Marie-Françoise Alamichel, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2020, 216 pp.

The basic question posed by this focused study is how accurate is the epithet ‘epic’ when applied to the literature of medieval England. A collateral question that must be asked, although more difficult of response, is how authors of the period might have understood the notions of genre, valued its potential, and sought to realize its conventions in their works. No vernacular statement of theory ‒ how an epic project might be conceived ‒ is extant, although the