Modern Retellings of Chivalric Texts

Book excerpt: Published in 1999, the ten essays in this collection identify and examine reworkings of identifiable source texts from the medieval or Renaissance periods. The reasons for the modern adaptations depend variously on an individual author’s personal perspectives, the worldview of his or her society, and the individual’s place in it. The various chapters therefore address issues such as why a particular model was chosen and how its retelling depends on the modern author/auteur’s misreading or rereading of medieval chivalric conventions. This book compliments numerous existing studies of medievalism in the Enlightenment and Victorian eras by examining more recent adaptations of the much studied Arthurian romances, but primarily extends the discussion on the nature of revivals to other medieval or Renaissance chivalric texts, especially the Carolingian cycle epic. The collection includes not only literary retellings of medieval texts, but also some in different media, such as theatre and cinema.