The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed. Anthony Bale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, xvii, 281 pp.

No other event in the entire Middle Ages has stirred as much excitement, interest, intrigue, fear, frustration, and religious enthusiasm as the crusades (1096–1291). Medievalists do not need to be reminded of that fact since medieval literature, the arts, music, religion, and countless chronicle accounts are filled with references and allusions to these religious-military endeavors to regain the Holy Land from Muslim control. But this volume, well edited by Anthony Bale, obviously appeals mostly to student and general readers and alerts them to the enormous impact which the crusades really had on medieval imagination and the subsequent world of writing. Other volumes might also consider medieval architecture or music in light of the crusades, but again, there is already much work published in that respect.