ENG 341: Medieval English Literature

Relationships between people and texts form the focus of the studies collected in this book. It was presented to Erik Kooper in recognition of his lifelong efforts to bring together people from universities worldwide. It will be of special interest to scholars and students of Arthurian and Middle English literature, codicologists, scholars interested in medieval Latin sermons and the Gesta Hereward

Communities have often shaped themselves around cultural spaces set apart and declared sacred. For this purpose, churches, priests or scholars no less than writers frequently participate in giving sacred figures a local habitation and, sometimes, voice or name. But whatever sites, rites, images or narratives have thus been constructed, they also raise some complex questions: how can the sacred be presented and yet guarded, claimed yet concealed, staged in public and at the same time kept exclusive?

Drawing from Eastern and Western literatures, Heinrich Zimmer presents a selection of stories linked together by their common concern for the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil. Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism.