the Mississippi, sitting with Ponca cousins in a bar and hoping not to get shot after the occupation of Wounded Knee. The reason for every poem in this marvellous selection is to invite readers into its personal, familial, communal space to feast with the Ponca people and Revard on whatever they have on the table. These poems are all for having some kind of good time together, and the more the merrier.