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Short narrative poems, religious and secular lyrics, and moral, political, and comic verses are all included in this comprehensive collection of works from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, from the heart-rending lament of a lone castaway to the embodied speech of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, from the anxiety of Eve, who carries "a sumptuous secret in her hands / And a tempting truth hidden in her heart," to the trust of Noah who builds "a sea-floater, a wave-walking / Ocean-home with rooms for all creatures," the world of the Anglo-Saxon poets is a place of harshness, beauty, and wonder. Now for the first time, the entire Old English poetic corpus—including poems and fragments discovered only within the past fifty years—is rendered into modern strong-stress, alliterative verse in a masterful translation by Craig Williamson. Accompanied by an introduction by noted medievalist Tom Shippey on the literary scope and vision of these timeless poems and Williamson's own introductions to the individual works and his essay on translating Old English poetry, the texts transport us back to the medieval scriptorium or ancient mead-hall, to share a herdsman's recounting of the story of the world's creation or a people's sorrow at the death of a beloved king, to be present at the clash of battle or to puzzle over the sacred and profane answers to riddles posed over a thousand years ago. This is poetry as stunning in its vitality as it is true to its sources. Were Williamson's idiom not so modern, we might think that the Anglo-Saxon poets had taken up the lyre again and begun to sing once more.
This critical book studies in depth the transition from the 'medieval' to the 'Renaissance' periods in English literature.
A revisionary account of the 900-year-long history of a major poetic tradition, explored through metrics and literary history.
This volume brings together a selection of lectures and essays in which J.A. Burrow discusses the work of English poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and Hoccleve, as well as the anonymous authors of Pearl, Saint Erkenwald, and a pair of metrical romances. Six of the pieces address general issues, with some reference to French and Italian writings ('Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages', for example, or 'The Poet and the Book'); but most of them concentrate on particular English poems, such as Chaucer's Envoy to Scogan, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Langland's Piers Plowman, and Hoccleve's Series. Although some of the essays take account of the poet's life and times ('Chaucer as Petitioner', 'Hoccleve and the 'Court''), most are mainly concerned with the meaning and structure of the poems. What, for example, does the hero of Ipomadon hope to achieve by fighting, as he always does, incognito? Why do the stories in Piers Plowman all peter out so inconclusively? And how can it be that the narrator in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess so persistently fails to understand what he is told?
The essays in this volume consider a range of poetic texts written in England between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, with the exception of works by Chaucer, and represent some of the exciting new developments in medieval studies over the last twenty years. The collection explores and interrogates the established canon of Middle English poetry and includes several studies of two major poems, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Piers Plowman, and essays on some less well-known works, including Havelok the Dane, The Owl and the Nightingale and The Flower and the Leaf. In a field that has been dominated by historical scholarship and conservative new criticism, Medieval English Poetry brings together some of the most controversial work currently being done in Middle English studies; this collection reveals the strength and depth of this research in feminist, Marxist, historicist, reader-response and deconstructionist method. It includes contributions from David Aers, Sheila Delany, Anne Middleton, and Lee Patterson. Stephanie Trigg's illuminating introduction examines some of the patterns that have emerged in the criticism of medieval literature this century, and pays particular attention to our constructions and definitions of the 'medieval'. The range of material covered, together with the detailed headnotes to each of the thirteen essays and the guide to further reading, make this book essential reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of Medieval English Literature.
A wide-ranging survey of the most important medieval authors and genres, designed for students of English.
Originally published in 1952 The Lost Literature of Medieval England provides an account of lost masterpieces of medieval English literature. The book examines the evidence for their existence and pieces together a fuller understanding of the literary traditions of the period. In more specific detail, the book looks at the concept of Christian epics and religious and didactic literature, as well as the drama and the lyrical poetry of the period.
This 1976 book is a study of the medieval English dream-poem set against classical and medieval visionary and religious writings.
Informed by multicultural, multidisciplinary perspectives, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature offers a new exploration of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland, from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century. Beginning with an account of writing itself, as well as of scripts and manuscript art, subsequent chapters examine the earliest texts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the tremendous breadth of Anglo-Latin literature. Chapters on English learning and literature in the ninth century and the later formation of English poetry and prose also convey the profound cultural confidence of the period. Providing a discussion of essential texts, including Beowulf and the writings of Bede, this History captures the sheer inventiveness and vitality of early medieval literary culture through topics as diverse as the literature of English law, liturgical and devotional writing, the workings of science and the history of women's writing.