Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), University of Zurich (English Seminar), course: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses how the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight uses, explores and sometimes undermines the conventions of the Arthurian romance genre. As a basis for this investigation, a definition of the genre is sketched, using a structuralist model along with a set of typical motifs found in many romances. Having established the essential genre elements the papier then examines the way the Gawain-poet makes use of these in his text. After identifying the fundamentally generic structure of the poem the author concentrates on incidents where the poet plays ironically with the reader's genre expectations.

This book offers an overview of the origins, growth, and influence of chivalry and courtly love, casting new light on the importance of these medieval ideals for understanding world history and culture to the present day. Rethinking Chivalry and Courtly Love shows that these two interlinked medieval era concepts are best understood in light of each other. It is the first book to explore the multicultural origins of chivalry and courtly love in tandem, tracing their sources back to the ancient world, then follow their development—separately and together—through medieval life and literature. In addition to examining the history of chivalry and courtly love, this remarkable volume looks at their enduring legacy—not just in popular media but in molding our present-day concepts of human rights, professional ethics, military conduct, and gender relations. Readers will see how understanding the tenets of the chivalrous life helps us understand our own world today.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a masterpiece of medieval English literature and one of the finest Arthurian tales in any language. Though its ingenious plotting and verbal artistry continue to dazzle readers, it is written in a challenging regional dialect and uses many words that were already archaic when the poem was written in the late fourteenth century. This edition is designed to make the poem, in its original Middle English, accessible to students and general readers. Following standards adopted for editing other Middle English poets, the edition lightly normalizes spellings to make words more recognizable for a modern audience. Extensive marginal glossing of difficult words, thorough on-page explanatory notes, and a comprehensive glossary offer further support for readers. The historical appendices include other examples of medieval romance from France and Britain.

Second, the methodological heterogeneity of the past three decades of Rose research has been extremely fruitful.".

Now at seventy-three volumes, this popular MLA series (ISSN 10591133) addresses a broad range of literary texts. Each volume surveys teaching aids and critical material and brings together essays that apply a variety of perspectives to teaching the text. Upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers, education specialists, and teachers in all humanities disciplines will find these volumes particularly helpful.

This volume is an introduction to the fifteenth century through chronicles and personal recollections of a diverse group of its French- and English-speaking writers. It revisits some of the principal events and personalities of that era through anecdotes illustrating interpersonal behavior. It examines how writers evaluated the conduct of their contemporaries and how some of their pessimistic conclusions may have contributed to the reputation for decadence of their century.

This volume presents Middle English studies as a modern discipline which unites linguistics, literature, philology, the history of ideas, textual studies including recent developments in the study of text types and genres, as well as the sociohistorical perspective. This large variety of both traditional and new approaches is mirrored in the four main parts of the book, starting with texts and text types, and moving on to vocabulary, syntax and morphology, and finally phonology and orthography. Aspects of language contact as well as corpus linguistic studies are also addressed in a number of contributions. Author are leading experts in their fields, and come from the United States, South Africa, and all parts of Europe.

The narrative re-tellings of the life, reign, and death of the English King Edward II (reigned 1307–1327) present a unique opportunity for scholars of sexuality in the early modern era. This is because the works of authors like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, Sir Francis Hubert, Elizabeth Cary, and Richard Niccols were all inspired by the public, cultural memory fashioned from Edward’s same-sex love affair with Piers Gaveston. As such, each of them presents a particular representation of and a specific discourse about male-male sexual relations in the Renaissance. In other words, what these works present is a concentrated body of literature about same-sex love in the early modern era: works that openly and frankly explore the possible origins of the love, the reasons and causes for it; works that explore the ramifications of male-male romantic relationships; works that explore the sexual politics and sociocultural dynamics of same-sex romantic partnerships; and works that describe and denote same-sex love from an English Renaissance perspective. This study looks at each of the major Renaissance texts about Edward II and examines the means through which each text understands and analyzes the nature of male-male same-sex love. From Marlowe’s crafting of a lover-identity for Edward to Drayton’s obsession with Marlowe’s version of (gay) history; from Hubert’s Augustinian construction of Edward’s nature to Cary’s identification with the fallen king to Niccols’ inspired exemplum, what each of these works demonstrates is that the “love that dare not speak its name” would not be silenced, at least not in the case of Edward and Gaveston. When one sees the name Edward II, one also sees his same-sex loves. The correlation has become ingrained into our public recall of history. Thus, as far as the world is concerned, Edward II was—and ever will be—the gay king.

This book explores how the cultural distinctions and conflicts between Anglo-Saxons and Normans originating with the Norman Conquest of 1066 prevailed well into the fourteenth century and are manifest in a significant number of Middle English romances including King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and others. Specifically, the study looks at how the material culture of these poems (architecture, battle tactic, landscapes) systematically and persistently distinguishes between Norman and Anglo-Saxon cultural identity. Additionally, it examines the influence of the English Outlaw Tradition, itself grounded in Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest, as expressed in specific recurring scenes (disguise and infiltration, forest exile) found in many Middle English romances. In the broadest sense, a significant number of Middle English romances, including some of the most well-read and often-taught, set up a dichotomy of two ruling houses headed by a powerful lord, who compete for power and influence. This book examines the cultural heritage behind each of these pairings to show how poets repeatedly contrast essentially Norman and Anglo-Saxon values and ruling styles.

The period 1300-1600 CE was one of intense and far-reaching emotional realignments in European culture. New desires and developments in politics, religion, philosophy, the arts and literature fundamentally changed emotional attitudes to history, creating the sense of a rupture from the immediate past. In this volatile context, cultural products of all kinds offered competing objects of love, hate, hope and fear. Art, music, dance and song provided new models of family affection, interpersonal intimacy, relationship with God, and gender and national identities. The public and private spaces of courts, cities and houses shaped the practices and rituals in which emotional lives were expressed and understood. Scientific and medical discoveries changed emotional relations to the cosmos, the natural world and the body. Both continuing traditions and new sources of cultural authority made emotions central to the concept of human nature, and involved them in every aspect of existence.