Viking America examined through the writing and rewriting of the Vinland story from the middle ages to the twentieth century. The accounts in the Vinland sagas of the great voyages to the northeast coast of America in the early years of the eleventh century have often been obscured by detailed argument over the physical identity of the West Atlantic landwhich its Scandinavian discoverers named Vinland. Geraldine Barnes leaves archaeological evidence aside and returns to the Old Norse narratives, Groenlendinga saga (Saga of Greenlanders) and Eiriks saga rauda(Saga of Eric the Red), in her study of the writing and rewriting of the Vinland story from the middle ages to the late twentieth century. She sets the sagas in the context of Iceland's transition from paganism to Christianity; later chapters explore the Vinland story in relation to issues of regional pride and national myths of foundation in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, to the ethos of popular imperialism during the same periodin English literature, and, in the late twentieth century, to postcolonial concerns. GERALDINE BARNES is associate professor of English, University of Sydney.

Studies in Medievalism is the only journal entirely devoted to modern re-creations of the middle ages: a field of central importance not only to scholarship but to the whole contemporary cultural world. The middle ages remain a prize to be fought for and a territory to control. From early modern times rulers and politicians have sought to ground their legitimacy in ancient tradition - which they have often invented or rewritten for their own purposes. This issue of Studies in Medievalism presents a number of such cases, ranging from the rewriting of Mozart, and Merovingian history, for the King of Bavaria, to the anglicization of the medieval WelshMabinogion by the wife of an English ironmaster. Other articles consider the involvement of scholarship with national and professional self-definition, whether in Renaissance Holland or Victorian Britain. And who "discovered" America, Christopher Columbus or Leif Ericsson? This is an issue of vital importance to many 19th-century Americans, but one created and determined entirely by scholarship. Simple commercial motives for exploiting the middle ages are also represented, whether straightforward forgery for sale, or the giant modern industry of tourism. Professor TOM SHIPPEY teaches in the Department of English at the University of St Louis; Dr MARTIN ARNOLD teaches at University College, Scarborough. Contributors: SOPHIE VAN ROMBURGH, ROLF H. BREMMER JR, BETSY BOWDEN, WERNER WUNDERLICH, JUDITH JOHNSTON, GERALDINE BARNES, RICHARD UTZ, JOHN BLOCK FRIEDMAN, STEVE WATSON.

Barnes contends that `rule by counsel' is central to the ethos of Middle English romance. By examining the development of Middle English romance against its background of 13th- and 14th-century royal-baronial conflict, this book assumes a new historical perspective. Friction between Plantagenet kings and dissident barons contributed to the development of the `problem of counsel' both as an actuality and as a topos in the literature of the period. Rule by counsel, an ideal which informs medieval English government at every level, is, the authorargues, central to the ethos of Middle English romance. The procedural formula of `counsel and strategy' is tested against a number of romances: Ywain and Gawain, Havelok, Gamelyn, Athelston, a selection of nine romances from the Auchinleck manuscript, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. By selecting these narratives Geraldine Barnes is able to approach the question of counsel from a number of different angles. This is a book which will stimulate considerable interest among scholars of medieval literature. GERALDINE BARNES is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Early English Literature at the University of Sydney.

This book deals with a fascinating but until recently largely neglected area of late medieval Icelandic literature: the indigenous prose romances, generally known as riddarasoegur (lit. sagas of knights), a group of some 30 sagas composed in Iceland from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century onwards which take place in an exotic (non-Scandinavian), vaguely chivalric milieu and are characterized by the extensive use of foreign motifs and a strong supernatural or fabulous element. The author, Geraldine Barnes, former Professor of English Language and Early English Literature at the University of Sydney, has written extensively on the riddarasoegur throughout her long career. This book represents the culmination of her work in this area and presents an interesting take' on the riddarasoegur, focusing on their learned or bookish' elements. Although the riddarasoegur are clearly modelled on Continental chivalric romances and influenced by the translated' riddarasoegur in terms of subject matter, style and ethos, that debt tends to be limited largely to the surface attributes of romance typically, princes on quests in exotic foreign lands which ultimately bring material rewards, noble brides and the acquisition of new kingdoms. Contrary to European chivalric romance, however, the Icelandic riddarasoegur manifest a substantial debt to medieval encyclopedic and historiographical traditions. One effect of this is to bring an element of biculturalism' to the textual landscapes of the riddarasoegur which suggests that their authors, and, by implication, their audiences, were familiar with both learned tradition and traditional lore and accustomed to moving back and forth between them in creative literary composition.

The essays in this collection -- a selection of papers presented at the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies workshop, `Travel and Cartography from Bede to the Enlightenment' (August 22-23, 2001) - track a variety of travel narratives from the eighth century to the eighteenth. Their voyages, which extend from from the literal to the spiritual, the political, and the artistic, show how the concept of narrative mapping has changed over time, and how it encompasses cosmogony, geography, chorography, topography, and inventory. Each essay is concerned in some way with the application of the medieval geographical imagination, or with the enduring influence of that imagination upon post-medieval travel and discovery writing.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate university students and to a broad range of academics across the disciplines of literature and history. It will be of particular interest to medievalists and scholars of the early modern period and to readers of, the new (1997) scholarly journal, Studies in Travel Writing.The volume will also appeal to a more general, informed readership interested in the history of travel and the history of ideas, early contact with indigenous people, and encounters between East and West.