New approaches to religious texts from the Middle Ages, highlighting their diversity and sophistication. From the great age of pastoral expansion in the thirteenth century, to the revolutionary paroxysms of the English Reformation, England's religious writings, cultures, and practices defy easy analysis. The diverse currents of practice and belief which interact and conflict across the period - orthodox and heterodox, popular and learned, mystical and pragmatic, conservative and reforming - are defined on the one hand by differences as nuanced as the apophatic and cataphatic approaches to understanding the divine, and on the other by developments as profound and concrete as the persecution of declared heretics, the banning and destruction of books, and the emergence of printing. The essays presented in this volume respond to and build upon the hugely influential work of Vincent Gillespie in these fields, offering a variety of approaches, spiritual and literary, bibliographical and critical, across the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation and beyond. Topics addressed include the Wycliffite Bible; the Assumption of the Virgin as represented in medieval English culture; Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock; and the survival of latemedieval piety in early modern England. LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford; RALPH HANNA is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus), Keble College, Oxford. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, James Carley, Alexandra da Costa, Anne Hudson, Ian Johnson, Daniel Orton, Susan Powell, Denis Renevey, Michael G. Sargent, Annie Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Barry Windeatt.

Discussion of site and buildings, books and manuscripts, cultural life and traditions, from the earliest Anglo-Saxon period to the later middle ages. Glastonbury Abbey was one of the great cultural centres of Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, yet this is the first volume of scholarly essays to be devoted to the subject. Written in honour of C. A. Ralegh Radford, the first itemsare concerned with the physical remains of the abbey, ranging from the place of Glastonbury in the development of Christianity in Somerset to specific examinations of surviving monastic buildings. The main body of the essays explores documents relating to the abbey for evidence of its history and traditions, including the earliest Anglo-Saxon period, pre-conquest abbots, and links with the Celtic world. The final section deals with the cultural life of the abbey: Glastonbury's role in education is discussed and the concluding essay deals with the most magical of all Glastonbury legends - its link with Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail. Contributors: PHILIP RAHTZ, MICHAEL D. COSTEN, C.J. BOND, J.B. WELLER, ROBERT W. DUNNING, LESLEY ABRAMS, JAMES P. CARLEY, ANN DOOLEY, SARAH FOOT, DAVID THORNTON, RICHARD SHARPE, JULIA CRICK, OLIVER J.PADEL, MATTHEW BLOWS, CHARLES T. WOOD, NICHOLAS ORME, CERIDWENLLOYD-MORGAN, FELICITY RIDDY.

Latest work on Arthur by respected scholars. This is the first volume of Arthurian Literature to be edited by Professor Carley and Professor Riddy. It has a strong English flavour with papers on Malory, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Awntyrs off Arthure, Hardyng, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and court culture under Edward IV. The new editors introduce Notes, shorter explorations of topics currently under scrutiny by Arthurian scholars, and there will be updates of articles contained in previous volumes. Contributorsinclude: RICHARD BARBER, FELICITY RIDDY, BONNIE WHEELER, HELEN PHILLIPS, MARTIN SCHICHTMAN, LAURIE FINKE and N.M. DAVIS.

Latest volume in this series containing the best new work on Arthurian topics. The latest volume of Arthurian Literature includes an edition and study of the widely disseminated Latin translation of Des Grantz Geanz(`De origine gigantum') by James Carley and Julia Crick, with a feminist readingof the poem by Lesley Johnson. Claude Luttrell writes on Chretien's Cliges; Corinne Saunders explores the issue of rape in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, Neil Wright offers a reconstruction of the Arthurian epitaphin Royal 20 B.XV, Frank Brandsma discusses the treatment of simultaneity in Yvain, Chanson de Roland and a section of the Lancelot en prose, Julia Crick updates the progress on the manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and A.H.W. Smith contributes a supplement to the bibliography of twentieth-century Arthurian literature begun in earlier volumes.

`[The series is an indispensable component of any historical or Arthurian library.' NOTES AND QUERIES This latest issue of Arthurian Literature continues the tradition of the journal in combining theoretical studies with editions of primary Arthurian texts. There is a special focus on Chretien de Troyes, with articles considering his identity, providing a new reading of Le Chevalier de la Charrete, and giving an account of a discovery of an important new fragment of the First Continuation. Other essays deal with Glastonbury, at the heart of the English Arthurian legend;the Scottish treatment of the Arthur story in the Reformation period; and the Morte Darthur in the context of fifteenth-century chivalric encyclopaedias. Contributors: SARAH KAY, NICK CORBYN, LISA JEFFERSON, AELRED WATKIN, JEANNE KROCHALIS, DAVID ALLAN, KAREN CHEREWATUK

The great vogue in Victorian times for matters Arthurian owes much to the poetry of Matthew Arnold and William Morris. Unlike Tennyson, however, neither of these poets is now remembered primarily for his Arthurian poems; as a result there is no modern anthology devoted to this area of their output. This is a major gap which the present volume seeks to rectify. Arnold's Tristram and Iseultis the first modern English retelling of the Tristram legend, a melancholy interpretation of the theme, reflecting the poet's pessimism about his own age; Morris's different approach -- the rich sensuality of his The Defence of Guenevere and other poems --clearly reveals the allure that the middle ages held for the pre-Raphaelites.