In this volume seventeen scholars from Great Britain, Ireland, Spain and the US pay tribute to the memory of Roger M Walker, Professor of Spanish at Birkbeck College, London. His publications were chiefly in the field of Old Spanish narrative epic, romance, hagiography and the Libro de buen amor and the editors have sought to assemble contributions on these topics. Versions of some of the papers were presented at the symposium held in Professor Walkers memory at Birkbeck College in October 1999.

Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Literature explores the ways Arabic, Jewish and Christian intellectuals in medieval Iberia (courtiers and clerics) adapt and transform the Andalusi go-between figure in order to represent their own role as cultural intermediaries. While these authors are of different religious, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, they use the go-between, an essential figure in the Andalusi courtly discourse of desire, to open up a secular, more tolerant intellectual space in the face of increasingly fundamentalist currents in their respective cultures. The way this study focuses on the hybrid discourses and identities of medieval Iberia as Muslim, Jewish and Christian responses to continual contact/conflict reflects a methodological approach based in Cultural and Translation Studies.

What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the broader medieval Europe that modern historians write about? This collection brings the focus back to medieval authors to see how they described their world. While we see that each author certainly had their own biases, the vast majority of them did not view the world as constrained to their small piece of it. Instead, they talked about the wider world, and often they had informants or textual sources that informed them about the world, even if they did not visit it themselves. This volume shows that they also used similar ideas to create space and identity – whether talking about the desert, the holy land, or food practices in their texts. By examining medieval authors and their own perceptions of their world, this collection offers a framework for discussions of medieval Europe in the twenty-first century.

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Interfaith liaisons carried powerful resonances, as such unions could function as a tool of diplomacy, the catalyst for conversion, or potent psychological propaganda. Examining a wide range of source material including legal documents, historical narratives, polemical and hagiographic works, poetry, music, and visual art, Simon Barton presents a nuanced reading of the ways interfaith couplings were perceived, tolerated, or feared, depending upon the precise political and social contexts in which they occurred. Religious boundaries in the Peninsula were complex and actively policed, often shaped by an overriding fear of excessive social interaction or assimilation of the three faiths that coexisted within the region. Barton traces the protective cultural, legal, and mental boundaries that the rival faiths of Iberia erected, and the processes by which women, as legitimate wives or slave concubines, physically traversed those borders. Through a close examination of the realities and the imagination of interfaith relations, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines highlights the extent to which sex, power, and identity were closely bound up with one another.

'Matthew Bailey's work on medieval Hispanic epic poetry is most impressive. It is a unique contribution to our knowledge of the Old Spanish epic and offers a highly original advance in its field. This book will, of course, primarily be of interest to Hispano-Medievalists, but given its enlightened and far-reaching views - based on very wide reading - it will also be of significant interest to all medievalists and folklorists, regardless-of specialty'-Samuel Armistead, Department of Spanish, University of California, Davis The Poetics of Speech in the Medieval Spanish Epic explores the composition of manuscript texts in thirteenth-century Spain. Of the vernacular epic poems originating with the minstrels of this era, only three full-length works remain: Cantar de Mio Cid, Poema de Fernßn Gonzßlez, and Mocedades de Rodrigo, all preserved and recorded by members of the clergy. By analysing expressive traits found in these three poems, Matthew Bailey links them to the cognitive processes that take place in the minds of speakers as narration unfolds. In Latin and other vernacular texts from the same period, authors identify their sources as oral, describe oral compositional techniques, and detail modes of processing texts in medieval monastic environments. Using the information provided by these details, as well as a close technical reading of the three epic poems, Bailey incorporates the methodologies and concepts of discourse analysis in an examination of expression in the Spanish epic and points convincingly to oral composition as the initial step in text creation for the period.

This volume brings together the knowledge of a number of distinguished scholars whose contributions to the field of Poema de mio Cid studies have been widely recognized. It provides an informed introduction to the poem and presents the most recent findings and interpretations.

The setting of this volume is the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, where Christianity and Islam co-existed side by side as the official religions of Muslim al-Andalus on the one hand, and the Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula on the other. Its purpose is to examine the meaning of the word 'Mozarab' and the history and nature of the people called by that name; it represents a synthesis of the author's many years of research and publication in this field. Richard Hitchcock first sets out to explain what being a non-Muslim meant in al-Andalus, both in the higher echelons of society and at a humbler level. The terms used by Arab chroniclers, when examined carefully, suggest a lesser preoccupation with purely religious values than hitherto appreciated. Mozarabism in León and Toledo, two notably distinct phenomena, are then considered at length, and there are two chapters exploring the issues that arose, firstly when Mozarabs were relocated in twelfth-century Aragón, and secondly, in sixteenth-century Toledo, when they were striving to retain their identity.