| Abstract | Paper -a:
In the Middle English hagiographical poem, St Erkenwald, heaven is represented indirectly through the treatment of the embodied material community of London. London's sense of civic identity relied heavily on a construction of the earthly, turbulent community as synecdochically related to the eternal, timeless community of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The image of the city allows the poet to define the salvation histories of both the individual soul and the created world as parallel structures. Redemption becomes available to the world and to individuals only through a shared idea of history governed by, and mapped onto, the timeless city.
Paper -b:
One of the interpretive keys often adopted in the criticism of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is ambiguity. Much has been written, for instance, about the curious blend of nature and culture in the figure of the Green Knight or the meaning of the axe and the holly bob taken together. This paper draws on studies emphasizing the importance of ambiguity in the romance, but focuses on an aspect of the text rarely mention in this context - fairies and their realm - investigating the possibility that the bulk of the poem's action takes place in the fairy otherworld. The argument aims to show that the narrative uncertainty about the real nature of Sir Bertilak and Castle Hautdesert serves not only as a vehicle of irony but also as an expression of a particular epistemology, raising the issue of man's fallibility, a common theme in the poems of the London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x.
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