Companion to the Gawain-Poet [Hardcover]

The essays collected here on the Gawain-Poet offer stimulating introductions to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience, providing both information and original analysis. Topics include theories of authorship; the historical and social background to the poems, with individual sections on particularly important features within them; gender roles in the poems; the manuscript itself; the metre, vocabulary and dialect of the poems; and their sources. A section devoted to Sir Gawain investigates the ideas of courtesy and chivalry found within it, and explores some of its later adaptations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. A full bibliography completes the volume. DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge; JONATHAN GIBSON has worked as a lecturer in the Universities of Exeter and Durham. Contributors: DEREK BREWER, MALCOLM ANDREW, A.C. SPEARING, JANE GILBERT, MICHAEL J. BENNETT, DAVID AERS, RALPH ELLIOTT, MICHAEL THOMPSON, FELICITY RIDDY, ANNE ROONEY, MICHAEL LACY, A.S.G. EDWARDS, H.N. DUGGAN, ELISABETH BREWER, RICHARD NEWHAUSER, HELEN COOPER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PRISCILLA MARTIN, NICK DAVIS, DEREK PEARSALL, GILLIAN ROGERS, BARRY WINDEATT, DAVID J. WILLIAMSEssays intended as a companion to a reading of the works of the Gawain poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience`Meter, Stanza, Vocabulary, Dialect'. - Hoyt N Duggan`Text and Society: The Historical Background'. - `Text and Society. Christianity for Courtly Subjects: Reflections on the Gawain-Poet'. - `Everyday Life: Landscape and Geography'. - Ralph W V Elliott`Everyday Life: Feasts'. - Derek S Brewer`Everyday Life. Jewels: Luxury, Piety and Preciousness in Pearl'. - Linda Brosnan`Everyday Life: The Hunts in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. - Anne Rooney`Everyday Life: Castles'. - M W Thompson`Everyday Life: Armour in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. - `Literary Sources: Romances and Other Secular Sources (Sir Gawain)lƒT