The text is accompanied by a detailed introduction, an essay on the metrical form, the translator's note, marginal glosses, and explanatory annotations to assist readers in the study of this canonical Arthurian romance. "Contexts" presents two French tales of Sir Gawain and a passage from the Alliterative Morte Arthure, also translated by Marie Borroff, as well as three selections from the original Middle English poem. "Criticism" collects ten interpretive essays on the poem's central themes. Contributors include Alain Renoir, Marie Borroff, J. A. Burrow, A. Kent Hieatt, W. A. Davenport, Ralph Hanna III, Lynn Staley Johnson, Jonathan Nicholls, Geraldine Heng, and Leo Carruthers. A Chronology of important historical and literary dates and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

This Norton Critical Edition includes: Marie Borroff's acclaimed verse translation, marginal glosses and explanatory footnotes. Laura L. Howes's full introduction along with Borroff's seminal essay, "The Metrical Forms" as well as her "Translator's Note". For comparative study and classroom discussion, two French tales of Sir Gawain, four selections from the original Middle English poem and a passage from the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Nine critical essays on the poem's central themes, four of them new to the Second Edition. A chronology and a selected bibliography. About the Series Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format-annotated text, contexts and criticism-helps students to better understand, analyse and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

Pearl, a dream vision, presents its poignant story of the education of a misguided Christian soul in metrically intricate and verbally ornate stanzas that add up to an overarching numerical design. Together with these two, Patience, Cleanness, and Saint Erkenwald make up the complete works of their anonymous author. All exhibit the dramatizing powers and metrical virtuosity of a master-poet. But none became part of the established literary canon until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the single manuscript copies in which they survive were edited and printed. Taken together, these works offer us a wide-ranging portrait of life in the late Middle Ages from the point of view of an independent-minded, learned, and cosmopolitan Englishman, a man as conversant with the conduct of life in great households as with Christian tradition and doctrine. He knew, among other things, how to sail a medieval passenger ship from its mooring to open sea, how to dress the carcass of a deer or a boar at the end of a royal hunt, and how a knight might flatter a noble and beautiful lady in the most intimate of situations while politely evading her seductive overtures.

A Richard Selzer Reader: Blood and Ink is a career-spanning collection, including major short stories and essays by the renowned doctor-author. In the 1960s, while practicing as a general surgeon and teaching surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, Richard Selzer began publishing unique creative work in magazines such as Harper's and Esquire. By 1985, when he retired as a physician to devote himself completely to writing, Selzer was already recognized as a pioneer in the field of medical humanities. When he died in 2016, as the author of 13 books, his influence was acknowledged by a younger generation of doctor-writers like Abraham Verghese and Atul Gawande. Selzer's unusual style fuses scientific and poetic language. Drawing on favorite readings, from the King James Bible to the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, he used this style to convey a sense of awe at the beauty and complexity of the human body, even in the midst of suffering. While describing himself as an atheist, Selzer always searched for "sacramental" moments of courtesy, courage, and grace in medical encounters. Because he often looked critically at the failure of doctors to regard the full humanity of their patients, Selzer's work has become required reading in many medical training programs. A Richard Selzer Reader includes several of the author's most famous essays and stories, as well as two dozen selections that have not been collected in his previous books. Chronologically, the material ranges from apprenticeship stories (as far back as a high-school composition) to two odd self-portraits that remained unpublished at the time of Selzer's death. Topically, the material ranges from meditations on the body, and on human mortality, to reflections on both medicine and writing as serious vocations. Along the way, Selzer celebrates the work of other doctor-writers, like Thomas Browne and Anton Chekhov, and in a series of previously unpublished diary entries he discusses the joys of nature, art, and family as bulwarks against the difficulties of growing old.

These poems, written over fifty years, address such subjects as the celerity of time, old age, art, literary acquaintances, and the author's beloved New England landscape. They delight in sound and form, even as they unsettle and disturb.

Literary critic, poet and philologist as well as medievalist, with a particular interest in the powers and effects of poetic language, Marie Borroff brings the full range of her expertise to bear on problems of central importance in the poetry of Chaucer and his nameless contemporary, the Gawain--or Pearl--poet. This collection of essays, much of it previously unpublished, represents a major contribution to the study of late Middle English literature.