Brian Stone Livres

‘Be prepared to perform what you promised, Gawain; Seek faithfully till you find me …’ A New Year’s feast at King Arthur’s court is interrupted by the appearance of a gigantic Green Knight, resplendent on horseback. He challenges any one of Arthur’s men to behead him, provided that if he survives he can return the blow a year later. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge and decapitates the knight – but the mysterious warrior cheats death and vanishes, bearing his head with him. The following winter Gawain sets out to find the Knight in the wild Northern lands and to keep his side of the bargain. One of the great masterpieces of Middle English poetry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight magically combines elements of fairy tale and heroic sagas with the pageantry, chivalry and courtly love of medieval Romance. Brian Stone’s evocative translation is accompanied by an introduction that examines the Romance genre, and the poem’s epic and pagan sources. This edition also includes essays discussing the central characters and themes, theories about authorship and Arthurian legends, and suggestions for further reading and notes.

The Middle English poems in this book exemplify three major genres in medieval religious writing: saint's legend, Bible epic and religious debate. St Erkenwald, perhaps the best saint's legend in English poetry, tells how a bishop of London raised a pagan judge from the dead and sent his soul to heaven. In Cleanness (often known as Purity) such events as the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Belshazzar's feast are recounted with the descriptive eloquence of the poet who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Owl and the Nightingale is a charming, if occasionally virulent, contest between two birds who debate, owl-wise and nightingale-wise, the traditional morals of the church and the ideals of courtly love.

Focusing on the elimination of chatter, this book offers valuable strategies to enhance product quality, surface finish, and tool longevity across various machining processes such as turning, drilling, milling, and grinding. It provides practical insights that can lead to significant improvements in manufacturing efficiency and output.

The book is for city dwellers, urban planners, and students interested in how climate change is unfolding in cities. It is the first book to explore the range and extent of adaptive transformations required to manage growing climate-related shocks that are only beginning to play out in large cities worldwide.