With The Legends of the Saints in Old Norse–Icelandic Prose, Kirsten Wolf has undertaken a complete revision of the fifty-year-old handlistThe Lives of the Saints in Old Norse Prose.

"A study of the representations of St. Michael in the liturgy, literature, and iconography of the period"--Provided by publisher.

The legend of Saint Barbara is preserved in two 15th-century manuscripts which are presented here on facing pages followed by an English translation. In addition, Wolf presents the Latin source text Passio Sancte Barbare . The texts are preceded by a lengthy and heavily annotated discussion of the legend's manuscripts, sources and content which also places the legend within the literary and historical context of Scandinavia and Iceland.

Annotated bibliography covering two centuries of scholarly criticism on the extensive corpus of medieval saints' legends. with the assistance of Margaret RogersonSaints' legends are being increasingly recognised as one of the most important genres of the middle ages, and attract much critical attention. This volume surveys the scholarly literatureof the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the extensive Middle English corpus. It also provides a conspectus of the genre's history in the Middle English period, and its place in the development of the modern discipline of Middle English, while both the introduction and the annotations give attention to the problematic boundaries between genres and to the issues involved in separating out texts from their manuscript contexts. General studies of the corpus as a whole are covered, as well as discussions and editions of individual legends, of the various extended cycles of legends, and of sermon collections that include hagiographic legends and exempla; the volume has been structured so as to provide an overview of the research on major works [for example the South English Legendary and St Erkenwald], and authors such as Osbern Bokenham, John Capgrave, William Caxton and John Mirk. It includesan Index of Scholars and Critics keyed to the Bibliography, an Index of Middle English Texts that covers all works, of whatever genre, mentioned in the annotations, and an Index of Manuscripts that gathers the references to the over 170 manuscripts cited.

"The Legend of St Brendan" is a study of two accounts of a voyage undertaken by Brendan, a sixth-century Irish saint. The immense popularity of the Latin version encouraged many vernacular translations, including a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman reworking of the narrative which excises much of the devotional material seen in the ninth-century "Navigatio Sancti Brendani abbatis" and changes the emphasis, leaving a recognisably secular narrative. The vernacular version focuses on marvellous imagery and the trials and tribulations of a long sea-voyage. Together the two versions demonstrate a movement away from hagiography towards adventure. Studies of the two versions rarely discuss the elements of the fantastic. Following a summary of authorship, audiences and sources, this comparative study adopts a structural approach to the two versions of the Brendan narrative. It considers what the fantastic imagery achieves and addresses issues raised with respect to theological parallels.