paper, 426 pages

ff. 1–16v. Amis and Amiloun is a story of two children who are conceived and born to different parents in different parts of a district but nonetheless are so alike that they can convincingly impersonate each other. When one of these pseudo-twins finds himself required to swear falsely to his own innocence before a trial by combat, this is precisely what they decide to do. Violence and infanticide betray a dark and sinister side to this tale, which is also found in the Auchinleck Manuscript of c. 1340.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 17–27v. Sir Tryamour can also be found in a manuscript dating to the middle of the fifteenth century in the library of the University of Cambridge. Probably an English work composed around the same time that Geoffrey Chaucer was composing his Canterbury Tales, it rehearses the familiar theme of a young warrior who engages his own father in battle without knowing it. Like Ipomadon, the young man in question goes off after winning a tournament that has as its prize the hand in marriage of a proud maiden ruling her kingdom alone. Like Ipomadon, this young man likes to hunt, and he returns to claim the maiden only when she is in danger of being forced to marry against her will. Unlike Ipomadon, he does not pretend to be this unwanted suitor after defeating him in single combat: the whole romance has a slightly more realistic atmosphere.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 28–31v. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury tale from the Squire is definitely for you if you're in the mood to read a surprising piece of medieval science fiction. It is a story involving pictures broadcast from across the world, invincible weapons, objects with the healing power of modern antibiotics, a device for travelling through the air to exotic locations, and, Oh yes, one thing we don't already have, an ability to understand the language of the birds. Now didn't Sigurd acquire this when he tasted the heart of the dragon Fafnir in an old Icelandic version of the ancient cycle of pagan Scandinavian poetry about the Volsungs?

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 32–34r. Chaucer's Canterbury tale from the Wife of Bath is set in the days of King Arthur. It tells of a knight who finds an old lady in a forest who offers to save his life if he will promise her one request. He has no other choice but to agree. She saves his life and requires him, in return, to marry her. But things do not turn out the way he expects, just as in the story of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. The ugly hag transforms into a beautiful young woman on their wedding night, in a theme that borrows from an ancient Irish tale of the warrior Diarmuid in the age of Fionn mac Cumhail.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 34–45v. Octavian is another story in which a mother is exiled and a young child separated from his father. The romance contains a curious scene in which a baby is carried off by a griffin and suckled by a lioness, and another exiled sibling is taken by an ape and brought up by the family of a merchant in Paris. Originally written in Old French in the thirteenth century, the story is found elsewhere in Middle English in a book that also contains the story of Sir Eglamour of Artois, lying in the library of Lincoln Cathedral.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 46–54r. Sir Eglamour of Artois is an English composition written at about the same time as the Middle English Yvain and Gawain, and in it there are fights with giants, a conflict with a dragon, strange journeys across the sea, supernatural encounters with mythical beasts and at the end of it all, the possibility of a knight winning his own mother's hand in marriage, just as Sir Degaré does in his own romance, and of course as Oedipus did in Sophocles' drama for an Ancient Athenian festival of Dionysus. But perhaps most curious of all, Sir Eglamour's sweetheart, Cristabel, is put into an open boat without food or water, sail or rudder, just like Emaré and Chaucer's heroine Constance, only to wash up on a foreign shore and become, without any warning at all, the king of Egypt's niece.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 55–124v. William and the Werewolf, or William of Palerne was translated into Middle English from its original French in the middle of the fourteenth century at the instigation of one Humphrey de Bohun. It tells the not uncommon story of a child taken overseas and adopted by a royal family and how his martial exploits later single him out and how his true lineage is at last exposed and his hidden origins revealed. But en route to this revelation – that he was seized from his father's palace by a wolf as a baby and taken overseas by it – he finds an astonishing way of escaping from another scene of near-certain death. If somebody skinned a deer and asked you to sew yourself into its hide, how likely is it that you would look at the end of it all exactly like a deer? Pretty unlikely? Impossible? Legs and arms all the wrong shape? Well, medieval people weren't fools either. The story is taken from an Old French romance called the Roman de Guillaume de Palerne dating to broadly the same time that Chrétien de Troyes was writing his Arthurian romances. This Middle English version dates to sometime around 1350 and includes an episode of disguise that must surely be a symbol of something else.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 125–130r. The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle relates an incident that, as legend has it, once happened to King Arthur in Inglewood Forest in Cumbria, involving a 'loathly lady' who makes an appearance in Irish mythology as well as in one of Chrétien de Troyes' twelfth century Arthurian romances and in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury tale from the Wife of Bath. King Arthur has been ambushed by the lady's brother while out hunting in the forest and is honour bound to return in exactly a year's time with the answer to a question, an answer upon which his life now depends. King Arthur encounters the knight's sister later in the story and she agrees to reveal the required answer, provided that he promises her the hand of Sir Gawain in marriage. There are descriptive hints that she looks like an owl, or a pig. The king is persuaded by Sir Gawain to agree to these terms.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 130–143v. Sir Perceval of Galles is found also in the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript lying in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, and although starting in the same vein as Chrétien de Troyes' tale of Sir Perceval, this fourteenth century English version of the story soon goes entirely its own way. It has been suggested that Geoffrey Chaucer had this Middle English tale of Sir Perceval of Galles in mind when he wrote a parody of romance in his own Canterbury tale of Sir Thopas. Sir Perceval fights a giant and defeats an entire army with the help of a magic ring which makes him invulnerable to death. But like Chaucer's tale of Sir Thopas, this romance may well repay a thoughtful read.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 144–194r. Yvain and Gawain is a Middle English retelling of Chrétien de Troyes compelling twelfth century adventure set in King Arthur's extended kingdom in which Sir Yvain adopts a lion and becomes known as the Knight of the Lion. This folllows a strange encounter at a magic spring where Sir Yvain finds himself able to summon a knight to do battle with him, in a situation very similar to one described at a lake outside Ancient Rome dedicated to the goddess Diana, in that monumental exploration of religion and anthropology by Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough. But following this encounter, his marriage to the lady who owns the spring, his subsequent loss of her and his retreat into the forest as a result, nobody knows who he really is. He goes about in disguise. He even encounters his estranged wife and she does not recognise him. If this sounds to you like an unusual thing to find in a medieval romance, you really need to read a few more romances! Yvain and Gawain retells Chrétien's tale in Middle English and was composed by an unknown author possibly around 1350, the time that Geoffrey Chaucer was a boy.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 194–195r. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury tale of Sir Thopas is widely assumed to be a parody of medieval romance. He writes it in doggerel and has Harry Bailey force him to stop after only a short while, with his opinion of it given in no uncertain terms. So what is Geoffrey Chaucer's parody about? Sir Thopas gallops his horse suicidally through a forest looking for a queen of Elfland whom he has fallen in love with and ends up in this Otherworld, where he meets with a giant. Geoffrey says it is the best tale that he knows. Is it just a tiny bit possible that, deep down, he might not be joking!

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

f. 196. One of Geoffrey Chaucer's short poems is addressed to someone named Bukton and a number of possible figures have been put forward to fit the name. Few people seem to have made the point, however, that, whoever Bukton was, he appears to be receiving a friendly but necessarily veiled warning. Remember that Chaucer was a poet – he could write on more than one level at once – and he is very clear at the end of this short poem that it is 'a lytel writ, proverbes or figure', a wise saying providing guidance, a symbol, perhaps a metaphor.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX

ff. 197–213v. The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain is a Middle English Arthurian romance whose earliest copy until now has been a printed edition dated 1508, now lying in the National Library of Scotland. As in the tale of Amis and Amiloun, and the story of Pwyll Lord of Dyved in the Welsh Mabinogion, the two principal players in this story exchange places – much to King Arthur's distress when Sir Gawain appears to have been defeated in single combat by Gologras. The king is so distraught that 'the tears trickle down his cheeks.' The story seems to have been concocted using the author's probably wide-ranging knowledge of Arthurian legend, including the characters of Sir Kay and Sir Gawain and of King Arthur's final march into Tuscany and back, but its principal plot is borrowed from a sequence of episodes in the First Continuation of Chrétien de Troyes tale of Sir Perceval and the graal.

Available also to view/download in PDF and DOCX