1066 AND ALL THAT, the comic history of England published in 1930, includes splendidly eccentric exam questions for each historical period; one of the medieval ones is ‘What have you done with your mother? (If Nun, write None)’. In the Arthurian legend, the only significant character who is sometimes said to be the offspring of a nun (or a virginal and virtuous princess) is not a king or a warrior hero but Merlin the magician. He is fathered clandestinely by a mysterious visitor, in some versions an incubus, but saved for the side of good by the holiness of his mother; in some she remains a virgin, suggesting a surprising parallel between Merlin and Christ. There is already a link between them in that their birth stories demonstrate Otto Rank's theory that in mythology and legend extra-marital and clandestine encounters often produce great heroes (this is also true of Arthur himself, conceived in an extra-marital tryst through Merlin's magic). These clandestine births often result in accusations against the mother, in both classical and medieval narratives. In Robert de Boron's Merlin, an influential French verse romance written around 1200, the precocious boy successfully defends his mother against a charge of fornication; and Arthur's mother too is falsely accused before the truth about his parentage is revealed (discussed in more detail below). No doubt this reflects historical anxieties about the chastity of queens and aristocratic ladies.

Much has been written about the importance of fathers, and father-son relations, in Arthurian literature; fathers may be absent, but their names convey both noble status and expectations – of inheritance, or a duty to avenge a death, for instance. The popular Fair Unknown motif is frequently used about promising young knights who often turn out to be fathered by Gawain, but little is said about their mothers. How much do parent and child interact, and how do they feel about each other? Some Arthurian knights are deeply moved by discovering the identity of their mothers or by being reunited with them. Some are reproached for not being more devoted to their mothers. Some defend their mothers, but others blame and punish them for inappropriate behaviour. In a range of medieval Arthurian texts, and also some modern ones, the mother-son relationship can be of profound significance.

BISHOP WÆRFERTH OF Worcester's late ninth century translation of Pope Gregory the Great's Latin Dialogi (late sixth century) into Old English as the Dialogues was an important text in pre-Conquest England: witness the three manuscripts and a bifolium of an otherwise lost manuscript that have survived. This number looks slightly less impressive when compared to the nine extant manuscripts or fragments from England of Gregory's original Latin text which date between the late seventh and late eleventh centuries. While the reception of the Old English Dialogues in both pre-Conquest England and in the past five decades has been adequately addressed, the tale of what people thought of it in the period between 1066 and its first edition in 1907 has largely remained untold. Now that plans have been announced to make a new edition, this essay charts the journey that the Old English Dialogues made from post-Conquest England into the world of the early-modern antiquaries and from there into the modern era. It appears that later medieval historiographers repeatedly mentioned its existence, thus probably drawing the attention of early modern antiquarians, notably Francis Junius and Edward Lye who quarried the text for its lexicographic potential. While Wærferth was frequently praised for his achievement, the contents of the Old English Dialogues, to the extent it was commented upon, met with a fair amount of (Protestant, Enlightened) contempt. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did a change in the scholarly paradigm emerge in Germany that spread to England and the rest of the Western academic world. The result was a renewed philological attention to the Dialogues, above all aimed at establishing a reliable text edition that would enable it to be analysed by both linguists and literary critics alike.

Post-Conquest references to Wærferth's translation of Gregory's Dialogues show the work did not really sink into oblivion, despite being in Old English. However, awareness of the text did not rest as much on familiarity with the vernacular version itself, as on the man who translated it, owing to Bishop Asser's reference to this feat in his Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum (Life of Alfred King of the Anglo-Saxons) [hereafter Vita Ælfredi] (893).

An original adaptation

FERGUUT OR DIE Riddere metten witten scilde (The Knight with the White Shield) is one of the oldest (c. 1240) Arthurian romances in Middle Dutch. The romance was written in Flanders, but the only extant copy is preserved in a manuscript, made in the duchy of Brabant around the middle of the fourteenth century, Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ltk 191. Ferguut is an adaptation of Fergus, an Old French Arthurian romance (c. 1200) by Guillaume le Clerc. This romance tells the story of an extraordinary hero who begins his career as the son of a farmer. Knighted at Arthur's court and on his way to his first adventure, he meets Galiene, who confesses her love for him. Fergus spurns her advances and the offended Galiene flees. When Fergus successfully returns from his adventure, he finds himself under the spell of love and leaves on a long quest for Galiene, in which he has to learn to combine amour ‘love’ and chevalerie ‘chivalry’. As the ‘Chevalier au bel Escu’ [the Knight with the Splendid Shield], Fergus fights for Galiene, who, after her father's death, has become mistress of Lothian. Eventually Fergus wins Galiene's hand in marriage and becomes lord of all her lands.

Research has shown that the romance of Fergus was also meant as a literary critique of Chrétien de Troyes's late twelfth century story of Perceval in Le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail). Guillaume returns to the romance model centering on the theme of the balance between worldly love and martial prowess, which Chrétien chose for his earlier romances Erec et Enide and Yvain. At the same time, Guillaume rejects Perceval's choice for a religiously inspired form of chivalry, symbolized by the Grail, by creating a new hero, Fergus, who is very similar to Perceval, and whose goal lies in the union of chivalry and love in the service of Galiene. Unlike Guillaume, the Flemish author does not aim at playing this specific intertextual game with the Conte du Graal; instead, the Middle Dutch romance offers a simpler, but skillfully told, fast-paced version of the story.

GERALDINE HENG's SEMINAL study The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018) is thought-provoking in many ways, even in minute details. In the Acknowledgements she thanks many people, including ‘David Johnson and Geert Claassens [who] shared their important translation-in-progress of the Middle Dutch Roman van Moriaen’. And indeed, Heng's excellent analysis of the story of the adventures of a black knight from Moriane in King Arthur's realm has benefited greatly from this well-made modern translation, where the only alternative in print would have been Jessie Weston's outdated and often not quite precise translation, published in 1901. The new translation-in-the-making would bring the number of Middle Dutch romances translated by the Johnson-Claassens team up to eight. The three volumes containing the already published translations, dating from 1992 to 2003, were re-issued in paperback in 2012. The translations areof great value for anyone studying Middle Dutch Arthurian romances, both in the Netherlands and abroad, since they combine a fine critical edition of the original Dutch text with an excellent rendition into modern English. The publication of their Moriaen translation, hopefully in the near future, will no doubt also stimulate the study of this very interesting romance in international and Dutch Arthurian research.

They have already done so much, and yet the team's intention at the time was, and hopefully still is, to bring to the international research community translations of more, perhaps even all ten, texts in the Lancelot Compilation, the flagship of Middle Dutch Arthuriana. This intention may be read between the lines of the elaborate introduction to the compilation accompanying the translation of five romances in 2003, where the acknowledgements suggest that there may be ‘further volumes in the Middle Dutch Romances series’. The Moriaen translation is perhaps one of these volumes-to-be, and there are a few more parts of the compilation that still remain un-translated. The manuscript (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, hs 129 A 10), dating from around 1320, contains a verse translation of the final third of the prose Lancelot, followed by the Perchevael romance and Moriaen, then another translation from the French vulgate Cycle, the Queeste van den Grale, followed by five more romances and, as closure, the translation of La mort le roi Artu, Arturs doet.

IN 2002, THE members of the respectable Maatschappij der nederlandse letterkunde (Society of Dutch literature) were invited to participate in a survey of the most important Dutch authors and texts. Multatuli's novel Max Havelaar, published in 1860, turned out to be their favourite title, followed closely by the Middle Dutch verse text Van den vos Reynaerde (Of Reynaert the Fox). Their high ranking of this thirteenth-century beast epic is understandable. recently, for example, geert Claassens characterised Van den vos Reynaerde as ‘a perfectly composed text, with supple versification, irony, sarcasm and humour effortlessly upholding a story that runs along smoothly according to a perfect plot.’ Multilingualism is one of the textual features that contribute to the beast epic's humour, the author of Van den vos Reynaerde clearly used French and latin elements for comic purposes. This multilingualism was addressed by the author who translated the Middle Dutch beast epic into Latin. His adaptation of the French and Latin passages demonstrates his moralising intentions in writing Reynardus Vulpes.

At the beginning of Van den vos Reynaerde, King Nobel, the lion, holds court. Various animals charge Reynaert with crimes in absentia. Even though Grimbeert the badger defends his nephew Reynaert eloquently, the king decides to summon the fox. His first two messengers, Bruun the bear and Tybeert the cat, fail to bring Reynaert along. Exploiting their weaknesses, the fox tricks them. The third messenger, Grimbeert, persuades Reynaert to accompany him to the court. On their way, the fox confesses his countless crimes to the badger. The court tries Reynaert and sentences him to death. However, due to his public confession, in which he presents an invented story about a hidden treasure and a conspiracy against the king's life, the greedy Nobel pardons him and imprisons Reynaert's opponents. Pretending to go on pilgrimage, the fox is allowed to leave the court in the company of Cuwaert the hare, whom he kills when he arrives at his home. Confronted with this murder, the king realizes that the fox has deceived him. Peace is seemingly restored after Nobel's reconciliation with Reynaert's enemies.

AT THE END of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur (completed 1469–70; published 1485) [hereafter Morte], after the wrack and ruin of Lancelot and Mordred's respective civil wars and the internecine strife in the wake of the Grail Quest, Guinevere, hearing that Arthur has died, seeks refuge in an abbatial convent at ‘Amysbyry’, or Amesbury. She takes vows there to become a Benedictine nun, wearing ‘whyght clothys and blak’ (2.929), and is eventually elected abbess and ruler, ‘as reson wolde’ (2.930). After an uncertain amount of time, she encounters her former lover Lancelot and turns him away, enjoining him to adopt a religious vocation in light of his sin, and while their parting is sorrowful, provoking ‘lamentacyon as they had be stungyn wyth sperys’ (2.934), the queen dies repentant. Malory's rendering of Guinevere's final years is poignant, leaving little doubt as to the authenticity of the queen's devotion, and his version of events is the one that has become perhaps most canonical in the centuries since its composition. The Morte, however, is an exceedingly late medieval account, and its treatment of Guinevere, at odds with a huge majority of the preceding pan-European Arthurian tradition, is derived in large part from Malory's principal English source for the latter part of his text, the anonymous fourteenth-century stanzaic Morte Arthur [hereafter sMA]. Guinevere's moral rehabilitation at Amesbury, in fact, is a detail seemingly original to the sMA, and although scholars have offered fruitful examinations of the textual convent in reference to the Benedictine monastery and later dependent Fontevrault priory located in the historical town of Amesbury, the site's particular associations and resonance within the Arthurian literary tradition have gone unacknowledged in any substantial detail. Amesbury is an important site of transformation in the Brut tradition that descended from the earliest dedicated chronicle account, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) [hereafter Historia] (c. 1136–38), and the fact that the poet of the sMA, and later Malory, utilizes Amesbury as the location of Guinevere's redemption strongly suggests an intertextual link from within the established Brut tradition that introduces a thematic valence of mourning turned to celebration for the queen in these later texts.

GOSCELIN OF ST Bertin's Liber confortatorius (Book of Encouragement) [hereafter the Liber] is the first known work of spiritual guidance for an anchoress to have been composed in England. It is also a deeply personal letter designed to assuage the heartbreak occasioned by Goscelin's loss of his former student Eve, who had left Wilton Abbey (where Goscelin was probably serving as chaplain) c. 1080 to embrace a more reclusive life as an anchoress in Angers. Distraught over Eve's unannounced departure, Goscelin envisions the Liber as a substitute for his physical presence, a textual surrogate that might effectively reconnect two bodies whose former closeness was severed by geographic distance. Although the fact of their separation is bitter to Goscelin, he seeks comfort in the idea that ‘Loquetur etiam edificatius tenax pagina quam fluxa lingua’ [the tenacious page will speak more edifyingly than the fluid tongue] and that ‘alligare et refouere nos poterit intercurrens epistola’ [a letter shuttling back and forth can reconnect us and keep us warm].

The connection with Eve that Goscelin hopes to engender by his self-described peregrina epistola (26) ‘pilgrim letter’ (19) is merely one aspect of the Liber's sustained fascination with chaste human intimacies. Composed in the early 1080s during the first flourishing of Gregorian reforms, Goscelin's letter is filled with images that explore corporeal configurations and the spiritual and intellectual closeness they enable or refuse: conjoined female twins fused from the navel down; a hermit with his limbs stuck in a tree for fifteen years; a ‘double man’ sporting two torsos, four hands and feet, but only one soul; a dead girl whose womb swells with her foster father's unborn child; and the Liber itself, a letter to a lost beloved sealed with both lips and tears. That the Liber displays a strong interest in bodily union and spiritual intermingling is, in many ways, unsurprising. The text took shape during the early years of clerical reform, a religious movement notorious among scholars of women and gender for its increased scrutiny of human bodies and their interactions. Although scholars have amply recognized the Liber's investment in interpersonal relations, they have yet to investigate the extent to which interconnected, immobile, or restricted bodies – figures with physical configurations often categorized under the modern rubric of ‘disability’ – inform Goscelin's efforts to theorize the possibilities and dangers of human intimacy.

ONE OF DAVID F. Johnson's many contributions to the study of Middle Dutch Arthuriana is an argument about the diverse reasons why Walewein should be considered as operating in a class of his own in the Roman van Walewein. Johnson's reading is characteristically astute, but his thesis about Walewein's individuality presents an opportunity to examine once again the manipulation of genre and convention evident in another Arthurian masterpiece focusing upon Arthur's nephew: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [hereafter SGGK]. In this most carefully crafted of medieval English romances, genre and convention are also closely tied to issues of heroism. Indeed, the Gawain-poet's manipulation of generic features includes a persistent emphasis on the isolation of his hero; this isolation is unusual given the generic telos of reconciliation so commonplace in the romance kind. Part of what happens, in consequence, is that Gawain is and is not a traditional romance hero; accordingly, SGGK is a generic hybrid. The question of how best to define romance has produced considerable scholarly debate, but love, whether of a heterosexual or homosexual partner, or of family, or of one's chivalric fellows, is a recurring and, indeed, defining feature of the genre; Gawain thus undertakes adventure for the love of Arthur. Unusually, though, Gawain is careful to avoid the kind of amorous or loving dalliance that is another staple form of adventure in the romance genre. Gawain is in fact continuously isolated throughout the poem, and this isolation suggests that he is also, in part, an unusual epic-heroic hero, one interested not only in the winning of that all-important heroic trait of public fame but also in abiding by a powerful code of honour. As so often in the heroic ethos, it is this code of honour and heroism – including, in this case, keeping Lady Bertilak's secret – that gets the hero Gawain into trouble. These issues of the hero's isolation, generic trouble, and honour are important for reassessing Gawain's supposed failure.

Erwin Cook makes a convincing case for the ancient Greek hero being both active and passive, a figure who is willing and capable of taking physical action and rendering appropriate harm to opponents, but who is equally likely to suffer harm him- or her-self.

IN A DISCUSSION of the meaning of ‘individuality’, Terry Eagleton cites two examples: ‘Homer's Odysseus seems to feel roughly this way, whereas Shakespeare's Hamlet most definitely does not’. Eagleton does something here that readers frequently do: he treats fictional characters like real, living, thinking people. It is a natural reflex to fill out the always-incomplete information in a story to make from it a plausible whole. The branch of literary criticism most commonly known as ‘cognitive literary studies’ takes this tendency as a point of departure for textual analysis. From this perspective, we may potentially resolve a conundrum found at the very heart of the Lanseloet van Denemerken, a fourteenth-century Middle Dutch play. Lanseloet van Denemerken [hereafter Lanseloet] is one of the so-called abele spelen ‘artful plays’ contained in the famous Hulthem manuscript (Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 15.589–15.623), where the play is recorded (on fols. 223rb–230ra) along with 210 other, mostly Middle Dutch, texts. The author is unknown (although he is likely to have come from the southern Netherlands), and its date is just as difficult to determine. The codicology of the manuscript itself does provide a terminus ante quem: the watermarks in its paper point to a production date between 1405 and 1410, and it was written by one scribe. The play itself likely dates to the late fourteenth century.

The play is not very long (no more than 952 lines) but still brings quite a few players on stage. Lanseloet (crown prince of Denemerken), his mother, Sanderijn (the woman he loves), an anonymous knight (whom Sanderijn eventually weds), Reinout (Lanseloet's servant) and the anonymous knight's forester. The play is well-structured, and the actions of the characters are usually clearly motivated. But Lanseloet, of all people, does something that initially seems counterintuitive (and that turns out to be very counterproductive in his attempts to win over Sanderijn): he agrees to a ruse his mother devises. Precisely at this point, the text does not give unequivocal information about the choices Lanseloet makes. This lack of information is not a problem only if the audience fills in the gaps in the text based on the context, giving them more or less free rein as long as they do not make assumptions that are clearly contradicted by the text.

THE VISIBILITY OF the intentions and identities of the leading artists, sculptors, scribes, and illuminators of early medieval England seems to become more apparent as the centuries progress, but such acts of representation always require thoughtful work on the audiences’ part. One of those acts of representation concerns the teams of producers, whose work may be deliberately rendered invisible within the object. In early medieval English art, for example, clear signs of the hands of the artists – their personal style, how this thing was carved, painted, and made – are often concealed, yet indications of the maker may be discoverable if one searches carefully for them. These are not meant to stand out, or even to be identifiable, except in a minority of cases, where a lead artist or scribe has significant prestige. In this study we seek to uncover the evidence for the ways in which the producers of textual and artistic objects in the early medieval period made manifest their individual efforts, to determine what presence the maker does have within their own work, and the different ways in which individual craftspeople are identified within objects, especially when the artefact was produced by a team.

Artworks, including illuminated manuscripts, were made for God, or at least manufactured in the sight of God, and expressions of personal artistry might usually have been considered evidence of pride or vanity. Very few artists’ identities are known prior to the twelfth century, and where self-reference appears to be made through the possible depiction of an artist by that artist, their name is concealed and thus lost to history. On the other hand, a portrait of the scribe (and possibly artist) Eadwig Basan survives on folio 133r of the Eadwig Psalter (London, British Library, Arundel 155, c. 1012–23), but scholars cannot be sure that it is actually by his hand. In the twelfth century, by contrast, it is possible to identify some professional artists, including the well-known ‘Master Hugo’, whose work is seen in the famous highly-illuminated manuscript, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, 2 – the Bury Bible, made at Bury St Edmunds.

Chapter 2 investigates how identity in Senecan tragedy is achieved via sympathetic identification with others, whether individuals or groups. The chapters focuses on Roman practices of exemplarity, which encouraged the formation of individual selves via the appropriation of others’ - often normative - characteristics. This habit of coyping and becoming a copy of other people connects the human individual to the fictional character, which is by nature inherently replicable. The two plays discussed in this chapter are Troades, where Astyanax is constantly characterised as a ‘second Hector’, and Hercules, where the protagonist pursues self-aemulatio in place of family attachments.