This volume offers newly translated texts that exemplify the two most important traditions of Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages. Encompassing such key works such as Lawman's Brut and Wace's Romance of Brut, written in Middle English and Old French, respectively, the Arthurian Epic Tradition depends on Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, written in Latin. Many modern readers are more familiar with Arthur and his fabled court as the centerpiece of a massive fictional tradition, well represented in the second part of this volume, including Chretien de Troyes's Story of the Grail, The Quest of the Holy Grail, and the Perlesvaus. These selections emphasize the connection between secular and religious understandings of chivalry that is the most distinctive quality of medieval Arthurian romance. Useful as a classroom text, the volume provides material for a semester's worth of study.
Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

William W. Kibler is the Superior Oil-Linward Shivers Centennial Professor of Medieval Studies (emeritus) at the University of Texas. He is the author or editor of numerous works on medieval French literature and language, including, as translator, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. He lives in Austin, Texas. R. Barton Palmer is the Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature at Clemson University. He has published numerous works on the English, French, and Latin literature of the later Middle Ages, and is the translator, with William Kibler and others, of several anthologies of medieval texts. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents


Preface

Part I: Arthurian Epic

Geoffrey of Monmouth. Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain): A Selection (Translated by Douglas McFarland)

Wace. Roman de Brut (The Romance of Brutus): A Selection (Translated by R. Barton Palmer)

Lawman. Brut: A Selection (Translated by R. Barton Palmer)

Part II: Arthurian Romance

Arthur in Early Wales/Culhwch and Owen (Translated by Craig Davis)

Chrétien de Troyes. Perceval (The Story of the Grail) (Translated by William W. Kibler)

Perlesvaus (Le Haut Livre du Graal): Selections (Translated by William W. Kibler)

La Queste del Saint Graal (The Quest of the Holy Grail): Selections (Translated by R. Barton Palmer)

La Mule sans Frein (The Girl with the Mule) (Translated by William W. Kibler)

Selected Bibliography

About the Contributors

Index