Textual Traditions and Medieval Literary Culture

Book excerpt: Essays illuminating how medieval cultures and identities have influenced later authors, texts, and communities. How did medieval literary cultures shape, and how were they shaped by, their received textual traditions? And how have cultures continued to respond to the inherited medieval tradition in later eras? This volume explores these important questions, considering how language and literature mediate the narration of history or culture - especially the culture and identity of Britain. In addressing the overarching concern of the conception of the past in the literatures of medieval Britain, and the later reception of medieval texts, the contributors' essays respond to the diverse areas of medieval studies upon which Professor Echard's work has had significant influence. They address, amongst other subjects, Arthuriana and "Matter of Britain" texts, the literary interrelationships between medieval Wales and England, medieval adaptations and interpretations of texts from classical antiquity, the poet John Gower, and medievalism in later centuries. As Professor Echard has consistently demonstrated in these fields, and as these essays overwhelmingly confirm, the past is rarely, if ever, represented at face value in the cultural products that lay claim to it.