A comprehensive survey of Malory's Morte Darthur, one of the most important texts of the Middle Ages. Malory's Morte Darthur is now a canonical and widely-taught text. Recent decades have seen a transformation and expansion of critical approaches in scholarship, as well as significant advances in understanding its milieux:textual, literary, cultural and historical. This volume adds to and updates the influential Companion of 1996, offering scholars, teachers and students alike a full guide to the text and the author. The essays it contains provide a synthetic overview of, and fresh perspectives on, the key questions about and contexts connected with the Morte. MEGAN G. LEITCH is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University; CORY JAMES RUSHTON is Associate Professor in the Department of English at St Francis Xavier University, Canada. Contributors: Dorsey Armstrong, Thomas Crofts, Sian Echard, Rob Gossedge, Daniel Helbert, Amy Kaufman, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Catherine Nall, Ralph Norris, Raluca Radulescu, Lisa Robeson, Meg Roland, Cory Rushton, Masako Takagi, Kevin Whetter.

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A wide range of Arthurian material is discussed here, reflecting its diversity, and enduring vitality. Geoffrey of Monmouth's best-selling Historia regum Britannie is discussed in the context of Geoffrey's reception in Wales and the relationship between Latin and Welsh literary culture. Two essays deal with the Middle English Ywain and Gawain: the first offers a comparative study of the Middle English poem alongside Chretien's Yvainand the Welsh Owein, while the second considers Ywain and Gawain with the Alliterative Morte Arthure in their northern English cultural and political context, the world of the Percys and the Nevilles. It isfollowed by a discussion of Edward III's recuperation of his abandoned Order of the Round Table, which offers an intriguing explanation for this reversal in the context of Edward's victory over the French at Poitiers. The final essay is a comparison of fifteenth- and twentieth-century portrayals of Camelot in Malory and T.H. White, as both idea and locale, and a centre of hearsay and gossip. The volume is completed with a unique and little-known medievalGreek Arthurian poem, presented in facing-page edition and modern English translation. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Christopher Berard, Louis J. Boyle, Thomas H. Crofts, Ralph Hanna, Georgia Lynn Henley, Erich Poppe

A comprehensive survey of one of the most important texts of the Middle Ages. Malory's Morte Darthur is now a canonical and widely-taught text. Recent decades have seen a transformation and expansion of critical approaches in scholarship, as well as significant advances in understanding its milieux:textual, literary, cultural and historical. This volume adds to and updates the influential Companion of 1996, offering scholars, teachers and students alike a full guide to the text and the author. The essays it contains provide a synthetic overview of, and fresh perspectives on, the key questions about and contexts connected with the Morte. MEGAN G. LEITCH is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University; CORY JAMES RUSHTON is Associate Professor in the Department of English at St Francis Xavier University, Canada. Contributors: Dorsey Armstrong, Thomas Crofts, Sian Echard, Rob Gossedge, Daniel Helbert, Amy Kaufman, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Catherine Nall, Ralph Norris, Raluca Radulescu, Lisa Robeson, Meg Roland, Cory Rushton, Masako Takagi, Kevin Whetter.

New readings of the Morte Darthur place both book and author within the historical and cultural context of fifteenth-century England. This book seeks to place Malory's Morte Darthur more firmly in its cultural and historical context. Its composition, in the mid to late fifteenth century, took place at a time of great upheaval for England, a period beginning with the loss of Bordeaux (and the Hundred Years War) and ending with the rise of Richard III. During this time the Morte was translated from numerous French sources, copied by scribes, and, finally, in July 1485, printed by William Caxton. The author argues that in this unique production history are reflected the ideological crises which loomed so massively over England's ruling class in the fifteenth century; and that the book is in fact inseparable from these crises. THOMAS H. CROFTS is Assistant Professor of English at East Tennessee State University