Alison Adams – författare

The Romance of Ydersurvives in a unique manuscript in Cambridge University Library, and has only once been edited; no translation survives. Yet it is a highly interesting work, reflecting a tradition which reaches back to the beginnings of Arthurian romance in the early 12th century; it is linked to the famous Arthurian sculpture on the cathedral at Modena, and contains an episode which foreshadows the temptation scene in Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight, while elsewhere Celtic material is much in evidence as the basis of the tale. It is also close in style and sometimes in content to the work of Chrétien de Troyes. Dr Adams' text provides a clear version of an often corrupt original, and the facing translation serves to illuminate the text further, enabling this neglected work to take its rightful place in the ranks of Arthurian literature.

These essays on Arthurian prose romances, published as a tribute to Cedric E. Pickford, reflect their development and the reshaping of the romances in response to changing taste and fashion from the death of Chrétien de Troyes tothe end of the medieval period in England. Topics include the question of religious influences; the transition of Arthurian material to foreign contexts; and the fortunes of the prose romance in England, focusing on the Prose Merlinand Malory. The contributors are: ELSPETH KENNEDY, RENÉE L. CURTIS, FANNI BOGDANOW, JANE H.M. TAYLOR, DAVID BLAMIRES, CERIDWEN LLOYD-MORGAN, CAROL M. MEALE, KAREN STERN, DEREK BREWER, FAITH LYONS, ROGER MIDDLETON