Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
11 - Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
Summary
The Festschrift for Derek Brewer published in his lifetime was devoted to Chaucer's Nachleben, in tribute to the enormous and innovative contribution he made to the study of Chaucer's heritage (Morse and Windeatt 1990). But another volume could have been focused on Arthurian literature, a field very dear to him where he also made very important contributions, both as a critic and as a publisher. Boydell & Brewer publish the journal Arthurian Literature, and their invaluable Arthurian Studies series now runs to over eighty volumes (many cited in this essay); it includes a number of Companions which deal with Arthurian material, not least Brewer's own co-edited Companion to the Gawain-Poet (Brewer and Gibson 1997), a volume to which he also contributed several essays. He worked on Arthurian literature from the beginning of his career. His first publication, in 1948, was a brief note on ‘Gawayn and the Green Chapel’ soon after he produced his first essay on Malory, ‘Form in the Morte Darthur’ (1952), later revised as the very influential ‘“the hoole book”‘ (1963b). In 1968 he published an edition of Books Seven and Eight of Malory's Morte Darthur (1968a); the introduction remains as relevant and elegant today as when it was first published – indeed, with its references to anthropology (honour and shame cultures) and to the experience of the Second World War, in which he himself had fought, and its sympathetic consideration of the character of Guinevere, it was quite avant-garde.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English LiteratureThe Influence of Derek Brewer, pp. 173 - 187Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013