The Theatre of Medieval Europe brings together the work of thirteen internationally recognized scholars of early drama to give a comprehensive account of recent findings in the field. Whilst reflecting the large body of research on English drama, the book widens the focus of its survey to represent the continental theatre of the period, with a succession of essays covering England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, central Europe and the Low Countries. In addition, it deals with Latin musical and liturgical drama, and addresses both the archival and stage-orientated aspects of theatre research. In reviewing the field in this way, this collection not only offers an account of recent discoveries across a range of countries and types of drama, but also suggests the comparative and interdisciplinary ground on which these fields of research may increasingly come to meet and cross-fertilise one another in the future. A major feature of the book is its authoritative, chronological and fully-indexed bibliography, which should serve as an invaluable guide to the most significant contributions in the field.

Influential scholars from Britain and North America discuss future directions in rapidly expanding field of manuscript study. The study of manuscripts is one of the most active areas of current research in medieval studies: manuscripts are the basic primary material evidence for literary scholars, historians and art-historians alike, and there has been an explosion of interest over the past twenty years. Manuscript study has developed enormously: codices are no longer treated as inert witnesses to a culture whose character has already been determined by the modern scholar, but are active participants in a process of exploration and discovery. The articles collected here discuss the future of this process and vital questions about manuscript study for tomorrow's explorers. They deal with codicology and book production, with textual criticism, with the material structure of the medieval book, with the relation of manuscripts to literary culture, to social history and to the medieval theatre, and with the importance to manuscript study of the emerging technology of computerised digitisation and hypertext display. The essays provide an end-of-millennium perspective on the most vigorous developments in a rapidly expanding field of study. Contributors: A.I. Doyle, C. David Benson, Martha W. Driver, J.P. Gumbert, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Linne R. Mooney, Eckehard Simon, Alison Stones, John Thompson. DEREK PEARSALL is former Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, York, and Professor of English at Harvard University.