While there has been a great deal of debate about enlarging the canon, less attention has been paid to how students respond to "new" literary figures such as Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, or to how instructors should incorporate them into an already cramped literature survey course. Instructors must consider some questions that…

Advantage should be taken of the increased interest in teaching Old English literature, in translation, at the college and high school levels. The study of "Beowulf" and other Old English literature has proved to be a stimulating experience for students at the United States Air Force Academy and at Georgia College. At the academy, the…

The Occitan movement in Southern France should be studied in the light of a world-wide political reality of our days, the surfacing of ethnic minorities which are beginning to voice cultural and political demands in almost all large industrialized or developing countries. The first step for a minority group to come into existence is almost without…

Although modern readers often find the interpretation of medieval literature difficult, they should be encouraged to use their imagination to resolve the dilemmas they encounter. Often, these are the same issues with which medieval audiences had to wrestle and which the poets intended to raise. W. Iser's and H. R. Jauss's principles of…

Even though medieval manuscripts represent the most voluminous surviving artifact from the Middle Ages, the very nature of this resource presents challenges for usage. In an effort to preserve medieval manuscripts and to create broader and more economical access to their contents, many libraries have in recent decades sought to provide filmed…