Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages – serie

Little, if anything, is known historically of Arthur, yet for centuries the romances of Arthur and his court dominated the imaginative literature of Europe in many languages. The roots of this vast flowering of the Arthurian legend are to be found in early Welsh tradition, and this volume gives an account of the Arthurian literature produced in Wales, in both Welsh and Latin, during the Middle Ages.The distinguished contributors offer a comprehensive view of recent scholarship relating to Arthurian literature in early Welsh and other Brythonic sources. The volume includes chapters on the 'historical' Arthur, Arthur in early Welsh verse, the legend of Merlin, the tales of Culhwch ac Olwen, Geraint, Owain, Peredur, The Dream of Rhonabwy and Trystan ac Esyllt. Other chapters investigate the evidence for the growth of the Arthurian theme in the Triads and in the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and discuss the Breton connection and the gradual transmission ofthe legend to the non-Celtic world.The volume, which is unique in offering a comprehensive discussion of the subject, will appeal widely to medievalists, to Welsh and Celtic scholars, and to those non-specialists who have felt the fascination of the figure of Arthur and wish to know more.

This book deals with the introduction of romance to Scandinavia in the thirteenth century and the cultural and literary context of the translations of Latin and French Arthurian literature, including the Tristan legend (with a chapter on the Byelorussian Tristan). It surveys the sources, redactions, and manuscript transmission of the translated texts and analyzes the peculiar nature of the Scandinavian Arthurian matter, including its transmission in prose, and the special place that the Swedish poem Harra Ivan has in the corpus. The volume also considers the late medieval and early modern ballads, rimur (narrative Icelandic poems), and chapbooks that were inspired by the medieval translations of the Tristan legend.

From the twelfth century onwards the legends of King Arthur and his knights, including the Tristan legend, spread across Europe, producing a vast range of adaptations and new stories. German and Dutch literature were of central importance in this expansion of Arthurian material from the 12th to 16th century. This title deals with this topic.

This is the first comprehensive book on the Arthurian legend in medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund Gardner's 1930 The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature. Arthurian material reached all levels of Italian society, from princely courts with their luxury books and frescoed palaces, to the merchant classes and even popular audiences in the piazza, which enjoyed shorter retellings in verse and prose. Unique assemblages emerge on Italian soil, such as the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or the innovative Tavola Ritonda, in versions made for both Tuscany and the Po Valley. Chapters examine the transmission of the French romances across Italy; reworkings in various Italian regional dialects; the textual relations of the prose Tristan; narrative structures employed by Italian writers; later ottava rima poetic versions in the new medium of printed books; the Arthurian-themed art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and more. The Arthur of the Italians offers a rich corpus of new criticism by scholars who have brought the Italian Arthurian material back into critical conversation.

This book fills the Iberian linguistic and geographical gap in Arthurian studies, replacing the now-outdated work by William J. Entwistle (1925). It covers Arthurian material in all the major Peninsular Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician); it follows the spread of Arthurian material overseas with the seaborne expansion of Spain and Portugal from Iberia into America and Asia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and, as well as examining the specifically Arthurian texts themselves, it traces the continued influence of the medieval Arthurian material and its impact on the society, literature and culture of the Golden Age and beyond, including its presence in Don Quixote, the influential Spanish Arthurian-inspired romance Amadís de Gaula, and in Spanish ballads. Such was its influence that we find an indigenous American woman called ‘Iseo’ (Iseult); and an Arthurian story appeared in an indigenous language of the Philippines, Tagalog, as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Arthur of the North is the first book-length study of the Arthurian literature that was translated from French and Latin into Old Norse-Icelandic in the thirteenth century, which has been preserved mostly in Icelandic manuscripts, and which in early modern times inspired the composition of narrative poems and chapbooks in Denmark, Iceland and Norway, chiefly of the Tristan legend. The importation of Arthurian literature in the North, primarily French romances and lais, is indebted largely to the efforts of King Hákon Hákonarson (r. 1217–63) of Norway, who commissioned the translation of Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan in 1226, and subsequently several Arthurian romances by Chrétien de Troyes and a number of Breton lais. The translations are unique in that the French metrical narratives were rendered in prose, the traditional form of narrative in the North. The book concludes with a chapter on Arthurian literature in the Rus’ area, precisely East Slavic, with a focus on the Belarusian Trysčan.Contents1. The Introduction of the Arthurian Legend in Scandinavia, Marianne E. Kalinke2. Sources, Translations, Redactions, Manuscript Transmission, Marianne E. Kalinke3. Breta sögur and Merlínússpá, Stefanie Gropper4 The Tristan Legend, Geraldine Barnes5. The Translated Lais, Carolyne Larrington6 The Old Norse-Icelandic Transmission of Chrétien de Troyes’s Romances: Ívens saga, Erex saga, Parcevals saga with Valvens þáttr, Claudia Bornholdt7. The Old Swedish Hærra Ivan Leons riddare, William Layher8. Arthurian Echoes in Indigenous Icelandic Sagas, Marianne E. Kalinke9. Arthurian Ballads, rímur, Chapbooks and Folktales, M. J. Driscoll10. Arthurian Literature in East Slavic, Susana Torres Prieto

King Arthur is arguably the most recognizable literary hero of the European Middle Ages. His stories survive in many genres and many languages, but while scholars and enthusiasts alike know something of his roots in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain, most are unaware that there was a Latin Arthurian tradition which extended beyond Geoffrey. This collection of essays will highlight different aspects of that tradition, allowing readers to see the well-known and the obscure as part of a larger, often coherent whole. These Latin-literate scholars were as interested as their vernacular counterparts in the origins and stories of Britain's greatest heroes, and they made their own significant contributions to his myth.

This is the first comprehensive book on the Arthurian legend in medieval and Renaissance Italy since Edmund Gardner’s 1930 The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature. Arthurian material reached all levels of Italian society, from princely courts with their luxury books and frescoed palaces, to the merchant classes and even popular audiences in the piazza, which enjoyed shorter retellings in verse and prose. Unique assemblages emerge on Italian soil, such as the Compilation of Rustichello da Pisa or the innovative Tavola Ritonda, in versions made for both Tuscany and the Po Valley. Chapters examine the transmission of the French romances across Italy; reworkings in various Italian regional dialects; the textual relations of the prose Tristan; narrative structures employed by Italian writers; later ottava rima poetic versions in the new medium of printed books; the Arthurian-themed art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; and more. The Arthur of the Italians offers a rich corpus of new criticism by scholars who have brought the Italian Arthurian material back into critical conversation.

This is the first comprehensive authoritative survey of Arthurian literature and traditions in the Celtic languages of Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. With contributions by leading and emerging specialists in the field, the volume traces the development of the legends that grew up around Arthur and have been constantly reworked and adapted from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. It shows how the figure of Arthur evolved from the leader of a warband in early medieval north Britain to a king whose court becomes the starting-point for knightly adventures, and how characters and tales are reimagined, reshaped and reinterpreted according to local circumstances, traditions and preoccupations at different periods. From the celebrated early Welsh poetry and prose tales to less familiar modern Breton and Cornish fiction, from medieval Irish adaptations of the legend to the Gaelic ballads of Scotland, Arthur in the Celtic Languages provides an indispensable, up-to-date guide of a vast and complex body of Arthurian material, and to recent research and criticism.