Philip E. Bennett

The Editor and the Text

Part 1 History and context: terror, the modern state and the dramatic imagination, Daniel Gerould terrorism as social drama and dramatic form, John Orr the inverted world of spectacle - social and political responses to terrorism, Aida Hozic aspects of terrorism in the work of Piscator, Michael Patterson individual and collectivist models of terror in German expressionism, Lado Dralj. Part 2 Contemporary drama: state terror and dramatic counter-measures, Mary Karen Dahl utopianism and terror in contemporary drama - the plays of Dusan Jovanovic, Dragan Klaic politics and terror in the plays of Howard Brenton, Richard Boon images of terrorism in contemporary British drama, David Ian Rabey the bomb in the baby carriage - women and terrorism in contemporary drama, Suzanne Greenhalgh.

Havelok and Rainoart

O deal with just these two heroes out of all possible combinations of heroes of their type in folktale seems perhaps arbitrary. However, among all those who share their fate as unpromising heroes who regain their own, Havelok and Rainoart stand out by their similarities, of character and situation, rather than by notable divergencies in their tales. Moreover, the localised nature of the Havelok stories and the obvious interference in them at

Some Reflexions on the Style of Robert Biket’s Lai du Cor

One of the problems that has taxed investigators into this short narrative poem most consistently since it was first edited in the nineteenth Century is that of its meter. Although, äs the title implies, this study will cover slightly more ground than mere metrics, it is on the six syllable line and Robert Bikets use of it that we shall concentrate. It is inevitable that questions of dating should be involved in any such research, but on this occasion they will be only an ancillary concern. What shall occupy us most in this investigation is the relationship between the Lai du Cor and various other productions of the twelfth Century which use the hexasyllable äs an element of composition. Not surprisingly the initial interest aroused by Bildets use of this apparently unrewarding medium was strictly archaeological. Students of the poem hoped to show that the use of the meter was particularly archaic and inferred from its mere presence that the lai must have been composed before the romans antiques, followed by Chretien de Troyes and Marie de France established the octosyllable äs the traditional narrative meter of French poetry. While forced to admit that it would take a brave man to use a meter other than that of the twelfth Century masters in writing Arthurian verse narrative, I do not find the argument of itself convincing, particularly in the face of counter arguments. The most telling of these is the presence of a number of broken couplets which indicate a probable date of composition later than Chretiens Erec. It is also interesting to note the evident lack of popularity of the Lai du Cor