'Part how-to guide, part manifesto - a gentle exhortation that encourages us to reconnect with our damaged belongings and ourselves.' TOAST magazine For Molly Martin, it all started with a pair of socks. Her favourite pair. When the heels became threadbare, her mother got out her darning mushroom and showed her how to reinforce the thinning stitches and bring them back to life. She has been stitching and darning ever since. In The Art of Repair, Molly explores the humble origins of repair and how the act of mending a cherished item carefully by hand offers not just a practical solution but nourishment for the soul. Using her own beautiful illustrations, she guides us through the basics of the craft - from piecing and patching to the ancient Japanese art of Sashiko. This book will stay with you long after you put down your needle and thread. It offers an antidote to our increasingly disposable lifestyle, encouraging us to reconnect not just with the everyday objects in our environment but also with ourselves.

First full-length study of these crucial buildings in the Morte, looking at the interplay between characters and space. Castles play an integral part in Malory's Morte Darthur; Camelot, Tintagel, Joyous Gard, and Dover, for example, are the crucial backdrop to the action and both host and shape the story as it moves through them. But despitethis, Malory's castles have received limited scholarly attention. As the first monograph to look extensively at either castles or space in Malory, this book aims to fill that gap. It reads the Morte through its castles - their architecture, structural and symbolic significance, and geographical locations, together with their political, communal, ritual, domestic, and martial functions. The book also traces the mutual development of space and identity in the text, looking at Malory's Arthurian community in and around castle space, both as individuals and as a group; for example, it considers Arthur's political success through his use of space, and shows how crucial Camelot and its hall are to the fellowship of knights. Overall, the volume suggests a better understanding of the community's central organising body, the Round Table, and offers important re-readings of a number of episodes and characters. MOLLY A. MARTIN is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at the University of Indianapolis.

New studies of the problem of medieval masculinity, and Chaucer's treatment of it. Issues relating to the male characters and the construction of masculinities in Chaucer's masterpiece of love found and love lost are explored here. Collectively the essays address the question of what it means to be a man in theMiddle Ages, what constitutes masculinity in this era, and how such masculinities are culturally constructed; they seek to advance scholarly understanding of the themes, characters, and actions of Troilus and Criseyde through thehermeneutics of medieval and modern concepts of manliness. Throughout, they argue that Troilus and the other characters, including Criseyde, are subject to multiple and conflicting interpretations, especially in regard to the intersections of their genders with their sexual performances and their conflicted relationships to generic expectations for gendered conduct. Contributors: JOHN M. BOWERS, MICHAEL CALABRESE, HOLLY A. CROCKER, KATE KOPPELMAN,MOLLY MARTIN, MARCIA SMITH MARZEC, GRETCHEN MIESZKOWSKI, JAMES J. PAXSON, TISON PUGH, R. ALLEN SHOAF, ROBERT S. STURGES, ANGELA JANE WEISL, RICHARD ZEIKOWITZ

New and fresh assessments of Malory's Morte Darthur. The essays here are devoted to that seminal Arthurian work, Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Developments of papers first given at the 'Malory at 550: Old and New' conference, they emphasise here the second part of its remit. Accordingly, several contributors focus new attention on Malory's style, using his stock phrases, metaphors, characterization, or manipulation of sources to argue for a deeper appreciation of his merits as an author. If, as others illustrate, Malory is a much better artist than his twentieth-century reputation allowed, then there is a renewed need to re-assess the vexed question of the possible originality of his 'Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney'. Similarly fresh approaches underlie those essays re-examining Malory's attitude to time and the sacred in 'The Sankgreal', the manner in which the ghosts of Lot and his sons highlight potential failures in the Round Table Oath, or the pleasures and pitfalls of Arthurian hospitality. The remaining contributions argue for new approaches to Malory's narrative gaps, Launcelot's status as a victim of sexual violence, and the importance of rejecting Victorian moral attitudes towards Gwenyvere and Isode, moralizing that still informs much recent scholarship addressing Malory's female characters. Contributors: Joyce Coleman, Elizabeth Edwards, Kristina Hildebrand, Cathy Hume, David F. Johnson, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Molly A. Martin, Cory James Rushton, Fiona Tolhurst, Michael W. Twomey

Fresh study of the intricate roles played by gender, visibility, and the idea of romance in Malory's Morte. Skilfully blending analysis of medieval ideas of optics and vision with careful close readings of the text and deft use of modern critical theory, the author offers a fresh, exciting and insightful reading of the Morte. Of interest to all medievalists, and particularly fascinating for those working in the fields of Arthurian literature, medieval science and philosophy, and gender studies. Dorsey Armstrong, Purdue University. This first book-length study of vision in the Morte Darthur examines the roles played by sight - seeing and being seen - in the Morte's construction of gender, highlighting also the influence of the romance genre in this process. The discussion addresses several key figures: Gareth provides a paradigm of visible romance masculinity; Launcelot's and Trystram's adulteries introduce competing needs for both visibility and invisibility; Palomydes and other less acclaimed knights, and reactions to their shortcomings, confirm the model of visible gender; grail knights and Malory retain secular romance ideas of vision and gender on the religious quest; and the two Elaynes and Percivale's sister prove femininity more variable and less rigid than masculinity in the text. The book argues that visibility is crucial to Malory's conception of gender identity and, further, that masculinity and femininity are determined throughout the Morte by the romance genre. MOLLY MARTIN is Associate Professor of English at the University of Indianapolis.