Refashioning "knights and Ladies Gentle Deeds"

Book excerpt: While not neglecting the question of direct borrowings, author Paul Rovang applies a theory of intertextuality to probe how the poet responded to the chivalric romance themes, conventions, materials, and structures which he encountered in the Morte Darthur. Both works are treated not as monoliths, but as links in a network of texts and other cultural phenomena relating to chivalry. In this way, a fuller sense is given not only of how vitally connected the two works are, but of how Spenser "refashioned" the transmitted ideals and symbols of Arthurian knighthood for his own age.