Alison Wiggins & Rosalind Field 
Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor 

The first interdisciplinary enquiry into a key figure in medieval and early modern culture.


Guy of Warwick is England’s other Arthur. Elevated to the status of national hero, his legend occupied a central place in the nation’s cultural heritage from the Middle Ages to the modern period.
Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor spans the Guy tradition from its beginnings in Anglo-Norman and Middle English romance right through to the plays and prints of the early modern period and Spenser’s
Faerie Queene, including the visual tradition in manuscript illustration and material culture as well as the intersection of the legend with local and national history. This volume addresses important questions regarding the continuities and remaking of romance material, and therelation between life and literature. Topics discussed are sensitive to current critical concerns and include translation, reception, magnate ambition, East-West relations, the construction of ‘Englishness’ and national identity, and the literary value of ‘popular’ romance.


ALISON WIGGINS is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Glasgow; ROSALIND FIELD is Reader in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.


CONTRIBUTORS: JUDITH WEISS, MARIANNE AILES, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, ROSALIND FIELD, ALISON WIGGINS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE, DAVID GRIFFITH, MARTHA W. DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, ANDREW KING, HELEN COOPER

Table of Content

Editorial Introduction

Gui de Warewic at Home and Abroad: A Hero for Europe – Judith Weiss

Gui de Warewic in its Manuscript Context – Marianne Ailes

Guy of Warwick as a Translation – Ivana Djordjevic

From
Gui to
Guy: The Fashioning of a Popular Romance – Rosalind Field

The Manuscripts and Texts of the Middle English
Guy of Warwick – Alison Wiggins

The
Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s
Guy of Warwick: The Non-Romance Middle English Tradition – A S G Edwards

An Exemplary Life: Guy of Warwick as Medieval Culture-Hero – Robert Rouse

The Visual History of Guy of Warwick – David Griffith

`In her owne persone semly and bewtwus’: Representing Women in Stories of Guy of Warwick – Martha W. Driver

Of Dragons and Saracens: Guy and Bevis in Early Print Illustration – Sian Echard

Guy of Warwick and
The Faerie Queene, Book II: Chivalry Through the Ages – Andrew King

Guy as Early Modern English Hero – Helen Cooper

About the author

ROBERT ROUSE Associate Professor, Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.