Kara L. McShane - Böcker

Thomas Hahn’s work laid the foundations for medieval romance studies to embrace the study of alterity and hybridity within Middle English literature. His contributions to scholarship brought Robin Hood studies into the critical mainstream, normalized the study of historically marginalized literature and peoples, and encouraged scholars to view medieval readers as actively encountering others and exploring themselves. This volume employs his methodologies – careful attention to texts and their contexts, cross-cultural readings, and theoretically-informed analysis – to highlight the literary culture of late medieval England afresh. Addressing long-established canonical works such as Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and Malory alongside understudied traditions and manuscripts, this book will be of interest to literary scholars of the later Middle Ages who, like Hahn, work across boundaries of genre, tradition, and chronology.

The Destruction of Jerusalem, also called Titus and Vespasian, is a fifteenth-century fictionalised version of the historical Roman siege of Jerusalem. Marked by antisemitism, Christian nationalism and violence, this Middle English poem weaves together sources both medieval and classical, transforming first-century Romans into Christian agents of divine vengeance. This new edition expands our understanding of fall of Jerusalem narratives in later medieval England, bringing attention to a long-ignored English retelling of these first-century events that captivated Christian audiences. Here presented in the most comprehensive edition to date, the poem will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Middle English romance, the Crusades, medieval antisemitism and literary reimaginings of historical events. The edition will be of value particularly in courses focused on Crusades traditions, traditions of medieval anti-Semitism, vernacular theology, or late medieval depictions of difference more broadly. The work complements other volumes in the METS series such as The King of Tars, Richard Coer de Lion and Crusades romances such as Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances.