A Companion to the Gawain-Poet

Arthurian Studies

by Derek S. Brewer, Jonathan Gibson (Editor)

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. WILLIAMS

Genres: Nonfiction, Medieval, Arthurian, Poetry, Literary Criticism

442 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 1997

Reviews

[Karina Chokewanca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book you read when couldn't have enough of the Gawain poet!!! I wouldn't say I couldn't have enough from it, I just read because I am taking a class for Middle English literature. It would be hard for me to rate this book. I thought it was, but mainly because it was a hard read and because after some time reading I had so many Aha! Moments. I guess now I will be able to go to bar and strike up a conversation with some fun facts about the Gawain poet.