[Extollager]

Incidentally, what do readers think of these matters? --

1.Carole Silver's observation that Walter is a merchant's son -- not a prince or knight, on the one hand, nor, on the other, a peasant boy who wins the princess as in so many fairy tales

2.Charlotte Oberg's idea that a key theme is liberation from tyranny -- for Walter, for the Maid -- and the establishment of a millenarian kingdom

3.Silver's observation that Walter is the only character with a Christian name

I appreciated Silver's connecting the Lady in Morris's romance with Acrasia in Spenser's Faerie Queene -- a wonderful work that some regard as the last great medieval work, others as something like the first great modern work set in an imaginary medieval period -- but I don't know if others here have read the latter work. I only got into it when I was in my forties or so! It's become one of the great "discoveries" of my own middle ages!