Studies of the evolution of the hero, from Beowulf to Lancelot. Andre Crepin, head of the English faculty at the Sorbonne, has made a great contribution to medieval English studies in France and in Europe. These studies in his honour reflect the wide range of his interests in Old and Middle English, fromBeowulf to Malory. Their linking theme is the literary and linguistic evolution of the hero, from the classic expression of the Germanic code to the chivalry of the knights of the Round Table, from Beowulf toChaucer's knight to Sir Lancelot. Beowulf as archetypal hero is both the subject of and the concept behind more than one study; others, attempting to define heroism, grapple with the semantic problem posed by the absence of thisword until very late in the medieval period; and the very notion of heroism is questioned as the passive hero or anti-hero emerges as a literary type, at the same time as the medieval consciousness of self developed. Contributors: GUY BOURGUIN, LEO CARRUTHERS, PETER CLEMOES, ANDY ORCHARD, ERIC STANLEY, JULIETTE DOR, DEREK BREWER, TERENCE P. DOLAN, JILL MANN, JOSSELINE BIBARD, JEAN-JACQUES BLANCHOT, JAMES WIMSATT, TERENCE McCARTHY, GLORIA CIGMAN.

Translation of fifteen lyrics marked Ch' found in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, along with a detailed inventory of the contents and a study of English and Chaucerian connections. When Chaucer began his service in the English courts in the late 1350s, the French lyric in the l>formes fixes/l> of ballade, rondeau, virelay, and chant royal was the poetry of the court. Chaucer no doubt composed such poetry. Among extant anthologies of lyrics in the fixed forms from that time, University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, comprising 310 poems of which about half are anonymous, seems the most likely to contain works written by Chaucer. To add to the likelihood, fifteen of the best anonymous poems - ten ballades, four chants royaux, and a rondeau - have the intriguing initials Ch' entered just beneath the rubrics. Besides editions and translations of the fifteen lyrics, l>Chaucer and the Poems of Ch'/l> provides a record of the numerous filiations of the Pennsylvania MS collection with Chaucer and England. This record includes text of a fascinating exchange of poems between Chaucer's early contemporaries, Philippe de Vitry and Jean de la Mote, the text of Granson's l>Cinq Balades Ensievans/l> in the closest version extant to Chaucer's l>Complaint of Venus/l>, and an analysis of the contents of the MS as they relate to Chaucer. l>Chaucer and the Poems of Ch'/l> concludes with a detailed inventory of this little-studied MS with particular note of Chaucerian aspects of it.