Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-355) and index.

The Word Aventure and the Adventure of Words -- Aventure -- Lai -- History, Philology, and the Quest for Origins -- The Obligation to Speak -- The Will to Remember "Guigemar" -- If Words Could Kill: The Lais and Fatal Speech -- Marie mal mariee -- "Lanval" and "Laustic" -- "Equitan" and "Le Fresne" -- "Bisclavret" -- The Voice in the Tomb of the Lais -- "Eliduc" -- "Les Deus Amanz" and "Chaitivel" "Milun" and "Chevrefoil" -- "Yonec" Beastly Talk: The Fables -- The Fables and the Lais -- Speech Acts in the Fables -- An Ethics of Language -- Changing Places: The Fables and Social Mobility at the Court of Henry II -- Scholasticism and the Fables -- Abelardian -- Ethics -- Appetite and Envy 0-- Logic and the Body -- Changing Habitat -- Social Mobility -- Marie's Fables and the Rise of the Monarchic State -- Right Reason and the Moral -- Town and Court and Royal Peace -- Measure, Timing, and Alertness -- Marie's Social Contract -- A Medieval "Best Seller" -- Chivalric Adventure -- Doors In and Out of the Otherworld -- In and Out of Another Tongue -- Making the Dead Speak -- Between Fable and Romance -- Making the Dead See -- Testimony and Transcription -- Genesis of the Tale -- Remembering What the Dead Have Said and Seen -- The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the Colonization of the Afterlife -- Patrick the Administrator -- The Norman and Irish Peace Movement -- Ecclesiastical Reform and the Cistercian Presence -- The Civil Governance of Captured Land -- The Invention of Purgatory and the Bureaucratization of the Afterlife -- Purgatory and the Law.

Description based on print version record.