The papers in this book examine the thematic, structural and aesthetic relationship between medieval English literature and a wide variety of more recent modern texts. Some of the contributors re-examine the concepts of authority and representation in Chrétien and Malory and of medieval romance and the modern novel, while Caxton’s Morte Darthur is interpreted from the point of view of Norbert Elias; other focuses of interest are the love-death motif in nineteenth-century novels, the comic in contemporary British fiction, the literary representations of Arthurian characters (Galahad, Tristan, Gawain), and recent Beowulf translations. In addition, there are socio-historic and generic readings of Chaucer’s Sir Thopas and of Troilus and Criseyde, of Ipomadon and Malory’s Morte Darthur. Aspects of medieval heritage are uncovered in Horace Walpole, Fürst Pückler-Muskau, Georg Kaiser, A. S. Byatt, David Lodge, Fay Weldon, Iris Murdoch, the Irish novelist Eamonn Sweeney and the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer and Peter Ackroyd’s recent Clerkenwell Tales. In addition, there is a translation of Karl Heinz Göller’s former essay on Chancer’s Troilus and Criseyde.
