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Product Description: To define the scope of this book is in one sense straightforward: the essays printed here offer critical readings of a range of poetry written in English between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, with the exception of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. These essays represent some of the developments in medieval studies over the last fifteen or twenty years. The concerns of this volume are very firmly clustered around literary criticism and critical methodology, and the ways in which medieval literary studies borrows from and contributes to the theory and practice of literary criticism in the 90s. The collection has two aims: to represent the growth, if not of a new medievalism, of at least a rich and interrogative vein of criticism in this field; and secondly, to consider this movement in the rather broader contexts and crises of criticism and historicism in the nineties. This series provides substantial volumes of new readings, presented in an accessible form and with a significant amount of editorial guidance. Each volume includes a substantial introduction which explores the theoretical issues and conflicts embodied in the essays selected and locates areas of disagreement between positions. The pluralism of theories has to be put on the agenda of literary studies. The volumes in this series all attempt to dramatize the differences, not necessarily with a view to resolving them but in order to foreground the choices presented by different theories or to argue for a particular route through the impasses the differences present. This series aims to disseminate the best of recent criticism and to show that it is possible to re-read the canonical texts of literature in new and challenging ways.