The theme of the `body and soul' relationship in medieval texts and modern reworkings. The theme of the body-and-soul relationship in medieval texts and in modern reworkings of medieval matter is explored in the articles here, specifically the representation of the body in romance; the relevance of bawdy tales to the cultural experience of authors and readers in the middle ages; the function of despair, or melancholy, in medieval and Renaissance literature; and the political significance of late medieval representations of `bodies' in the chroniclers' accounts of the Rising and in Gower's poems. Two articles are devoted to modern retellings of medieval themes: John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, seen in relation to the traditional acta martyrum, and the medieval revival in Tory Britain exemplified in Douglas Oliver's The Infant and the Pearl. Contributors: PAMELA JOSEPH BENSON, NIGEL S. THOMPSON, JON WHITMAN, JEROME MANDEL, BARBARA NOLAN, YASUNARI TAKADA, YVETTE MARCHAND, ROBERT F. YEAGER, JOERG O. FICHTE, JOHN KERRIGAN

This book of new stories by the Israeli-American short story writer Jerome Mandel tells tales of the head, the heart, and writing - some gritty, some witty, some smooth. They address loss and love, puzzlement and growing old, making choices -- with wit, intelligence, sympathy. In these stories cars break down, people make surprising announcements or do unexpected things, they die or don't or can't or sell metaphors. Some people fall in love, misplace love, lose love.