Medieval Romances

When I was young books were a bit short at my house. However, we did have a collection of medieval romances that I read and reread. When I recently found this book I was enchanted to see some old favorites here. Oh, yes, these stories have scholarly worth. But they also have the power to fire the imagination and feed the mind hungry for magic and adventure. Spend some time enjoying these tales before you study them!

Loomis and Loomis present translations of the following tales: _Perceval, or the Story of the Grail_ by Chretien de Troyes, _Tristan and Isolt_ by Gottfried von Strassburg, _The Youth of Alexander the Great_, _Aucassin and Nicolete_, _Havelok the Dane_, _Sir Orfeo_, _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ - all anonymous, and an excerpt from the Caxton Mallory - _The Book of Balin_. Of these, Tristan, Perceval and Gawain make up the bulk of the text and the translations read well, although I prefer Hatto for Tristan and Kibler for Perceval. The real finds in this book though are the briefer tales that do not deal with the Matter of Britain as they are difficult to locate elsewhere.Alexander stories formed part of _The Matter of Rome_ a collection of tales rivaling the Carolingian _Matter of France_ and the Arthurian _Matter of Britain_ in popularity in the middle ages. Alexander's story here is welcome, albeit only a brief episode. "Aucassin and Nicolette" is a brief story of a damsel in distress and her rescuer/lover. Sir Orfeo is an odd amalgam of Greek and Celtic myth in a medieval setting. One stylistic point which may bother some is that despite most of these tales being 20th century translations into English of works which were originally non-English, (Mallory and Gawain being exceptions), Loomis and Loomis include a lot of Shakespearian era wording (thee, thou, quoth, ye, yea) rather than more modern choices.