Walter of Chatillon was one of the leading Medieval Latin poets, who flourished at the high point of Medieval Latin literature - the later twelfth century. This volume presents the Latin text and facing English translation of Walter's shorter poems, including love poems, satires, and (largely Christmas) hymns. His satirical poems, often written in Goliardic hexameters, of which he was an accomplished master, are fine examples of the form. The allusiveness of his hymns makes them often notoriously difficult, but they provide a fascinating insight into the mindset of the clergy of the time and the prevalence of allegorical interpretation of the Bible. This volume provides an outline of the author's life, and adds a further fifteen poems to the previously accepted canon of fifty-two poems which appear in earlier editions of Walter of Chatillon's poetry. The introduction discusses the attribution of the additional poems, Walter's use of rhythmical and metrical verse in these poems, the relevant manuscripts, the recurring themes of the Feast of Fools, and avarice and largesse, and the arrangement of the poems. This volume makes available in English for the first time the shorter poems of an important medieval poet together with an improved Latin text. Scholars of the twelfth century will find a great deal of primary evidence on a wide variety of social and religious issues now accessible to them.

The Codex Buranus, compiled, in all likelihood, in South Tyrol in the first half of the thirteenth century, has fascinated modern scholars and performers ever since its rediscovery in 1803. Its diverse range of texts (some famously featuring in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana) and music gives testimony to the intensely vibrant, plurilingual, and multicultural milieu in which the Codex Buranus was compiled, but poses a challenge to modern users. Perhaps more so than many other medieval manuscripts, it is an artefact which demands, and benefits from, an interdisciplinary approach. The chapters here, from scholars in a variety of fields, enable the less well-known aspects of the Codex Buranus; textual, musical, and artistic; to receive greater scrutiny, and bring new perspectives to bear on the more thoroughly explored parts of the manuscript. Making accessible existing discourse and encouraging fresh debates on the codex, the essays advocate fresh modes of engagement with its contents, contexts, and composition. They also examine questions of its reception history and audience.

Carmina Burana, literally "Songs from Beuern," is named after the village where the manuscript was found. The songbook consists of nearly 250 poems, on subjects ranging from sex and gambling to crusades and corruption. Compiled in the thirteenth century in South Tyrol, a German-speaking region of Italy, it is the largest surviving collection of secular Medieval Latin verse and provides insights into the vibrant social, spiritual, and intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The multilingual codex includes works by leading Latin poets such as the Archpoet, Walter of Chatillon, and the canonist Peter of Blois, as well as stanzas by German lyric poets. More than half these poems are preserved nowhere else. A selection from Carmina Burana first appeared in Victorian England in 1884 under the provocative title Wine, Women and Song. The title Carmina Burana remains fixed in the popular imagination today, conjured vividly by Carl Orff's famous cantata-no Medieval Latin lyrics are better known throughout the world. This new presentation of the medieval classic in its entirety makes the anthology accessible in two volumes to Latin lovers and English readers alike.