Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. A Tribute to Helen Cooper

New approaches to the everlasting malleability and transformation of medieval romance.

The essays here reconsider the protean nature of Middle English romance. The contributors examine both the cultural unity of romance and its many variations, reiterations and reimaginings, including its contexts and engagements with other discourses and forms, as they were "rewritten" during the Middle Ages and beyond. Ranging across popular, anonymous English and courtly romances, and taking in the works of Chaucer and Arthurian romance (rarely treated together), in connection with continental sources and analogues, the chapters probe this fluid and creative genre to ask just how comfortable, and how flexible, are its nature and aims? How were Middle English romances rewritten toaccommodate contemporary concerns and generic expectations? What can attention to narrative techniques and conventional gestures reveal about the reassurances romances offer, or the questions they ask? How do romances' central concerns with secular ideals and conduct intersect with spiritual priorities? And how are romances transformed or received in later periods? The volume is also a tribute to the significance and influence of the work of Professor Helen Cooper on romance.

Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University; Megan G. Leitch is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University; Corinne Saunders is Professor of English andCo-Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University.

Contributors: Elizabeth Archibald, Julia Boffey, Christopher Cannon, Neil Cartlidge, Miriam Edlich-Muth, A.S.G. Edwards, Marcel Elias, Megan Leitch, Andrew Lynch, Jill Mann, Marco Nievergelt, Ad Putter, Corinne Saunders, Barry Windeatt, R.F. Yeager

ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society.

MEGAN G. LEITCH is the Professor and Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen.

Corinne Saunders is Professor of Medieval Literature at the Department of English Studies, University of Durham.

A. S. G. Edwards is Honorary Professor of Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Ad Putter is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Bristol, UK, co-director of Bristol's Centre for Medieval Studies, and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author and editor of numerous books, with a particular interest in Medieval Romance texts and the works of the Gawain poet. He is currently leading a research project on the literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations.