Lancelot is the central romance of the Vulgate Cycle, in which the chivalric elements in Arthur's court come to the fore. These chivalric elements contain the seeds of Arthur's destruction and the dissolution of the Round Table, as Lancelot's love for Guinevere undermines his bond to Arthur; the tension between love, prowess and loyalty is the undercurrent of the long romance which describes the exploits which he performs in her service. It also includes many stories which are chivalric adventures largely unrelated to the main theme, and uses the device of interweaving these stories to form a huge stream of narrative. This series of episodic pictures leads ultimately to the birth of Lancelot's son Galahad, who is destined to become the hero of the Grail. Parts three and four of Lancelot begin with the episode of the false Guinevere, in which Guinevere is accused of being an impostor; Lancelot is then abducted and imprisoned by Morgan le Fay, who out of hatred for Arthur intends to reveal their love to the king. When he escapes, Guinevere is abducted by Meleagant, and Lancelot has to rescue her. In the course of these adventures, the Grail appears for the first time: Lancelot comes to the Burning Tomb, where he learns that his sins will prevent him from succeeding in the Grail Quest; and Gawain reaches the Grail Castle, but fails the test. For a full description of the Vulgate Cycle see the blurb for the complete set.

This study focuses on the relationship between Old French verse romances and the women who formed a part of their audience, and challenges the commonly-held view that all courtly literature promoted the social welfare of the noblewomen to whom romances were dedicated or addressed. Using reader-response theory, feminist criticism and recent historical studies, Roberta Krueger provides close readings of a selection of texts, both well-known and less well-known, to show an intriguing variety of portrayals of women: misogynistic, idealizing and didactic. She suggests that romances not only taught their audiences idealized models of masculine and feminine behaviour (including a sophisticated underpinning of medieval women's loss of autonomy in the family, education and society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), but that many romances also invited their readers to criticise and to resist gender roles.

This Companion presents fifteen original and engaging essays by leading scholars on one of the most influential genres of Western literature. Essays on the origins of romance in French and English courts are complemented by articles that trace the transmission and evolution of these stories throughout Europe. The volume provides a clear introduction for students and fresh perspectives for scholars on topics ranging from manuscripts to gender roles in chivalry and courtly love. An introduction, a chronology and a bibliography of texts and translations complete this lively, useful overview.

This Companion presents fifteen original and engaging essays by leading scholars on one of the most influential genres of Western literature. Essays on the origins of romance in French and English courts are complemented by articles that trace the transmission and evolution of these stories throughout Europe. The volume provides a clear introduction for students and fresh perspectives for scholars on topics ranging from manuscripts to gender roles in chivalry and courtly love. An introduction, a chronology and a bibliography of texts and translations complete this lively, useful overview.

A volume of carefully focused essays illuminating the works of one of the leading 20th-century German writers. Alfred Doeblin (1878-1957) was one of the great German-Jewish writers of the 20th century, a major figure in the German avant-garde before the First World War and a leading intellectual during the Weimar Republic. Doeblin greatly influenced the history of the German novel: his best-known work, the best-selling 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, has frequently been compared in its use of internal monologue and literary montage to James Joyce's Ulysses and John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer . Doeblin's oeuvre is by no means limited to novels, but in this genre, he offered a surprising variety of narrative techniques, themes, structures, and outlooks. Doeblin's impact on German writers after the Second World War was considerable: Gunter Grass, for example, acknowledged him as "my teacher." And yet, while Alexanderplatz continues to fascinate the reading public, it has overshadowed therest of Doeblin's immense oeuvre. This volume of carefully focused essays seeks to do justice to such important texts as Doeblin's early stories, his numerous other novels, his political, philosophical, medical, autobiographical, and religious essays, his experimental plays, and his writings on the new media of cinema and radio. Contributors: Heidi Thomann Tewarson, David Dollenmayer, Neil H. Donahue, Roland Dollinger, Veronika Fuechtner, Gabriele Sander, Erich Kleinschmidt, Wulf Koepke, Helmut F. Pfanner, Helmuth Kiesel, Klaus Muller-Salget, Christoph Bartscherer, Wolfgang Dusing. Roland Dollinger is Associate Professor of German at Sarah Lawrence College; Wulf Koepke is Professor Emeritus of German at Texas A&M University; Heidi Thomann Tewarson is Professor of German at Oberlin College.

Written in 1456 and purporting to be the biography of the actual fourteenth-century knight of its title, Jean de Saintre has been called the first modern novel in French and one of the first historical novels in any language. Taken in hand at the age of thirteen by an older and much more experienced lady, Madame des Belles Cousines, the youth grows into an accomplished knight, winning numerous tournaments and even leading a crusade against the infidels for the love of Madame. When he reaches maturity, Jean starts to rebel against Madame's domination by seeking out chivalric adventures on his own. She storms off to her country estates and takes up with the burly abbot of a nearby monastery. The text moves into darker and uncourtly territory when Jean discovers their liaison and lashes out to avenge his lost love and honor, ruining Madame's reputation in the process. Composed in the waning years of chivalry and at the threshold of the print revolution, Jean de Saintre incorporates disquisitions on sin and virtue, advice on hygiene and fashion, as well as lengthy set pieces of chivalric combat. Antoine de La Sale, who was, by turns, a page, a royal tutor, a soldier, and a judge at tournaments, embellished his text with wide-ranging insights into chivalric ideology, combat techniques, heraldry and warfare, and the moral training of a young knight. This superb translation-the first in nearly a hundred years-contextualizes the story with a rich introduction and a glossary and is suitable for scholars, students, and general readers alike. An encyclopedic compilation of medieval culture and a window into the lost world of chivalry, Jean de Saintre is a touchstone for both the late Middle Ages and the emergence of the modern novel.