The fourth edition of this essential Middle English textbook introduces students to the wide range of literature written in England between 1150 and 1400. Beginning with an extensive overview of middle English history, grammar, syntax, and pronunciation, the book goes on to examine key middle English texts -- including a new extract from Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Divine Love -- with helpful notes to direct students to key points within the text. Keeping in mind adopter feedback, this new edition includes a new model translation section with a student workbook and model exercise for classroom use. This new chapter will include sections on 'false friend' words, untranslatable idioms and notes on translating both poetry and prose. The text and references will be fully updated throughout and a foreword dedicated to the late J. A. Burrow will be included.

Originally published in 1965, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an interpretation of the most important poem in Middle English literature, the only fourteenth century work which can stand beside Chaucer. The book examines the poem's conventions and purposes in a critical analysis and provides a useful and insightful introduction to 'Sir Gawain'. It will be of interest to students and academics studying the poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Originally published in 1965, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an interpretation of the most important poem in Middle English literature, the only fourteenth century work which can stand beside Chaucer. The book examines the poem's conventions and purposes in a critical analysis and provides a useful and insightful introduction to 'Sir Gawain'. It will be of interest to students and academics studying the poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Authors of the Middle Ages is a new series designed for research and reference. Each part, by an expert on the subject, gives an account of the facts known about a particular Author's life and immediate historical context, together with a review of subsequent scholarship. This is supported by citation of all known contemporary references; a dated and classified list of manuscripts and editions; a bibliography of secondary sources; and appendices listing or printing the key literary and documentary sources. The aim is to combine, in one compact work, a bibliography of a medieval author with all the information needed for further research. Each will be available individually, or in a collection with three other contemporary Authors. Authors of the Middle Ages is divided into two sub-series, English Writers of the Late Middle Ages and historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West.

This essential Middle English textbook, now in its third edition, introduces students to the wide range of literature written in England between 1150 and 1400.
New, thoroughly revised edition of this essential Middle English textbook.
Introduces the language of the time, giving guidance on pronunciation, spelling, grammar, metre, vocabulary and regional dialects.
Now includes extracts from 'Pearl' and Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'.
Bibliographic references have been updated throughout.
Each text is accompanied by detailed notes.

This book treats separately all four poems: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain. There are also chapters on: the history of the poems and their rediscovery; alliterative verse; and what little is known about the author. The main emphasis falls on interpretation, and on such explanations as a modern reader may require. All quotations cited from the poems are translated as well.

A profoundly organic view of humanity in nature, the concept of "ages of man" made itself felt in nearly all forms of medieval discourse--sermons, Bible commentaries, moral and political treatises, encyclopedias and lexicons, medical and astrological handbooks, didactic and courtly poems, and
even stained glass windows. J.A. Burrow's analysis ranges over the many manifestations of this idea, and considers the ways in which such ideas of natural order entered into medieval writers' assessment of human nature.

Gestures and looks played an even more important role in public and private exchanges of medieval society, than they do today. Gestures meant more than words, for example, in ceremonies of homage and fealty. In this compelling study, medievalist Burrow examines the role of non-verbal communication in a range of narrative texts, including Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte D'arthur, the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the prose Lancelot, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and Dante's Commedia.

A profoundly organic view of humanity in nature, the concept of "ages of man" made itself felt in nearly all forms of medieval discourse--sermons, Bible commentaries, moral and political treatises, encyclopedias and lexicons, medical and astrological handbooks, didactic and courtly poems, and
even stained glass windows. J.A. Burrow's analysis ranges over the many manifestations of this idea, and considers the ways in which such ideas of natural order entered into medieval writers' assessment of human nature.

In an updated edition of his hugely successful student introduction to English literature from 1100 to 1500, J.A. Burrow takes account of scholarly developments in the the field, most notably devoting a final chapter to the impact of historicism on medieval studies. Full of information and stimulating ideas, and a pleasure to read, Burrow's book deals with circumstances of composition and reception, the main genres, "modes of meaning" (allegory etc.), and medieval literature's afterlife in modern times. It shows that the literature of authors such as Chaucer, Gower, and Langland is more readily accessible than usually imagined, and well worth reading too. By placing medieval writers in their historical context - the four centuries between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance - Professor Burrow explains not only how they wrote, but why.

One of the chief functions of poetry in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was to praise gods, people and things. Heroes and kings were glorified in many varieties of praise, and the arts of encomium and panegyric were codified by classical rhetoricians and later by writers on poetry. J. A. Burrow's study spans over two thousand years, from Pindar to Christopher Logue, but its main concern is with the English poetry of the Middle Ages, a period when praise poetry flourished. He argues that the 'decline of praise' in English literature since the seventeenth century, which has meant that modern readers and critics find it hard to appreciate this kind of poetry. This erudite but accessible account by a leading scholar of medieval literature shows why the poetry of praise was once so popular, and why it is still worth reading today.

One of the chief functions of poetry in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was to praise gods, people and things. Heroes and kings were glorified in many varieties of praise, and the arts of encomium and panegyric were codified by classical rhetoricians and later by writers on poetry. J. A. Burrow's study spans over two thousand years, from Pindar to Christopher Logue, but its main concern is with the English poetry of the Middle Ages, a period when praise poetry flourished. He argues that the 'decline of praise' in English literature since the seventeenth century, which has meant that modern readers and critics find it hard to appreciate this kind of poetry. This erudite but accessible account by a leading scholar of medieval literature shows why the poetry of praise was once so popular, and why it is still worth reading today.

In medieval society, gestures and speaking looks played an even more important part in public and private exchanges than they do today. Gestures meant more than words, for example, in ceremonies of homage and fealty. In this, the first study of its kind in English, John Burrow examines the role of non-verbal communication in a wide range of narrative texts, including Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's Morte D'arthur, the romances of Chretien de Troyes, the Prose Lancelot, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, and Dante's Commedia. Burrow argues that since non-verbal signs are in general less subject to change than words, many of the behaviours recorded in these texts, such as pointing and amorous gazing, are familiar in themselves; yet many prove easy to misread, either because they are no longer common, like bowing, or because their use has changed, like winking.