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This article surveys recent scholarship on Middle English romances, observing that outside Malory, Chaucer, and the Gawain -poet, most romances remain littleknown. To be sure, the corpus and development of Middle English romance are unwieldy and complicated, compared to that of Old French romance. New work on the romances, however, redefines the relationships between Middle English romance and its French sources, explores the aesthetic values of Middle English romances, and offers new approaches to teaching Middle English romances beyond the few most famous ones. Moreover, theoretical approaches to medieval romance encourage discussions across traditional period boundaries; medievalists also have special skills to contribute to scholarship. Current work on medieval English romance focuses on its aesthetic as well as cultural properties, bringing both into play in the classroom as well as in scholarship.2 Teaching and Studying the Middle English Romance

This comparison of the Middle English Auchinleck manuscript's romance Of Arthour and of Merlin to its Old French source suggests that this poem is the earliest instance of Arthurian children's literature in English.

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The five medieval and early modern manuscripts of Arthour and Merlin contain marginal reactions from early modern readers showing that the romance remained popular for some centuries after its composition, although readers focused more on Vortigern and Merlin than on Arthur.