Up-to-date Coverage of the scope and extent of the important tradition of Arthurian material in Iberian languages and of the modern scholarship on it. (= Wide-ranging bibliographical coverage and guide to both texts and research on them.) Written by Specialists in the different Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Spanish and its dialects). (= Expert analysis of different traditions by leading scholars from Spain and the UK.) Wide-ranging Study not only of medieval and Renaissance literary texts, but also of modern Arthurian fiction, of the global spread of Arthurian legends in the Spanish and Portuguese worlds, and of the social impact of the legends through adoption of names of Arthurian characters and imitation of practices narrated in the legends. (=A comprehensive guide to both literary and social impact of Arthurian material in major world languages.)

A meditation on holiness and beauty through the study of Saint Mary of Egypt. Saint Mary of Egypt has fascinated theologians, poets, and artists since the seventh century. Her story is richly evocative, encompassing sin and sanctity, concupiscence and asceticism, youth and old age. In Promiscuous Grace, Sonia Velázquez thinks with Saint Mary of Egypt about the relationship between beauty and holiness. Drawing on an archive spanning Spanish medieval poetry, Baroque paintings, seventeenth-century hagiography, and Balzac’s Le chef-d’œuvre inconnu, Velázquez argues for the importance of the senses on the surface of religious texts on her way to revealing why the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt still matters today.

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.