An evidence-based examination of Chapter 56 of the Historia Britonum (Arthur's so-called battle list) suggests that it has most in common with the world of late antiquity. The work differs in almost every other respect from Welsh heroic age poetry. Arthur's command of Britain's kings, the images on his 'shoulders,' and the sacral number of battles all argue for a context from the time of Orosius and Gildas.

In an effort to understand the conceptual unity of the Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3) poems, I argue that a survey of the kinds of stones in the texts and their biblical meanings can provide a heuristic for understanding the intertextual connections between prominent figures such as the Pearl-Maiden and Bertilak’s wife.

Palomides reveals a major structural pattern of alternating discord and unity in the 'Tristram' section. Though struggling with divided identities and loves, the knight eventually resolves these core conflicts through confession and baptism. Fully unified, he then leaves Arthur's court in reaction to increased conflict within the Round Table.

Reviewed by: The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives ed. by Susanna Fein Laura Ashe susanna fein, ed., The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2016. Pp. xi, 253. isbn: 978-1-903153-65-9. £60. This collection of essays provides an impressively comprehensive ‘state of the field’ view of scholarship on the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, NLS MS Advocates 19.2.1). It gathers together some of the foremost authorities on the manuscript, and [End Page 105] combines their contributions with those of younger and emerging scholars, covering a large variety of approaches to the manuscript and its textual and visual contents. The volume’s approach is admirably set out by Susanna Fein’s introduction: appropriately to the study of such a vast and collaborative undertaking as the Auchinleck MS, Fein documents the many scholars whose past and current work has illuminated our understanding of the manuscript over the forty or so years since the publication of the invaluable facsimile edition in 1977. The effect is to present an inspiring showcase of the fruits of scholarly conversation and collaboration. As Fein notes, her senior contributors refine and expand upon their earlier expressed views in this volume, drawing on all the interim developments, while those who have come new to the field all display a sense of contributing to a vibrant, open and generous critical landscape. This in itself makes the volume a wonderful flagship for medieval studies as a whole. The importance of the Auchinleck MS is undoubted; Fein quotes her contributors on its ‘crucial significance’ and ‘deserved cultural centrality’ (p. 1). It is striking then that there remains so much uncertainty about the circumstances of its commissioning and production, not to mention its audience and reception. The essays in this volume offer many, entirely plausible, theories in response to these questions, and the contributors are not all in agreement with one another, which is absolutely as it should be. Because of the lost gatherings and smaller textual lacunae in the manuscript, the fourteenth-century book is itself an object of speculative reconstruction, and one whose material existence can be imaginatively traced as it changed through time—both the lengthy (and uncertainly ordered) process of producing the book, and the piecemeal, ongoing correction, alteration, damage, and loss. A prime example of this is Ralph Hanna’s contribution, in which he argues that Scribe 6 is identical with Scribe 1, working on the manuscript at different times and under different conditions of composition; this leads him to a fascinating discussion of the manuscript’s inconsistency overall. Derek Pearsall’s essay offers an overview and updating of the early ‘bookshop’ theory of the Auchinleck’s production, but he is more optimistic than Hanna about the overall organization of the manuscript’s numerous contributors, describing a plausible scenario of a ‘network of contacts’ (p. 24) through whom Scribe 1 could source and commission the required materials and labor. This picture is augmented by Timothy A. Schonk’s study of the paraphs in the manuscript; his analysis of the four separate identifiable paraph-markers provides evidence both of a single individual’s organization of the work, and of the sometimes rather ‘loose’ associations which bound the various scribes and illuminators to the project and to one another (pp. 177–8). Meanwhile, Míceál F. Vaughan’s detailed analysis of scribal corrections to the Auchinleck leads him to question the status of Scribe 1 as the undisputed arbiter of the project. He suggests that the pattern of corrections throughout—including corrections to the work of Scribe 1—may imply a final production stage overseen by another, or several others. In combination, these fascinating essays on the production of the manuscript provide nuanced and carefully-thought out arguments which interact most fruitfully. Several essays which attend to textual matters as well as to the book itself persuasively draw the Auchinleck away from its long-assumed ‘monolingualism’ or [End Page 106] a possibly ‘unlearned’ audience, notwithstanding its unprecedentedly comprehensive presentation of texts newly or very recently translated into English. Translation is of course an inherently multilingual and scholarly activity, and it is very pleasing to see this pursued in imaginative ways. A.S.G. Edwards draws...

Reviewed by: Outlaw Heroes as Liminal Figures of Film and Television by Rebecca A. Umland Alan Baragona rebecca a. umland, Outlaw Heroes as Liminal Figures of Film and Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2016. Pp. 296. isbn: 978–0–7864–7988–7. $39.95. It is an old-said saw that 'all comparisons are odious.' So Rebecca Umland has waded into somewhat dangerous waters as she seeks to compare Casablanca's Rick Blaine, Shane, Dirty Harry, and Batman, among others, to the medieval knight errant in general and to Malory's Lancelot in particular. In Outlaw Heroes as Liminal Figures of Film and Television, Umland traces the origin of the heroic loner in Hollywood films about cops, vigilantes, and action heroes back to cinematic and television westerns (including the 'disguised western' Casablanca), and ultimately to medieval romance and the figure of the knight, principally Malory's Lancelot. The book is organized into three sections. The Introduction and Part I begin by establishing the typology of the literary knight first in the Middle Ages and then as reinterpreted primarily in the Victorian Age. Umland then traces the lone knight errant as reincarnated on film in Casablanca and Shane and on television in The Lone Ranger and Have Gun—Will Travel. Part II treats two Hollywood franchises that begin in the 1970s, the maverick cop Dirty Harry series and the vigilante Death Wish series. Ulmand refers to these as 'urban westerns.' Part III explores two more franchises featuring action heroes that combine aspects of both the cop and the vigilante into the 'elite warrior': Rambo and Batman (in this case, appropriately, focusing on the Batman of the so-called Dark Knight series). The connection between these real, disguised, and urban westerns and chivalric romance is unquestionable. Nor is it accidental. Batman is a 'dark knight'; the gunslinger/mercenary of Have Gun—Will Travel is named 'Paladin' and uses a chess knight on his business card. Through extensive research, Umland reveals less obvious connections, as well. In one episode of the Lone Ranger radio show, the voiceover says, 'there is a light that must have burned in the eyes of knights in armor' (p. 63). Shane, the novel says, represents 'all that makes a man' (p. 43), a phrase from Tennyson's Idylls of the King. The final season of Have Gun—Will Travel opened with an 'origin story' in which viewers learn the hero was given the name 'Paladin' by a mentor who not only perceives the hero as a 'gentleman knight in shiny armor' (p. 74), but calls the villain of the story a dragon. [End Page 81] Once Umland enters the deeper woods of medieval romance itself, however, the parallels become more tenuous. She finds three traits of the knight reflected in the liminal outlaw hero, characteristics that become a unifying theme throughout the book. First, they are loners, either wandering or in some self-imposed exile or isolation. Second, they are free from permanent domestic entanglements and, in the end, always remain in their loner state. And they act according to a private moral code, often a 'higher law' at odds with 'official' societal authority. These are the characteristics of the 'true knight' as gleaned from Umland's main source, Beverly Kennedy's classic Knighthood in the 'Morte Darthur.' One can see how Lancelot might illustrate all three traits. He often wanders on errantry; he cannot marry; and, most importantly, when Guenevere is condemned to the stake for adultery, Lancelot, according to Umland, puts his personal code of honor and love above the law, rescues her, and precipitates a civil war with the official authority, King Arthur. Yet, upon closer examination of Lancelot's story in comparison to, say, Shane or Rick Blaine, cracks appear in the analogy. First, a knight errant is not a drifter. He is seeking whatever aventure God gives him to increase his worship at court, so errantry is socially sanctioned. Nor is he disillusioned or otherwise damaged, like Shane or Rick or even the Lone Ranger. The hero knight's moral code is not individualistic or at odds with official authority. The libertarian streak so prominent in the myth of the West is alien...

This article argues that Chretien de Troyes’ Yvain serves as an exemplum of Christian virtue through which the author explores caritas —love directed toward a higher purpose than oneself—as the theological virtue under which all others are ordered and which the hero Yvain must work to perfect.

LaƷamon exposes the fragility of kingly authority in the episode of the Giant of Mont St. Michel. Using deeds Arthur performs to sustain order, the Giant disrupts the order and challenges the social hierarchy established in Brittany. By portraying the Giant as an anti-Arthur figure that leaves a lasting mark in Arthur’s land, LaƷamon continues the pattern of kingship in his narrative, in which kingly authority repeatedly meets challenges from invading forces.

Jane H.M. Taylor, Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France. Gallica 33. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 294. isbn: 978-1-8438-4365-8. £60.00.Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France is a much-needed study of the reception of Arthurian material in France at the onset of the printing age and through the sixteenth century. Building on the few articles devoted to that topic, Taylor analyzes at length editorial and publishing strategies to promote Arthurian romances despite the reservation that this sort of literature aroused in Renaissance France. Even though few original romances were produced in the fifteenth century, stories about Lancelot, Tristan, and other famous knights as well as about the Grail were copied and treasured by book lovers and certainly had a large readership. This success was enduring when booksellers such as Antoine Verard ventured into what would prove the very lucrative business of publishing fiction. Yet around 1540 French readers turned away from Arthurian matters, forcing authors, translators, editors and publishers to adapt old stories to new tastes. Taylor describes how book producers first accompanied and even strengthened the persistent Arthurian craze and later tried to resist its demise by reconfiguring Arthurian material in ways that would appeal to a changed audience. She chooses not to write a global history of Arthurian romances in the Renaissance, but to focus on a series of specific publishing endeavors as examples of the varied ways in which book producers took into account new cultural environments, but also largely contributed to changes in literary tastes. Two concepts are at the heart of her study: 'poaching,' a term borrowed from Michel de Certeau, that designates the process by which old material is transformed into a new creation fitting new cultural practices; and 'taste': relying on Bourdieu's theory about culture-making, Taylor examines how 'producers of a work of literature' (by which she means writers and publishers [162]) manipulate readers-consumers in order to promote a cultural product.Divided into seven chapters, the book first chronicles the successful transformation and adaptation ofArthurian material: Pierre Sala's seemingly anachronistic rewritings of Chretien de Troyes' Yvain and of the Tristan story; and the highly skillful manner in which Verard and other publishers, assisted by teams of anonymous scribe-editors, negotiated the passage from a manuscript culture to the age of printing. Taylor scrutinizes what might look like 'cosmetic' changes: a new and 'modern' mise en page, the commission of specific woodcut illustrations, and the systematization of the table of rubrics, that assured the publishing success of two huge romances, Lancelot and Tristan. …