Originally published in 1994, Oral Tradition in Middle English is an edited collection providing a multidisciplinary look at the importance and nature of oral tradition in Middle English literature. The book offers a discussion of the gradual problemization of orality and literacy in works of verbal art from this period. It shows how early typographies proved too exclusive to explain the heterogeneity of relevant texts, bringing to bear the new and potentially productive concepts of "vocality" and developing literacy. This book establishes a new interpretive paradigm for Middle English poetry.

Originally published in 1970, John Lydgate sets out to restore a sense of perspective to the work of Lydgate, not by attributing a spurious modernity as a precursor of the Renaissance, but by accepting the fact that he is fundamentally medieval. The book analyses Lydgate's background in literary tradition and compares this with Chaucer's work. The book looks at Lydgate as a professional craftsman and examines how his work adapted to the demands and occasions of his age. Without over-valuing the poetry, this approach makes it possible to discriminate with increased objectivity between the more and less worthwhile and to distinguish the unexpectedly large number of poems in which craftsman-like competence rises to rhetorical artistry of a high order. In accepting Lydgate as the epitome of his age, the book also provides a diagram of the medieval poetic mind in its basic form and suggests the usefulness of Lydgate as a source book for the understanding of medieval literature.

Originally published in 1990, Memorization in the Transmission of the Middle English Romances tackles the long-standing issue of the role of memorization in the transmission of Middle English romances. The book addresses the lack of consensus on the issue, despite extensive discussion, putting forth the theory that the heterogeneity of the poems of this period, grouped under the general heading of 'medieval romance', makes generalizations about the history of transmissions unreliable. The book suggests that oral-formulaic theory has been applied over-literally to oral or oral derived works, through the assumption that all poems answer the same structural criteria. The book also looks at the aspects of orality and performance theory alongside the textuality and intertextuality of these medieval texts.

Originally published in 1977, Old English and Middle English Poetry provides a historical approach to English poetry. The book examines the conditions out of which poetry grew and argues that the functions that it was assigned are historically integral to an informed understanding of the nature of poetry. The book aims to relate poems to the intellectual and formal traditions by which they are shaped and given their being. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying or working in the fields of literature and history alike.

Originally published in 1969 Piers Plowman is a collection of 12 original essays by leading academics on Piers Plowman. As a combined volume, this collection forms a substantial introduction and a comprehensive account of the poem, its background and textual problems. The book's essays reflect the diversity, and vigour of criticism in the field of medieval literature and opens new perspectives in the study of one of its finest poems.

Originally published in 1967, The Poetry of John Lydgate presents a broad discussion of John Lydgate's secular poetry. It reassesses much of the poetry through critical examination and suggests that Lydgate was not necessarily the master that the medieval ages proclaimed him to be, nor the plain poet that he is often seen as in modern analysis. Instead, the book suggest that he was a competent poetic craftsman that presents substantial literary form in his poetry. The analysis in the book looks at Lydgate as atypical of the Middle Ages, instead exhibiting traits currently linked to the Renaissance. The book provides a unique perspective on John Lydgate as a poet and will be of interest to medievalist and literary historians alike.

Originally published in 1985. This impressive research tool offers four different indexes to cross-reference works on the sources of Chaucer. The user can look up sources by author, genre type or title, or look up the title of one of Chaucer's works to find which bibliographic entries they are mentioned within. This is a useful reference work on Chaucer source and analogue scholarship, including 1477 entries.

First published in 1991, Romantic Ecology reassesses the poetry of William Wordsworth in the context of the abiding pastoral tradition in English Literature. Jonathan Bate explores the politics of poetry and argues that contrary to critics who suggest that the Wordsworth was a reactionary who failed to represent the harsh economic reality of his native Lake District, the poet's politics were fundamentally 'green'. As our first truly ecological poet, Wordsworth articulated a powerful and enduring vision of human integration with nature which exercised a formative influence on later conservation movements and is of immediate relevance to great environmental issues today. Challenging the orthodoxies of new historicist criticism, Jonathan Bate sets a new agenda for the study of Romanticism in the 1990s.

Originally published in 1972, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric discusses themes and images in religious lyric poetry in Medieval English poetry. The book looks at the affect that tradition and convention had on the religious poetry of the medieval period. It examines the background of the lyrics, including the Latin tradition which was inherited by medieval vernacular and shows how religious lyric poetry presents, through a rich variety of images, the significant incidents in the scheme of Christ's redemption, such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Passion and the Resurrection. It also considers the lyrics which were designed to assist humanity in the task of living in a Christian life, as well as those which prepared them for death.

Originally published in 1967 The Pearl looks at the anonymous fourteenth century poet of Pearl. The book argues that the poem ranks in importance and interest with that of Chaucer and Langland, but suggests that it has always proved more difficult to approach to the modern reader. The aim of this book is to clear away some of the difficulty through a close examination of the material the poet had to draw on, and the poet's use of this in the organisation of the poem. The main themes are established through detailed analysis of the poem, which is seen as much more than either a lament for an individual or the mere figurative presentation of an idea.

First published in 1989, Piepho has translated the Latin works of Mantuan's eclogues, which play such a crucial role in the culture of Western Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Published in 1994: In The Perilous Cemetery adventure, Gawain is required to fight the devil himself. In repayment for having cured a young woman of madness, the devil keeps her entombed in a grave by day and requires her by night to fulfil his sexual desires.

Published in 1995: The present volume contains two comparatively lengthy Latin hexameter poems that emanated from this circle. One is by Richard Eedes; the other is anonymous, although for the purposes of this book the author provisionally accepted Tucker Brooke's attribution to George Peele.

Originally published in 1994, The Short Lyric Poems of Jean Froissart is a meticulous reading of the important but generally neglected short lyric poems of Jean Froissart. The book situates Froissart within the cultural and literary context of fourteenth-century Europe and examines a representative number of his lyric forms (pastourelles, chansons royales, ballades, virelais, and rondeaux) demonstrating their richness of theme and poetic virtuosity. The book provides a readable and reliable English translation, making it possible for English scholars unfamiliar with the original Middle French forms to understand and appreciate the influence Froissart had on Chaucer and other authors of the age. The book focuses on themes, techniques, meters, and rhythms that Froissart employed in his poetry, on how his poetry fits poetic tradition, and on the place of Froissart in literary history.

Originally published in 1991, Piers Plowman: An Approach to the C-Text studies what might be called the "mindscape" of Piers Plowman. The book argues that the C-text poem is inspired by the writings of the biblical prophets. The book outlines the fourteenth-century background and discusses the idea of prophecy and how the biblical prophets were read, as well as the role of literary models such as Wyclif and Joachim of Fiore. By examining the specific aspects of the poem, the book shows imaginative connections between the poem and the prophets, offering a unique perspective that Langland's prophetic stance is complementary to other approaches to the poem.

Originally translated and published in 1987, this volume contains a full text and translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's Eclogues, alongside textual and historical notes including an explanation of Boccaccio's life, his artistic achievement, and the sources and influences.

A vivid and original account of one of Ireland's greatest poets by an acclaimed Irish historian and literary biographer The most important Irish poet of the postwar era, Seamus Heaney rose to prominence as his native Northern Ireland descended into sectarian violence. A national figure at a time when nationality was deeply contested, Heaney also won international acclaim, culminating in the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. In On Seamus Heaney, leading Irish historian and literary critic R. F. Foster gives an incisive and eloquent account of the poet and his work against the background of a changing Ireland. Drawing on unpublished drafts and correspondence, Foster provides illuminating and personal interpretations of Heaney's work. Though a deeply charismatic figure, Heaney refused to don the mantle of public spokesperson, and Foster identifies a deliberate evasiveness and creative ambiguity in his poetry. In this, and in Heaney's evocation of a disappearing rural Ireland haunted by political violence, Foster finds parallels with the other towering figure of Irish poetry, W. B. Yeats. Foster also discusses Heaney's cosmopolitanism, his support for dissident poets abroad, and his increasing focus in his later work on death and spiritual transcendence. Above all, Foster examines how Heaney created an extraordinary connection with an exceptionally wide readership, giving him an authority and power unique among contemporary writers. Combining a vivid account of Heaney's life and a compelling reading of his entire oeuvre, On Seamus Heaney extends our understanding of the man as it enriches our appreciation of his poetry.

So that readers could more fully understand the extent of Williams' radical simplicity, all of his published poetry, excluding Paterson, was reissued in two definite volumes, of which this is the first.

In this introduction to the life and works of John Keats, originally published in 1981, William Walsh presents a comprehensive but approachable study which illuminates first the poems, indirectly the man, and more obliquely the period. Working within a biographical framework, the author looks at Keats from the point of view of the development of his art and sensibility, examining all the major poems and relating them to the letters; reference is made throughout the book to the best contemporary critical writing on the subject and a select bibliography is provided.

On October 7th, 1955, a little known poet called Allen Ginsberg premiered a new long poem in the Six Gallery in San Francisco. "Howl", penned in the shadow of the Cold War, would cause a sensation among the crowd that gathered that evening. It would not be long before the poem's impact spread far beyond the confines of the Bay Area literary scene to a national and international readership. Within a year, "Howl" would be published by famed independent publisher City Lights. In the decades that followed, the piece would become possibly the most influential poem in American culture, certainly the most widely read. Ginsberg's masterpiece is a cornerstone of the dynamic and radical literature produced by the so-called Beat Generation and its resonance is still felt today. In "Howl for Now", academics, commentators and practitioners reflect on the power of "Howl", half a century on from Ginsberg's historic first reading, through a series of essays and interviews. Poet David Meltzer reflects on the San Francisco scene in the mid-1950s, Ginsberg collaborator Steven Taylor offers a personal memoir, film director Ronald Nameth and rock composer Bill Nelson contemplate a documentary version of "Howl", and members of the University of Leeds, in the UK, consider the political, cultural and aesthetic place of the poem as both a social document and a point of contemporary inspiration.

Central to understanding the prophecy and prayer of the Hebrew Bible are the unspoken assumptions that shaped them-their genres. Modern scholars describe these works as "poetry," but there was no corresponding ancient Hebrew term or concept. Scholars also typically assume it began as "oral literature," a concept based more in evolutionist assumptions than evidence. Is biblical poetry a purely modern fiction, or is there a more fundamental reason why its definition escapes us? Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on its Own Terms changes the debate by showing how biblical poetry has worked as a mirror, reflecting each era's own self-image of verbal art. Yet Vayntrub also shows that this problem is rooted in a crucial pattern within the Bible itself: the texts we recognize as "poetry" are framed as powerful and ancient verbal performances, dramatic speeches from the past. The Bible's creators presented what we call poetry in terms of their own image of the ancient and the oral, and understanding their native theories of Hebrew verbal art gives us a new basis to rethink our own.

First published in 1971.
This collection of essays discusses some of the central works and areas of literature in the Renaissance period of cultural history.
Contents include: Spenser and the Allegorists; The Faerie Queene, I and V; The Cave of Mammon; The Banquet of Sense; John Donne; The Patience of Shakespeare; Survival fo the Classic; Shakespeare's Learning; The Mature Comedies; The Final Plays.

This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women's writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism 'interfeminism' - coined to partner Kristin Bluemel's 'intermodernism' - locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two 'waves' of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this 'out-of-category' writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism. The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman's Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history. List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.

This book explores Wordsworth's extraordinary influence on the tourist landscapes of the Lake District throughout the age of railways, motorcars and the First World War. It reveals how Wordsworth's response to railways was not a straightforward matter of opposition and protest; his ideas were taken up by both advocates and opponents of railways, and through their controversies had a surprising impact on the earliest motorists as they sought a language to describe the liberty and independence of their new mode of transport. Once the age of motoring was underway, the outbreak of the First World War encouraged British people to connect Wordsworth's patriotic passion with his wish to protect the Lake District as a national heritage - a transition that would have momentous effects in the interwar period, when popular motoring paradoxically brought a vogue for open-air activities and a renewal of romantic pedestrianism. With the arrival of global tourism, preservation of the cultural landscape of the Lake District became an urgent national and international concern. This book explores how patterns of tourist behaviour and environmental awareness changed in the century of popular tourism, examining how Wordsworth's vision and language shaped modern ideas of travel, self-reliance, landscape and environment, cultural heritage, preservation and accessibility.