Companion to the Gawain-Poet

A. S. G. Edwards is Honorary Professor of Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Kent at Canterbury. The late Derek Pearsall was Emeritus Gurney Professor of Middle English Literature at Harvard University; he wrote extensively on Chaucer, Gower, Langland and Lydgate, including biographies of Chaucer and Lydgate, an edition of the C-text of Langland's Piers Plowman. JANE GILBERT is Professor of Medieval Literature and Critical Theory at University College London, UK. NICHOLAS WATSON teaches English at Harvard University. His research focuses on medieval English and North European literature, intellectual history, visionary writing and the role of the written vernacular.

• - A S G Edwards`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)'. - Elisabeth Brewer`Literary Sources: Scriptural and Devotional Sources of the Gawain-Poet (Other poems)'. - Richard G. Newhauser`Courtesy and Chivalry in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Order of Shame and the Invention of Embarrassment'. - `Gender and Sexual Transgression in the Gawain-Poet'. - Jane Gilbert ***`The Gawain-Poet as a Vernacular Theologian'. - Nicholas Watson`The Supernatural'. - Helen Cooper`Narrative Structures'. - Nick Davis`Allegory and Symbolism'. - Priscilla Martin`Poetic Identity in the Gawain-Poet'. - A C Spearing ***`Sir Gawain: Some Later Versions. The Grene Knight'. - `Sir Gawain: Some Later Versions. Sir Gawain at the fin de siècle: Novel and Opera'. - Barry A Windeatt`Sir Gawain: Some Later Versions. Sir Gawain in Films'. - David Williams - Malcolm Andrew - Michael LacyThe Supernatural - Helen Cooper

This superb collection of introductory essays by leading scholars and critics provides an excellent one-volume guide to the works of the anonymous Gawain-poet.