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Created in London <I>c</I>. 1340, the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1) is of crucial importance as the first book designed to convey in the English language an ambitious range of secular romance and chronicle. Evidently made in London by professional scribes for a secular patron, this tantalizing volume embodies a massive amount of material evidence as to London commercial book production and the demand for vernacular texts in the early fourteenth century. But its origins are mysterious: who were its makers? its users? how was it made? what end did it serve? <BR> The essays in this collection define the parameters of present-day Auchinleck studies. They scrutinize the manuscript's rich and varied contents; reopen theories and controversies regarding the book's making; trace the operations and interworkings of the scribes, compiler, and illuminators; tease out matters of patron and audience; interpret the contested signs of linguisticand national identity; and assess Auchinleck's implied literary values beside those of Chaucer. Geography, politics, international relations and multilingualism become pressing subjects, too, alongside critical analyses of literary substance.<BR><BR> Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University (Kent, Ohio) and editor of <I>The Chaucer Review</I>. <BR><BR> Contributors: Venetia Bridges, Patrick Butler, Siobhain Bly Calkin, A. S. G. Edwards, Ralph Hanna, Ann Higgins, Cathy Hume, Marisa Libbon, Derek Pearsall, Helen Phillips, Emily Runde, Timothy A. Shonk, M-l F. Vaughan.

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This chapter surveys the significant yet frequently overlooked body of poetic material from the fifteenth century that focuses on antique narratives. It considers them through their approach to their inherited narratives. This approach allows a unified and contextually sensitive comparison to be made across a diverse corpus, including alliterative poetry, Scots works, long retellings of classical narratives, and shorter comic episodes, and it also enables lengthy works to be succinctly analysed. Particular kinds of works discussed are the narratives of Alexander (The Wars of Alexander and The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour), narratives of Troy (Gest hystoriale/Destruction of Troy, Laud Troy Book), accounts drawn from Ovid and Virgil (John Metham, Amoryus and Cleopes), Charlemagne histories (The Sowdon of Babylon), and tales influenced by Chaucer (the Tale of Beryn).