This collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F. Johnson, exploring the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contracts with the Low Countries, and highlighting common texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions of Old English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch.

This collection honours the scholarship of Professor David F. Johnson, exploring the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contracts with the Low Countries, and highlighting common texts, motifs, and themes across the textual traditions of Old English and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch.

Few scholars have contributed as much to the wider view of medieval England and its cultural contacts with the Low Countries than Professor David F. Johnson. His wide-ranging scholarship embraces both the textual traditions of Old English, especially in manuscript production, and later medieval romances in both English and Middle Dutch, highlighting their common texts, motifs, and themes.

Taking Johnson's work as its starting point and model, the essays collected here investigate early English manuscript production and preservation, illuminating the complexities of reinterpreting Old English poetry, particularlyBeowulf, and then go on to pursue those nuances through later English and Middle Dutch Arthurian romances and drama, includingSir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Canterbury Tales, and the Roman van Walewein. They explore a plethora of material, including early medieval textual traditions and stone sculpture, and draw on a range of approaches, such as Body and Disability Theories. Overall, the aim is to bring multiple disciplines into dialogue with each other, in order to present a richer and more nuanced view of the medieval literary past and cross-cultural contact between England and the Low Countries, from the pre-Conquest period to the late-Middle Ages, thus forming a most appropriate tribute to Professor Johnson's pioneering work.

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Medieval English and Dutch Literature in its European Context and the Work of David F. Johnson
Larissa Tracy and Geert H. M. Claassens

1. Reconstructing a Lost Manuscript of the Old English Gospels
Roy M. Liuzza

2. The Reception of the Old English Version of Gregory the Great'sDialogues between the Conquest and the Close of the Nineteenth Century
Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

3. An Unrecorded Copy of Heinrich Krebs'sAn Anglo-Saxon Version of Gregory's Dialogues, Printer's Proofs
Thomas A. Bredehoft and Rachel C. S. Duke

4. The Body as Media in Early Medieval England
Martin Foys

5. Who Snatched Grendel inBeowulf 852b?
Stephen Harris

6. 'Mobile as Wishes': Anchoritism, Intersubjectivity, and Disability in theLiber confortatorius
Danielle Allor and Stacy S. Klein

7. The Presence of the Hands: Sculpture and Script in the Eighth to Twelfth Centuries
Catherine Karkov and Elaine Treharne

8. Perceval's Name and the Gifts of the Mother
Thomas D. Hill

9. A Relaxed Knight and an Impatient Heroine: Ironizing the Love Quest in the Second Part of the Middle DutchFerguut
Marjolein Hogenbirk

10. Multilingualism inVan den vos Reynaerde and its Reception inReynardus Vulpes
Bart Besamusca

11. Three Characters as Narrator in theRoman van Walewein
Roel Zemel

12. As the Chess-Set Flies: Arthurian Marvels in Chaucer'sSquire's Tale and theRoman van Walewein
Jamie C. Fumo

13. For a Performer's Personal Use: The Corrector's Lines in the Lower Margin of the Middle DutchLanceloet Manuscript
Frank Brandsma

14. 'Oft leudlez alone': The Isolation of the Hero and Its Consequences inSir Gawain and the Green Knight
K. S. Whetter

15. Shifting Skin: Passing as Human, Passing as Fay inSir Gawain and the Green Knight
Larissa Tracy

16. The Lover Caught Between his Mother and his Maiden inLanseloet van Denemerken
Geert H. M. Claassens

17. Afterlives: The Abbey at Amesbury and the 'Rehabilitation' of Guinevere in Malory and the StanzaicMorte Arthur
Christopher Jensen

18. The Importance of Being an Arthurian Mother
Elizabeth Archibald

Select Bibliography
Bibliography of David F. Johnson's Works
Index
Tabula Gratulatoria