(view table of contents)

Product Description: A new and completely revised edition of this authoritative work, intended to encourage personal appreciation and independent appraisal by students of English. This is a stimulating introduction to the poetry composed in an age that witnessed fundamental cultural developments: the emergence of the English from among the warring tribes of Europe, their conversion to Christianity, the development of feudalism and the chivalric myth, the military adventure of the Crusades, and the growth of a vigorous citizen class in the burgeoning towns of England...read more

(view table of contents)

This detailed study argues that theology and poetry enjoyed a mutually beneficial and productive relationship during the 14th century and that both poets and theologians, in this time of humanism, asserted the sanctity of the human body. Rhodes examines examples of poets writing about theology, such as Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale , and of theologians transmitting their ideas in verse, notably Robert Grossetest in his The Castle of Love . He also considers the ways in which Langland expanded on Grosseteste's ideas and discusses the theological position of the Pearl -poet. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This first modern treatment of the Chaucerian Apocrypha--the 51 spurious works included in the folio editions printed between 1532 and 1721--addresses the nature of canon formation and why the apocrypha became a Chaucerian canon of its own, while making a larger argument about how Chaucer is constructed, or invented, by his readers...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Ten essays from the September 1998 conference The Waning of the Middle Ages? A Reappraisal of Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, held in Dublin seek cultural, political, and aesthetic significance in a body of work generally considered exceptionally dull...read more

Modern ways of presenting Chaucer have often made his work seem "normal," so that The Canterbury Tales and its much-studied General Prologue are seen as archetypes of narrative and prologue. The author of this book argues that study of Chaucer's major work alongside contemporary English poems reveals the odd and extreme aspects of Chaucer's writing as well as the daring and experimental qualities in his work. The focus of the book is on strategies of narrative and discourse, but it includes discussion of famous middle English poems--Confessio Amantis, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, --and some less familiar romances, such as Gamelyn and Emaré, as well as the idea of the tale-collection. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Drawing on manuscript sources, this book examines how the medieval clergy developed the authority and persuasive force to attempt to govern the day-to-day speech of Western Christians. It explores, for the first time, how Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the "Patience" poet presented and judged these attempts to label some political, social and private speech as deviant and destructive--as lying, slander, blasphemy and other Sins of the Tongue...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. 1st Edition. x, 256 p. Very good clean tight sound square, no bookplate, inscriptions or marks of any kind. In pictorial paperback with one light crease to spine, marvellous Jonah and the Whale illustration from 13th century bible to upper...read more

Product Description: This volume brings together a series of key essays by Larry D Benson, well-known for his work in editing the Riverside Chaucer. Of the studies selected, the opening three deal with Old English, recasting the possibilities for the critical study of Beowulf, above all the relation between oral and written literary production...read more

Product Description: Signes and Sothe examines the literary and historical tradition of poetry inspired by Piers Plowman. It explores the relationships of Richard the Redeless, The Crowned King, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede and Mum and the Sothsegger to each other, and to Piers...read more

Product Description: Book by Prior, Sandra Pierson

Product Description: Explores the influence of oral tradition on Middle English poetry from Layamon's 12th-century Brut to Chaucer. Approaching from a number of theoretical perspectives, the 11 essays challenge some fundamental assumptions about the context, composition, and reception of English literature at what (i...read more

Product Description: To define the scope of this book is in one sense straightforward: the essays printed here offer critical readings of a range of poetry written in English between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, with the exception of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer...read more