The essays discuss the female characters in Arthurian legend, medieval and modern readers of the legend, modern critics and the modern women writers who have recast the Arthurian inheritance, and finally women visual artists who have used the material of the Arthurian story. All the essays concentrate interpretation on a female creator and the work. This collection contains a useful bibliography of material devoted to female characters in Arthurian literature.

    It is divided into three main sections, on Malory in context, the art of the Morte Darthur, and its reception in later years. As well as essays on the eight tales which make up the Morte Darthur, there are studies ofthe relationship between the Winchestermanuscript and Caxton's and later editions; the political and social context in which Malory wrote; his style and sources; and his treatment of two key concepts in Arthurian literature, chivalry and the representation of women. The volume also includes a brief biography of Malory with a list of the historical records relating to him and his family. It ends with a discussion of the reception of the Morte Darthurfrom the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and a select bibliography.Contributors: P.J.C. FIELD, FELICITY RIDDY, RICHARD BARBER, ELIZABETH EDWARDS, TERENCE MCCARTHY, CAROL MEALE, JEREMY SMITH, ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD, BARBARA NOLAN, HELEN COOPER, JILL MANN, DAVID BENSON, A.S.G. EDWARD

    Written in the first half of the 13th century, it represents a different view of the legend of the Holy Grail from that found in Wolfram von Eschenbach or the French Quest of the Holy Grail, though all derive from Chretien's Perceval; the unknown author adds a much greater religious emphasis and a desire to glorify crusading chivalry for the secular adventures of Arthur, Perceval and Lancelet. The framework of the romance is the struggle of Arthur and his knights to impose, by force, the New Law of Christianity in place of the Old Law. This view of the Arthurian world should be of interest to students of medieval literature, Arthurian enthusiasts and to historians interested in the world of chivalry and its attitudes.

    Deeply influenced by Wagner and the German romantics, he reacted sharply against the ponderous preaching - as he perceived it to be - of the Tennysonian orthodoxy and created poetry of pure feeling. Tristram of Lyonesse, in particular, is a sustained celebration of the triumph of love over conventional morality - an evocation of Walter Pater's form of medievalism where religion shades into sensuous love and sensuous love into religion.

    He reached power shortly after the Romans evacuated Britain at the end of the fifth century and died at the Battle of Camlann. He became king at 15 under the name of Ambrosius Aurelianus and fought against the Saxons on the mainland as Riothamus, thus explaining the regeneration motif so closely tied to the mythical Arthur. This study reveals that the integrity and ideals central to Arthurian myth were very much a part of the real Arthur.