While love is private, and in medieval literature especially is seen as demanding secrecy, to tell stories about it is to make it public. Looking, often accompanied by listening, is the means by which love is brought into the public realm and by which legal evidence of adulterous love can be obtained. Medieval romances contain many scenes in which secret watchers and listeners play leading roles, and in which the problematic relation of sight to truth is a central theme. The effect of such scenes is to place the poem's audience as secret watchers and listeners; and in later medieval narratives, as the role of the storyteller comes to be realized, the poet too sees himself in the undignified role of a voyeur. A. C. Spearing's book explores these and related themes, first in relation to medieval and modern theories and instances of looking, and then through a series of readings of romances and first-person narratives, including works by Beroul, Gottfried von Strassburg, Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Chaucer, Lydgate, Douglas, Dunbar, and Skelton. Its focus on looking also leads to the recovery of some less well-known works such as Partonope of Blois and The Squire of Low Degree. The general approach is psychoanalytic, but the reading of specific medieval texts always has primacy, and this in turn makes possible a running critique of current conceptions of the gaze in relation to power and gender.

Two crucial genres of medieval literature are studied in this outstanding collection. The essays in this volume honour the distinguished career of Professor Elizabeth Archibald. They explore two areas that her scholarship has done so much to illuminate: medieval romance, and Arthurian literature. Several chapters examine individual romances, including Emare, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Roman de Silence. Others focus on wider concerns in romances and related works in Middle English, Latin, French, German and Icelandic, from a variety of perspectives. Later chapters consider Arthurian material, with a particular emphasis on hitherto unexamined aspects of Malory's Morte Darthur. It thus, fittingly, reflects the range of linguistic and literary expertise that Professor Archibald has brought to these fields.

Survey of and guide to all the major authors and genres in Middle English prose. The essays in this volume provide an up-to-date and authoritative guide to the major prose Middle English authors and genres. Each chapter is written by a leading authority on the subject and offers a succinct account of all relevant literary, history and cultural factors that need to considered, together with bibliographical references. Authors examined include the writers of the Ancrene Wisse, the Katherine Group and the Wohunge Group; Richard Rolle; Walter Hilton; Nicholas Love; Julian of Norwich; Margery Kempe; "Sir John Mandeville"; John Trevisa, Reginald Pecock; and John Fortescue. Genres discussed include romances, saints' lives, letters, sermon literature, historicalprose, anonymous devotional writings, Wycliffite prose, and various forms of technical writing. The final chapter examines the treatment of Middle English prose in the first age of print. Contributors: BELLA MILLETT, RALPH HANNA III, AD PUTTER, KANTIK GHOSH, BARRY A. WINDEATT, A.C. SPEARING, IAN HIGGINS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, VINCENT GILLESPIE, HELEN L. SPENCER, ALFRED HIATT, FIONA SOMERSET, HELEN COOPER, GEORGE KEISER, OLIVER S. PICKERING, JAMES SIMPSON, RICHARD BEADLE, ALEXANDRA GILLESPIE.

While love is private, and in medieval literature especially is seen as demanding secrecy, to tell stories about it is to make it public. Looking, often accompanied by listening, is the means by which love is brought into the public realm and by which legal evidence of adulterous love can be obtained. Medieval romances contain many scenes in which secret watchers and listeners play leading roles, and in which the problematic relation of sight to truth is a central theme. The effect of such scenes is to place the poem's audience as secret watchers and listeners; and in later medieval narratives, as the role of the storyteller comes to be realized, the poet too sees himself in the undignified role of a voyeur. A. C. Spearing's book explores these and related themes, first in relation to medieval and modern theories and instances of looking, and then through a series of readings of romances and first-person narratives, including works by Beroul, Gottfried von Strassburg, Chr?tien de Troyes, Marie de France, Chaucer, Lydgate, Douglas, Dunbar, and Skelton. Its focus on looking also leads to the recovery of some less well-known works such as Partonope of Blois and The Squire of Low Degree. The general approach is psychoanalytic, but the reading of specific medieval texts always has primacy, and this in turn makes possible a running critique of current conceptions of the gaze in relation to power and gender.

`Provides an excellent one-volume guide to the works of the anonymous Gawain-poet.' CHOICE The essays collected here on the Gawain-Poet offer stimulating introductions to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience, providing both information and original analysis. Topics includetheories of authorship; the historical and social background to the poems, with individual sections on particularly important features within them; gender roles in the poems; the manuscript itself; the metre, vocabulary and dialect of the poems; and their sources. A section devoted to Sir Gawain investigates the ideas of courtesy and chivalry found within it, and explores some of its later adaptations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Afull bibliography completes the volume. The late DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge; JONATHAN GIBSON has worked as a lecturer in the Universities of Exeter and Durham.

Readings in Medieval Poetry is a linked collection of essays on such poems as the Song of Roland, King Horn, Havelok, Sir Orfeo, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, House of Fame and Troilus and Criseyde, the alliterative Morte Arthure, The Siege of Jerusalem, Purity, Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers Plowman. The connecting purpose is to open up a variety of kinds of medieval poetry to modern readers; and, while the methods used vary with the kinds of poetry being discussed, they frequently involve, along with historical treatments in terms of medieval practices and systems of ideas, the adoption and adaptation of theoretical frameworks borrowed from outside the medieval field.

This is a critical book to study in depth the transition from the 'medieval' to the 'Renaissance' periods in English literature. What exactly, in a literary context, do those terms designate? Mr Spearing argues that, far from being fixed determinants, they demand careful critical reappraisal. He rewrites the literary history of the period from Chaucer to the early Spenser in a way that puts emphasis on the importance of Chaucer's influence on a tradition which in many important respects began with him. Many literary and cultural qualities, normally considered 'Renaissance', can be seen to have their origins, so far as the English tradition is concerned, in Chaucer's contacts with Italian culture. This book shows how Chaucer can be regarded as a Renaissance poet whose work was medievalised by his admiring successors. Traditions other than the Chaucerian are examined in this light, and the author engages with the larger problems of literary history through the detailed analysis of specimen texts.

A 1976 study of the medieval English dream-poem, set against the background of classical and medieval visionary and religious writings and the theory of dreams from classical times down to Freud and Jung. In this first general treatment of one of the most popular kinds of literature in the Middle Ages, Mr Spearing examines many specific poems in some detail and explores the nature of the visionary tradition in which medieval dream-poets felt themselves to be writing: he develops a theory of the dream-poem as a type of work in which medieval poets focused their own consciousness of the activity of creating imaginative fictions, variously and often ambiguously balanced between vision and fantasy. The book begins with the early tradition of dream poetry in Latin writers such as Boethius, moving on to consider Chaucer, alliterative dream-poems, especially Pearl and Piers Plowman, and finally turning to late medieval dream-poetry.

A study of the four great Middle English poems, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience and Purity, which are in the same manuscript and are usually attributed to the same anonymous poet. After a general chapter devoted to the poet and his background, Mr Spearing turns to the poems, analysing each closely, paying particular attention to details of style, tone and approach, and commenting on what they have in common and the ways in which they diverge.

Essays on the many key aspects of medieval literature, reflecting the significant impact of Professor Derek Brewer. Derek Brewer (1923-2008) was one of the most influential medievalists of the twentieth century, first through his own publications and teaching, and later as the founder of his own academic publishing firm. His working life of some sixty years, from the late 1940s to the 2000s, saw enormous advances in the study of Chaucer and of Arthurian romance, and of medieval literature more generally. He was in the forefront of such changes, and his understandings ofChaucer and of Malory remain at the core of the modern critical mainstream. Essays in this collection take their starting point from his ideas and interests, before offering their own fresh thinking in those key areas of medieval studies in which he pioneered innovations which remain central: Chaucer's knight and knightly virtues; class-distinction; narrators and narrative time; lovers and loving in medieval romance; ideals of feminine beauty; love,friendship and masculinities; medieval laughter; symbolic stories, the nature of romance, and the ends of storytelling; the wholeness of Malory's Morte Darthur; modern study of the medieval material book; Chaucer's poetic language and modern dictionaries; and Chaucerian afterlives. This collection builds towards an intellectual profile of a modern medievalist, cumulatively registering how the potential of Derek Brewer's work is being reinterpreted and is renewing itself now and into the future of medieval studies. Charlotte Brewer is Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford; Barry Windeatt is Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Contributors: Elizabeth Archibald, Charlotte Brewer, Mary Carruthers, Christopher Cannon, Helen Cooper, A.S.G. Edwards, Jill Mann, Alastair Minnis, Derek Pearsall, Corinne Saunders, James Simpson, A.C. Spearing, Jacqueline Tasioulas, Robert Yeager, Barry Windeatt.

Essays suggesting new ways of studying the crucial but sometimes difficult range of medieval mystical material. This volume seeks to explore the origins, context and content of the anchoritic and mystical texts produced in England during the Middle Ages and to examine the ways in which these texts may be studied and taught today. It foregrounds issues of context and interaction, seeking both to position medieval spiritual writings against a surprisingly wide range of contemporary contexts and to face the challenge of making these texts accessible to a wider readership. The contributions, by leading scholars in the field, incorporate historical, literary and theological perspectives and offer critical approaches and background material which will inform both research and teaching. The approaches to Middle English anchoritic and mystical texts suggested in this volume are many and varied. In this they reflect the richness and complexity of the contexts from which these writings emerged. These essays are offered aspart of an ongoing exploration of aspects of medieval spirituality which, while posing a considerable challenge to modern readers, also offer invaluable insights into the interaction between medieval culture and belief. Contributors: E.A. Jones, Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden, Santha Bhattachariji, Denis Renevey, A.C. Spearing, Thomas Bestul, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Barry A. Windeatt, Alexandra Barratt, R.S. Allen, Roger Ellis, Ann M. Hutchison, Marion Glasscoe, Catherine Innes-Parker

Essays intended as a companion to a reading of the works of the Gawain poet: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience The essays collected here on the Gawain-Poet offer stimulating introductions to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness and Patience, providing both information and original analysis. Topics includetheories of authorship; the historical and social background to the poems, with individual sections on particularly important features within them; gender roles in the poems; the manuscript itself; the metre, vocabulary and dialect of the poems; and their sources. A section devoted to Sir Gawain investigates the ideas of courtesy and chivalry found within it, and explores some of its later adaptations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Afull bibliography completes the volume. DEREK BREWER was Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge; JONATHAN GIBSON has worked as a lecturer in the Universities of Exeter and Durham. Contributors: DEREK BREWER, MALCOLM ANDREW, A.C. SPEARING, JANE GILBERT, MICHAEL J. BENNETT, DAVID AERS, RALPH ELLIOTT, MICHAEL THOMPSON, FELICITY RIDDY, ANNE ROONEY, MICHAEL LACY, A.S.G. EDWARDS, H.N. DUGGAN, ELISABETH BREWER, RICHARD NEWHAUSER, HELEN COOPER, NICHOLAS WATSON, PRISCILLA MARTIN, NICK DAVIS, DEREK PEARSALL, GILLIAN ROGERS, BARRY WINDEATT, DAVID J. WILLIAMS

The classic respected series in a stunning new design. This edition includes the full, complete text of The Reeve's Prologue and Tale and The Cook's Prologue and the Fragment of his Tale from the highly-respected Selected Tales series. In the original Middle English, this edition includes an in-depth introduction by A. C. Spearing and J. E Spearing, detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingA AcentsAcentsa A-Acentsa Acentss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of intere

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingA AcentsAcentsa A-Acentsa Acentss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of intere

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

In Medieval Autographies, A. C. Spearing develops a new engagement of narrative theory with medieval English first-person writing, focusing on the roles and functions of the "I" as a shifting textual phenomenon, not to be defined either as autobiographical or as the label of a fictional speaker or narrator. Spearing identifies and explores a previously unrecognized category of medieval English poetry, calling it "autography." He describes this form as emerging in the mid-fourteenth century and consisting of extended nonlyrical writings in the first person, embracing prologues, authorial interventions in and commentaries on third-person narratives, and descendants of the dit, a genre of French medieval poetry. He argues that autography arose as a means of liberation from the requirement to tell stories with preordained conclusions and as a way of achieving a closer relation to lived experience, with all its unpredictability and inconsistencies. Autographies, he claims, are marked by a cluster of characteristics including a correspondence to the texture of life as it is experienced, a montage-like unpredictability of structure, and a concern with writing and textuality. Beginning with what may be the earliest extended first-person narrative in Middle English, Winner and Waster, the book examines instances of the dit as discussed by French scholars, analyzes Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue as a textual performance, and devotes separate chapters to detailed readings of Hoccleve's Regement of Princes prologue, his Complaint and Dialogue, and the witty first-person elements in Osbern Bokenham's legends of saints. An afterword suggests possible further applications of the concept of autography, including discussion of the intermittent autographic commentaries on the narrative in Troilus and Criseyde and Capgrave's Life of Saint Katherine.

The classic respected series in a stunning new design. This edition of The Knight's Tale from the highly-respected Selected Tales series includes the full, complete text in the original Middle English, along with an in-depth introduction by A. C. Spearing, detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary.

The classic respected series in a stunning new design. This edition of The Franklin's Prologue and Tale from the highly-respected Selected Tales series includes the full, complete text in the original Middle English, along with an in-depth introduction by A. C. Spearing, detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary.

The classic respected series in a stunning new design. This edition of The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale from the highly-respected Selected Tales series includes the full, complete text in the original Middle English, along with an in-depth introduction by A. C. Spearing, detailed notes and a comprehensive glossary.

This book investigates how subjectivity is encoded in the texts of a wide variety of medieval narratives and lyrics - not how they express the subjectivity of individuals, but how subjectivity, escaping the bounds of individuality, is incorporated in the linguistic fabric of their texts. Most of the poems discussed are in English, and the book includes analyses of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Man of Law's Tale, and Complaint Unto Pity, the works of the Pearl poet, Havelok the Dane, the lyric sequence attributed to Charles of Orleans (the earliest such sequence in English), and many anonymous poems. It also devotes sections to Ovid's Heroides and to poems by the troubadour Bernart de Ventadorn. For the first time, it brings to bear on medieval narratives and lyrics a body of theory which denies the supposed necessity for literary texts to have narrators or 'speakers', and in doing so reveals the implausibilities into which a dogmatic assumption of this necessity has led much of the last century's criticism.