Ennius' Annales, which is preserved only in fragments, was hugely influential on Roman literature and culture. This book explores the genesis, in the ancient sources for Ennius' epic and in modern scholarship, of the accounts of the Annales with which we operate today. A series of appendices detail each source's contribution to our record of the poem, and are used to consider how the interests and working methods of the principal sources shape the modern view of the poem and to re-examine the limits imposed and the possibilities offered by this ancient evidence. Dr Elliott challenges standard views of the poem, such as its use of time and the disposition of the gods within it. She argues that the manifest impact of the Annales on the collective Roman psyche results from its innovative promotion of a vision of Rome as the primary focus of the cosmos in all its aspects.

The medieval period offers a rich variety of literature and was crucial to the development of English Literature and particularly to the development of key literary genres. However, differences between Medieval and Modern language can make this a challenging area to approach. In this handy guide, Corinne Saunders focuses on English and Continental literature, offering: An overview of the literature within the broader social, political and cultural history of the period the development of literary genres that remain recognisable and influential today – lyric, romance, drama the nature of manuscript culture, the limits on literacy in the medieval period, the importance of literary sources, and the very different attitudes of medieval writers to ideas of originality consideration of Medieval English Literature within a wider international context of cultural exchange Introductions to the most widely read authors of the time - the Gawain-poet, Langland, Chaucer, Gower and Malory – alongside some less familiar writers and genres An epilogue will briefly trace the afterlives of medieval literature, and its role in shaping the English literary canon, particularly from the Romantic period onwards. This volume will be enlightening reading for anyone approaching study of Medieval literature, or interested in the development and origins of the literature we read today.

Product Description: What shall we make of medieval English lyrics? They have no fixed line or meter, no consistent point of view, and their content may seem misaligned with the other texts in manuscripts in which they are found. Yet in Lyric Tactics, Ingrid Nelson argues that the lyric poetry of later medieval England is a distinct genre defined not by its poetic features—rhyme, meter, and stanza forms—but by its modes of writing and performance, which are ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational...read more

Product Description: In Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance, Walter Wadiak traces the evolution of the medieval English romance from its thirteenth-century origins to 1500, and from a genre that affirmed aristocratic identity to one that appealed more broadly to an array of late medieval communities...read more

Product Description: In this book, Steele Nowlin examines the process of poetic invention as it is conceptualized and expressed in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) and John Gower (ca. 1330–1408). Specifically, it examines how these two poets present invention as an affective force, a process characterized by emergence and potentiality, and one that has a corollary in affect—that is, a kind of force or sensation distinct from emotion, characterized as an “intensity” that precedes what is only later cognitively understood and expressed as feeling or emotion, and that is typically described in a critical vocabulary of movement, emergence, and becoming...read more

Product Description: This volume brings together essays by leading authorities on the production, reception, and editing of medieval English manuscripts in honour of Ralph Hanna, on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford...read more