Reviews
"Presents each of the poet's works within the sociohistorical context of King Richard II's reign, giving newly nuanced readings of each text."
--CHOICE
"Offers readers much to think about and build upon, useful points of entry into the political, religious, social and literary worlds of late medieval England. This thoughtful, interesting volume foregrounds, in the best way, the relevance and value of some of the greatest works produced in the history of English literature."
--Review of English Studies
“This book is ideal for undergraduate students, as it relives itself of a sober academic tone by contextualizing these fourteenth-century poems within the broader literary history of works such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and by offering succinct summaries of the poems, organized at the beginning of each chapter. But the breadth of this survey and particularly the author’s ambitious study of the historical world in which the Gawain poet lived give the book value even for more advanced scholars of the poem, and make it an important contribution to the library of Gawain studies.”
--Comitatus
“A consistently engaging and richly contextualized study… of great use to undergraduates, to graduate students, and to advance scholars seeking a survey of this singular corpus of late-medieval poetry.”
--The Medieval Review