Essays on book history, manuscripts and reading during a period of considerable change. The production, transmission, and reception of texts from England and beyond during the late medieval and early renaissance periods are the focus of this volume. Chapters consider the archives and the material contexts in which texts were produced, read, and re-read; the history of specific manuscripts and early printed books; and some of the continuities and changes in literary and book production, dissemination, and reception in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Responding to Professor Julia Boffey's pioneering work on medieval and early Tudor material and literary culture, they cover a range of genres - from practical texts written in Latin to works of Middle English poetryand prose, both secular and religious - and examine an assortment of different reading contexts: lay, devotional, local, regional, and national. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early RenaissanceLiterature, and JACLYN RAJSIC is Lecturer in Medieval Literature, at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. Contributors: Laura Ashe, Priscilla Bawcutt, Martin Camargo, Margaret Connolly, Robert R. Edwards, A.S.G. Edwards, Susanna Fein, Joel Grossman, Alfred Hiatt, Pamela M. King, Matthew Payne, Derek Pearsall, Corinne Saunders, Barry Windeatt, R.F. Yeager.

New essays examining Bohemia as a key European context for understanding Chaucer's poetry. Chaucer never went to Bohemia but Bohemia came to him when, in 1382, King Richard II of England married Anne, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. Charles's splendid court in Prague was renowned across Europe for its patronage of literature, art and architecture, and Anne and her entourage brought with them some of its glamour and allure - their fashions, extravagance and behaviour provoking comment from English chroniclers. For Chaucer, a poet and diplomat affiliated to Richard's court, Anne was more muse than patron, her influence embedded in a range of his works, including the Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women and Canterbury Tales. This volume shows Bohemia to be a key European context, alongside France and Italy, for understanding Chaucer's poetry, providing a wide perspective on the nature of cultural exchange between England and Bohemia in the later fourteenth century. The contributors consider such matters as court culture and politics, the writings of Richard Rolle, artistic style, Troy stories, historiographic writing and travel narrative; they highlight the debt Chaucer owed to Bohemian culture, and the affinities between English and Bohemian literary production, whether in the use of Petrarch's tale of Griselde, the iconography of the tapster figure, or satires on the Passion of Christ.

New research into medieval English literature, with a particular focus on manuscripts and writing. This acclaimed study of English medieval manuscripts and early printed books - many items from Professor Takamiya's own collection - quickly sold out in hardcover. The subjects range from Saint Jerome to Tolkien, with particular concentrations on Chaucer, Gower, Malory and religious and historical writings of the late middle ages. There are essays examining the work of early printers such as Caxton and de Worde, and of bibliophiles and antiquarians in modern times. Befitting a tribute to a bibliophile, this volume has been handsomely designed by Lida Kindersley of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge, and is extensively illustrated. The volume as a whole constitutes a substantial body of research on medieval English literature, and early books and manuscripts. Contributors: Richard Barber, Nicolas Barker, Richard Beadle, N.F. Blake, Julia Boffey, Piero Boitani, Derek Brewer, Helen Cooper, A.I. Doyle, Martha W. Driver, A.S.G. Edwards, P.J.C. Field, Christopher de Hamel, Ralph Hanna, Lotte Hellinga, Kristian Jensen, Edward Donald Kennedy, Richard A. Linenthal, Jill Mann, Takami Matsuda, David McKitterick, Rosamond McKitterick, Linne R. Mooney, Ruth Morse, Daniel W. Mosser, Tsuyoshi Mukai, Paul Needham, M.B. Parkes, Derek Pearsall, Oliver Pickering, P.R. Robinson, Michael G. Sargent, John Scahill, Kathleen L. Scott, Jeremy J. Smith, Isamu Takahashi, John J. Thompson, Linda Ehrsam Voigts, Yoko Wada, Bonnie Wheeler, Patrick Zutshi.

Introduces Skelton and his work to readers unfamiliar with the poet, gathers together the vibrant strands of existing research, and opens up new avenues for future studies. John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences. This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen; JOHN SCATTERGOOD is Professor (Emeritus) of Medieval and Renaissance English at Trinity College, Dublin. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton,A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

First entire collection centred on Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, making a compelling case for its importance and value. The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer's first major poem, is foundational for our understanding of Chaucer's literary achievements in relation to late-medieval English textual production; yet in comparison with other works, itstreatment has been somewhat peripheral in previous criticism. This volume, the first full-length collection devoted to the Book, argues powerfully against the prevalent view that it is an underdeveloped or uneven early work, and instead positions it as a nuanced literary and intellectual effort in its own right, one that deserves fuller integration with twenty-first-century Chaucer studies. The essays within it pursue lingering questions as well as new frontiers in research, including the poem's literary relationships in the sphere of French and English writing, material processes of transmission and compilation, and patterns of reception. Each chapter advances an original reading of the Book of the Duchess that uncovers new aspects of its internal dynamics or of its literary or intellectual contexts. As a whole, the volume reveals the poem's mobility and elasticity within an increasingly international sphere of cultural discourse that thrives on dynamic exchange and encourages sophisticated reflection on authorial practice. Jamie C. Fumo is Professor of English at Florida State University. Contributors: B.S.W. Barootes, Julia Boffey, Ardis Butterfield, Rebecca Davis, A.S.G. Edwards, Jeff Espie, Philip Knox, Helen Phillips, Elizaveta Strakhov, Sara Sturm-Maddox, Marion Wells.

The questions of fame and reputation are central to Chaucer's writings; the essays here discuss their various treatments and manifestations. Fama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature: where fame came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable and how it was acquired and kept. An interest in fame was not new but was renewed and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages. The work of Geoffrey Chaucer collates received ideas on the subject of fama, both from the classical world and from the work of his contemporaries. Chaucer's place in these intertextual negotiations was readily recognized in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary authority. This volume tracks debates onfama which were past, present and future to Chaucer, using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Birkbeck, University of London; Catherine Nall is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Alcuin Blamires, Julia Boffey, Isabel Davis, Stephanie Downes, A.S.G. Edwards, Jamie C. Fumo, Andrew Galloway, Nick Havely, Thomas A. Prendergast, Mike Rodman Jones, William T. Rossiter, Elizaveta Strakhov.

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.

Essays shedding fresh and significant light on Gower's poetry, major and minor, as it was received, read, and re-produced in England and in Iberia from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. John Gower's great poem, the Confessio Amantis, was the first work of English literature translated into any European language. Occasioned by the existence in Spain of fifteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish manuscripts ofthe Confessio, the nineteen essays brought together here represent new and original approaches to Gower's role in Anglo-Iberian literary relations. They include major studies of the palaeography of the Iberian manuscripts;of the ownership history of the Portuguese Confessio manuscript; of the glosses of Gowerian manuscripts; and of the manuscript of the Yale Confessio Amantis. Other essays situate the translations amidst Anglo-Spanish relations generally in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; examine possible Spanish influences on Gower's writing; and speculate on possible providers of the Confessio to Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt and queenof Portugal. Further chapters broaden the scope of the volume. Amongst other topics, they look at Gower's use of Virgilian/Dantean models; classical gestures in the Castilian translation; Gower's conscious contrasting of epic ideals and courtly romance; nuances of material goods and the idea of "the good" in the Confessio; Marxian aesthetics, Balzac, and Gowerian narrative in late medieval trading culture between England and Iberia; reading the Confessio through the lens of gift exchange; literary form in Gower's later Latin poems; Gower and Alain Chartier as international initiators of a new "public poetry"; and the modern sales history of manuscript and earlyprinted copies of the Confessio, and what it reveals about literary trends. Ana Saez Hidalgo is Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain; R.F. Yeager is Professor of English and World Languagesand chair of the department at the University of West Florida. Contributors: Maria Bullon-Fernandez, David R. Carlson, Sian Echard, A.S.G. Edwards, Robert R. Edwards, Tiago Viula de Faria, Andrew Galloway, Fernando Galvan, Marta Maria Gutierrez Rodriguez, Mauricio Herrero Jimenez, Ethan Knapp, Roger A. Ladd, Alberto Lazaro, Maria Luisa Lopez-Vidriero Abello, Matthew McCabe, Alastair J. Minnis, Clara Pascual-Argente, Tamara Para A. Shailor, Winthrop Wetherbee

This collection of seventeen original essays by leading authorities offers, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the significant authors and important aspects of fifteenth-century English poetry. This collection of seventeen original essays by leading authorities offers, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of the significant authors and important aspects of fifteenth-century English poetry. The major poets of thecentury, John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve, receive detailed analysis, alongside perhaps lesser-known authors: John Capgrave, Osbern Bokenham, Peter Idley, George Ashby and John Audelay. In addition, several essays examine genres and topics, including romance, popular, historical and scientific poetry, and translations from the classics. Other chapters investigate the crucial contexts for approaching poetry of this period: manuscript circulation, patronageand the influence of Chaucer. Julia Boffey is Professor of Medieval Studies at Queen Mary, University of London; A.S.G. Edwards is Professor of Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Kent. Contributors: Anthony Bale, Julia Boffey, A.S.G. Edwards, Susanna Fein, Alfred Hiatt, Simon Horobin, Sarah James, Andrew King, Sheila Lindenbaum, Joanna Martin, Carol Meale, Robert Meyer-Lee, Ad Putter, John Scattergood, Anke Timmermann, DanielWakelin, David Watt.

Originally published in 1981, Middle English Prose is an edited collection providing an index of research and scholarship on Middle English prose. The book is split into specific thematic areas of scholarship covering such areas as editorial technique and middle English mystical prose, as well as focusing more in detail on specific prose such as Nicholas Love's Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ. Each chapter contains a collection of useful sources and an editorial analysis and description on each source. Even today, this will provide a useful and valuable resource for researchers of the medieval period.

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

Over the course of her career, Elizabeth Robertson has pursued innovative scholarship that investigates the overlapping domains of medieval philosophy, literature, and gender studies. This collection of essays dedicated to her work examines gender in medieval English writing along several axes: poetic, philosophical, material-textual, and historical. Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature focuses on the ways that the medieval body becomes a site of inquiry and agency, whether in the form of the idealized feminine body of secular and religious lyric, the sexually permissive and permeable body of fabliaux, or the intercessory body of religious devotional writing. This collection asks, how do imagined bodies frame literary explorations of philosophical categories such as nature, the will, and emotion? What can accounts of specific historical medieval women-as authors, patrons, interlocutors-tell us about such representations? In what ways do devotional practices and texts intersect with the representations of gender? The essays span a broad range of medieval literary works, from the lais of Marie de France to Pearl to Piers Plowman and the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, and a broad range of methodological approaches, from philosophy to affect and manuscript studies.

Originally published in 1981, Middle English Prose is an edited collection providing an index of research and scholarship on Middle English prose. The book is split into specific thematic areas of scholarship covering such areas as editorial technique and middle English mystical prose, as well as focusing more in detail on specific prose such as Nicholas Love's Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ. Each chapter contains a collection of useful sources and an editorial analysis and description on each source. Even today, this will provide a useful and valuable resource for researchers of the medieval period.

The first interdisciplinary enquiry into a key figure in medieval and early modern culture. Guy of Warwick is England's other Arthur. Elevated to the status of national hero, his legend occupied a central place in the nation's cultural heritage from the Middle Ages to the modern period. Guy of Warwick: Icon and Ancestor spans the Guy tradition from its beginnings in Anglo-Norman and Middle English romance right through to the plays and prints of the early modern period and Spenser's Faerie Queene, including the visual tradition in manuscript illustration and material culture as well as the intersection of the legend with local and national history. This volume addresses important questions regarding the continuities and remaking of romance material, and therelation between life and literature. Topics discussed are sensitive to current critical concerns and include translation, reception, magnate ambition, East-West relations, the construction of "Englishness" and national identity,and the literary value of "popular" romance. ALISON WIGGINS is Lecturer in English Language at the University of Glasgow; ROSALIND FIELD is Reader in Medieval Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Note on ebook images: Due to limited rights we are unable to make all images in this book available in the ebook version. If you'd like to purchase the ebook regardless, please email us on [email protected] to obtain a PDF of the images. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. CONTRIBUTORS: JUDITH WEISS, MARIANNE AILES, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, ROSALIND FIELD, ALISON WIGGINS, A.S.G. EDWARDS, ROBERT ALLEN ROUSE, DAVID GRIFFITH, MARTHA W. DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, ANDREW KING, HELEN COOPER

Essays considering the relationship between Gower's texts and the physical ways in which they were first manifested. The media in which Gower's works were first transmitted, whether in print of manuscript form, are of vital importance to an understanding of both the poet and his audience. However, in comparison with those of his contemporary Chaucer, they have been relatively little studied. This volume represents a major collaboration between specialist scholars in manuscript and book history, and experts in Gower more generally, breaking new ground in approaching Gower through first-hand study of his publications in manuscript and print. Its chapters consider such matters as manuscript and book illumination, provenance, variant texts and editions, scribes, and printers, looking at how, and to what degree, the materiality of the vellum, paper, ink and binding illuminates - and even implicates - the poet and his poetry. MARTHA DRIVER is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University; the late DEREK PEARSALL was Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University; R.F. YEAGER Is Professor of English and Foreign Languages, Emeritus, University of West Florida. Contributors: Stephanie L. Batkie, Julia Boffey, Margaret Connolly, Sian Echard, A.S.G. Edwards, Robert Epstein, Brian W. Gastle, Amanda J. Gerber, Yoshiko Kobayashi, Aditi Nafde, Tamara Perez-Fernandez, Wendy Scase, Karla Taylor, David Watt.

New essays reappraising the history of the book, manuscripts, and texts. The dynamic fields of the history of the book and the sociology of the text are the areas this volume investigates, bringing together ten specially commissioned essays that between them demonstrate a range of critical and materialapproaches to medieval, early modern, and digital books and texts. They scrutinize individual medieval manuscripts to illustrate how careful re-reading of evidence permits a more nuanced apprehension of production, and receptionacross time; analyse metaphor for our understanding of the Byzantine book; examine the materiality of textuality from Beowulf to Pepys and the digital work in the twenty-first century; place manuscripts back into specific historical context; and re-appraise scholarly interpretation of significant periods of manuscript and print production in the later medieval and early modern periods. All of these essays call for a new assessment of the ways in which we read books and texts, making a major contribution to book history, and illustrating how detailed focus on individual cases can yield important new findings. Contributors: Elaine Treharne, Erika Corradini, Julia Crick, Orietta Da Rold, A.S.G. Edwards, Martin K. Foys, Whitney Anne Trettien, David L. Gants, Ralph Hanna, Robert Romanchuk, Margaret M. Smith, Liberty Stanavage.

Created in London c. 1340, the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1) is of crucial importance as the first book designed to convey in the English language an ambitious range ofsecular romance and chronicle. Evidently made in London by professional scribes for a secular patron, this tantalizing volume embodies a massive amount of material evidence as to London commercial book production and the demand for vernacular texts in the early fourteenth century. But its origins are mysterious: who were its makers? its users? how was it made? what end did it serve? The essays in this collection define the parameters of present-day Auchinleck studies. They scrutinize the manuscript's rich and varied contents; reopen theories and controversies regarding the book's making; trace the operations and interworkings of the scribes, compiler, and illuminators; teaseout matters of patron and audience; interpret the contested signs of linguistic and national identity; and assess Auchinleck's implied literary values beside those of Chaucer. Geography, politics, international relations and multilingualism become pressing subjects, too, alongside critical analyses of literary substance. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University and editor of The Chaucer Review. Contributors: Venetia Bridges, Patrick Butler, Siobhain Bly Calkin, A. S. G. Edwards, Ralph Hanna, Ann Higgins, Cathy Hume, Marisa Libbon, Derek Pearsall, Helen Phillips, Emily Runde, Timothy A. Shonk, Miceal F. Vaughan.

The cult of St Edmund was one of the most important in medieval England, and further afield, as the pieces here show. St Edmund, king and martyr, supposedly killed by Danes (or "Vikings") in 869, was one of the pre-eminent saints of the middle ages; his cult was favoured and patronised by several English kings and spawned a rich array of visual,literary, musical and political artefacts. Celebrated throughout England, especially at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, it also inspired separate cults in France, Iceland and Italy. The essays in this collection offer a range of readings from a variety of disciplines - literature, history, music, art history - and of sources - chronicles, poems, theological material - providing an overview of the multi-faceted nature of St Edmund's cult, from the ninthcentury to the early modern period. They demonstrate the openness and dynamism of a medieval saint's cult, showing how the saint's image could be used in many and changing contexts: Edmund's image was bent to various political andpropagandistic ends, often articulating conflicting messages and ideals, negotiating identity, politics and belief. CONTRIBUTORS: ANTHONY BALE, CARL PHELPSTEAD, ALISON FINLAY, PAUL ANTONY HAYWARD, LISA COLTON, REBECCA PINNER, A.S.G. EDWARDS, ALEXANDRA GILLESPIE

First full-scale guide to the origins and development of the early printed book, and the issues associated with it. The history of the book is now recognized as a field of central importance for understanding the cultural changes that swept through Tudor England. This companion aims to provide a comprehensive guide to the issues relevant to theearly printed book, covering the significant cultural, social and technological developments from 1476 (the introduction of printing to England) to 1558 (the death of Mary Tudor). Divided into thematic sections (the printed booktrade; the book as artefact; patrons, purchasers and producers; and the cultural capital of print), it considers the social, historical, and cultural context of the rise of print, with the problems as well as advantages of the transmission from manuscript to print. the printers of the period; the significant Latin trade and its effect on the English market; paper, types, bindings, and woodcuts and other decorative features which create the packaged book; and the main sponsors and consumers of the printed book: merchants, the lay clientele, secular and religious clergy, and the two Universities, as well as secular colleges and chantries. Further topics addressed include humanism, women translators, and the role of censorship and the continuity of Catholic publishing from that time. The book is completed with a chronology and detailed indices. VINCENT GILLESPIE is J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford; SUSAN POWELL held a Chair in Medieval Texts and Culture at the University of Salford, and is currently affiliated to the Universities of London and York. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, Alan Coates, Thomas Betteridge, Julia Boffey, James Clark, A.S.G. Edwards, Martha W. Driver, Mary Erler, Alexandra Gillespie, Vincent Gillespie, Andrew Hope, Brenda Hosington, Susan Powell, Pamela Robinson, AnneF. Sutton, Daniel Wakelin, James Willoughby, Lucy Wooding

Material on the production and transmission of medieval literature and the early formation of the canon of English poetry. A wide range of poets is covered - Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, the Gawain poet, Langland, and Lydgate, along with the translator of Claudian's De Consulatu Stilichonis. The Turnament of Totenham is read in termsof theory of the carnivalesque and popular culture, and major contributions are made to current linguistic, editorial and codicological controversies. Going beyond the Middle Ages, the book also considers the sixteenth-century reception of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Post-Reformation reading of Lydgate. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the production and transmission of medieval literature, and in the early formation of the canon of English poetry. Contributors: JULIA BOFFEY, J.A. BURROW, CHRISTOPHER CANNON, MARTHA DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, A.S.G. EDWARDS, KATE D. HARRIS, S.S. HUSSEY, KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, CAROL M. MEALE, LINNE R. MOONEY, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, V.I.J. SCATTERGOOD, ELIZABETH SOLOPOVA, ESTELLE STUBBS, JOHN THOMPSON.

Essays on the medieval chronicle tradition, shedding light on history writing, manuscript studies and the history of the book, and the post-medieval reception of such texts. The histories of chronicles composed in England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and onwards, with a focus on texts belonging to or engaging with the Prose Brut tradition, are the focus of this volume. The contributors examine the composition, dissemination and reception of historical texts written in Anglo-Norman, Latin and English, including the Prose Brut chronicle (c. 1300 and later), Castleford's Chronicle (c. 1327),and Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles (c. 1334), looking at questions of the processes of writing, rewriting, printing and editing history. They cross traditional boundaries of subject and period, taking multi-disciplinary approaches to their studies in order to underscore the (shifting) historical, social and political contexts in which medieval English chronicles were used and read from the fourteenth century through to the present day. As such, the volume honours the pioneering work of the late Professor Lister M. Matheson, whose research in this area demonstrated that a full understanding of medieval historical literature demands attention to both the content of theworks in question and to the material circumstances of producing those works. JACLYN RAJSIC is a Lecturer in Medieval Literature in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London; ERIK KOOPER taughtOld and Middle English at Utrecht University until his retirement in 2007; DOMINIQUE HOCHE Is an Associate Professor at West Liberty University in West Virginia. Contributors: Elizabeth J. Bryan, Caroline D. Eckhardt,A.S.G. Edwards, Dan Embree, Alexander L. Kaufman, Edward Donald Kennedy, Erik Kooper, Julia Marvin, William Marx, Krista A. Murchison, Heather Pagan, Jaclyn Rajsic, Christine M. Rose, Neil Weijer

First full-scale guide to the origins and development of the early printed book, and the issues associated with it. The history of the book is now recognized as a field of central importance for understanding the cultural changes that swept through Tudor England. This companion aims to provide a comprehensive guide to the issues relevant to theearly printed book, covering the significant cultural, social and technological developments from 1476 (the introduction of printing to England) to 1558 (the death of Mary Tudor). Divided into thematic sections (the printed booktrade; the book as artefact; patrons, purchasers and producers; and the cultural capital of print), it considers the social, historical, and cultural context of the rise of print, with the problems as well as advantages of the transmission from manuscript to print. the printers of the period; the significant Latin trade and its effect on the English market; paper, types, bindings, and woodcuts and other decorative features which create the packaged book; and the main sponsors and consumers of the printed book: merchants, the lay clientele, secular and religious clergy, and the two Universities, as well as secular colleges and chantries. Further topics addressed include humanism, women translators, and the role of censorship and the continuity of Catholic publishing from that time. The book is completed with a chronology and detailed indices. Vincent Gillespie is J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford; Susan Powell held a Chair in Medieval Texts and Culture at the University of Salford, and is currently affiliated to the Universities of London and York. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, Alan Coates, Thomas Betteridge, Julia Boffey, James Clark, A.S.G. Edwards, Martha W. Driver, Mary Erler, Alexandra Gillespie, Vincent Gillespie, Andrew Hope, Brenda Hosington, Susan Powell, Pamela Robinson, AnneF. Sutton, Daniel Wakelin, James Willoughby, Lucy Wooding

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.