Kings & captains;: Variations on a heroic theme

Literature & Fiction

Moorman, Charles

History & Criticism

University Press of Kentucky

Charles Moorman reexamines several major works of the western heroic tradition: The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Nibelungenlied, the Norse sagas, and the Arthurian cycle. Disregarding the usual limited definitions which have controlled the study of heroic literature, he draws together these disparate works by proposing a theme common to them all: the opposition of two major figures whom he names king and captain.The figure of the king arises from the community with its need for responsible government, while the captain, derived from myth, is a highly individualistic, irresponsible heroic figure. The tension which Moorman sees between them is used as a means of reinterpreting the works under study. Though widely separated in time and cultural milieu, The Illiad, and The Song of Roland, for example, can be compared by interpreting both the Agamemnon-Achilles and the Oliver-Roland relationships as conflicts between king and captain. These essays will prove illuminating for layman and scholar alike.

Kings and Captains: Variations on a Heroic Theme

The Pearl-Poet

Poetry

Irvington Pub.

Editing the Middle English manuscript

Univ. Press of Mississippi

An Arthurian Dictionary

An Arthurian dictionary

Reference

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

This handy, compact, and authoritative volume provides readers and students with information about a multitude of Arthurian characters, places, themes, and topics from the first written records of early myths and legends through Sir Thomas Malory's epic Morte D'arthur.

Moorman, Ruth

This edition of the complete Works of Cotton Nero A.x.---Patience, Purity, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight---is the first collected edition since the manuscript itself.  Charles Moorman's hope is that this work will facilitate studies of the whole Gawain-Poet, in addition to those of his individual works.  In addition, this edition should provide a basis for comparative study and aid in an evaluation of the poet's development. Designed for the professional scholar, the student, and the general reader with no training in Middle English, this edition brings together the tools for both introductory and advances study.  Moorman has tried to make the text as readable, the notes as succinct and informative, and the glossary as useful as possible.  The new reader will find before him everything necessary for a convenient first reading, and the scholar will see and appreciate the results of generations of scholarship. These four poems---two dramatic biblical narratives, an elegy, and a chivalric romance---are, next to the works of Chaucer, the finest poems of the fourteenth century, an age abounding in great literature.  Their variety, their rich imagery, their depth of mood and feeling, and particularly their sensitive responsiveness to the moral dilemmas of human life make these poems an endless, if not wholly translatable, source of both despair and comfort.  The Works of the Gawain-Poet presents a number of distictive features: a conservatively edited text; the original manuscript illustrations; apparatus, glosses, and notes on the page with the text; and a full introduction and bibliography.  The book should prove useful both as a reading and reference edition and as a graduate text.

The Works of the Gawain-Poet

This handy, compact, and authoritative volume provides readers and students with information about a multitude of Arthurian characters, places, themes, and topics from the first written records of early myths and legends through Sir Thomas Malory's epic Morte Darthur.

Minary, Ruth Moorman

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