New Medieval Literatures is the first issue of a new annual of work on literature and culture in medieval Europe. As well as featuring exciting new essays that interpret medieval texts for a postmodern age, every volume will include a survey by a leading medievalist of recent work in an emerging field of study. The essays in NML 1 question the concept of the medieval text itself. The volume as a whole demonstrates the central contribution of medievalists to the "production of the present."