Important and wide-ranging studies of the ideological exploitations performed by and upon the medieval romance.As one of the most important, influential and capacious genres of the middle ages, the romance was exploited for a variety of social and cultural reasons: to celebrate and justify war and conflict, chivalric ideologies, and national, local and regional identities; to rationalize contemporary power structures, and identify the present with the legendary past; to align individual desires and aspirations with social virtues. But the romance in turn exploitedavailable figures of value, appropriating the tropes and strategies of religious and historical writing, and cannibalizing and recreating its own materials for heightened ideological effect. The essays in this volume consider individual romances, groups of writings and the genre more widely, elucidating a variety of exploitative manoeuvres in terms of text, context, and intertext. Contributors: Neil Cartlidge, Ivana Djordjevic, Judith Weiss, Melissa Furrow, Rosalind Field, Diane Vincent, Corinne Saunders, Arlyn Diamond, Anna Caughey, Laura Ashe

Introduction - Laura AsheThe Fairies in the Fountain: Promiscuous Liaisons - Neil CartlidgeSaracens and other Saxons: Using, Misusing and Confusing Names in Gui de Warewic and Guy of Warwick - Ivana DjordjevicThe Exploitation of Ideas of Pilgrimage and Sainthood in Gui de Warewic - Judith WeissChanson de Geste as Romance in England - Melissa FurrowPatterns of Availability and Demand in Middle English Translations de romanz - Rosalind FieldReading a Christian-Saracen Debate in Fifteenth-Century Middle English Charlemagne Romance: The Case of Turpines Story - Diane VincentSubtle Crafts: Magic and Exploitation in Medieval English Romance - Corinne SaundersMeeting Grounds: Gardens in Middle English Romance - Arlyn Diamond'Als for the worthynes of þe romance': Exploitation of Genre in the Buik of Kyng Alexander the Conquerour - Anna CaugheySir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Limits of Chivalry - Laura Ashe