This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Published by Boydell & Brewer Inc.

First published in 2003, Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, is the first comprehensive reference to the vital world of medieval Spain. This unique volume focuses on the Iberian kingdoms from the fall of the Roman Empire to the aftermath of the Reconquista and encompass topics of key relevance to medieval Iberia, including people, events, works, and institutions, as well as interdisciplinary coverage of literature, language, history, arts, folklore, religion, and science. It also provides in-depth discussions of the rich contributions of Muslim and Jewish cultures, and offers useful insights into their interactions with Catholic Spain. With nearly 1,000 signed A-Z entries and written by renowned specialists in the field, this comprehensive work is an invaluable tool for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

In this volume seventeen scholars from Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and the US pay tribute to the memory of Roger M Walker, Professor of Spanish at Birkbeck College, London. His publications were chiefly in the field of Old Spanish narrative epic, romance, hagiography and the Libro de buen amor and the editors have sought to assemble contributions on these topics. Versions of some of the papers were presented at the symposium held in Professor Walkers memory at Birkbeck College in October 1999.

First published in 1996. Now updated with a new information-packed 40-page Supplement covering the years 1990-1995, this unique Encyclopedia highlights the World of King Arthur from its origins in Dark Age Britain to the present day, when Arthurian novels, films, and music continue to appear around the world at an astonishing rate. The Supplement, which provides five full years of coverage not available anywhere else, enhances the usefulness of more than 1,300 entries on all aspects of the Arthurian legend-in literature, history, folklore, archaeology, art, and music. Written by an international team of over 130 authorities, no oth­er work approaches this A-Z guide to the legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table for breadth and depth of coverage. This is the ultimate source for reliable information on topics as diverse as the Grail, Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guenevere, Arthurian operas, the historicity of Arthur, and more.

Up-to-date Coverage of the scope and extent of the important tradition of Arthurian material in Iberian languages and of the modern scholarship on it. (= Wide-ranging bibliographical coverage and guide to both texts and research on them.) Written by Specialists in the different Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Spanish and its dialects). (= Expert analysis of different traditions by leading scholars from Spain and the UK.) Wide-ranging Study not only of medieval and Renaissance literary texts, but also of modern Arthurian fiction, of the global spread of Arthurian legends in the Spanish and Portuguese worlds, and of the social impact of the legends through adoption of names of Arthurian characters and imitation of practices narrated in the legends. (=A comprehensive guide to both literary and social impact of Arthurian material in major world languages.)

Composed in Old French between about 1220 and 1240, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle is a group of five prose romances centered on the love affair between Lancelot and Guenevere. It consists of an immense central core, the Lancelot Proper, introduced by The History of the Holy Grail and The Story of Merlin and concluded by The Quest for the Holy Grail and The Death of Arthur. This volume brings together thirteen essays by noted scholars from the first symposium ever devoted exclusively to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Exploring the cycle's evolution across the literatures of medieval France, Italy, Spain, Catalonia, and England, the authors take a variety of approaches that highlight a broad range of cultural, social, historical, and political concerns and offer a comparative and interdisciplinary vision of this great romance.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reexamining the roles played by author, reader, scribe, and text in medieval literary practice, John Dagenais argues that the entire physical manuscript must be the basis of any discussion of how meaning was made. Medievalists, he maintains, have relied too heavily on critical editions that seek to create a single, definitive text reflecting an author's intentions. In reality, manuscripts bear not only authorial texts but also a variety of elements added by scribes and readers: glosses, marginal notes, pointing hands, illuminations, and fragments of other, seemingly unrelated works. Using the surviving manuscripts of the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor, a work that has been read both as didactic treatise on spiritual love and as a celebration of sensual pleasures, Dagenais shows how consideration of the physical manuscripts and their cultural context can shed new light on interpretive issues that have puzzled modern readers. Dagenais also addresses the theory and practice of reading in the Middle Ages, showing that for medieval readers the text on the manuscript leaf, including the text of the Libro, was primarily rhetorical and ethical in nature. It spoke to them directly, individually, always in the present moment. Exploring the margins of the manuscripts of the Libro and of other Iberian works, Dagenais reveals how medieval readers continually reshaped their texts, both physically and ethically as they read, and argues that the context of medieval manuscript culture forces us to reconsider such comfortable received notions as "text" and "literature" and the theories we have based upon them.