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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.
`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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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