This comprehensive, critical edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the fruit of William Vantuono's research on the fourteenth-century romance. In combining fantasy and realism, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight praises court life with an undercurrent of satire against a declining chivalric ideal. The poem calls up from the mythic past the shadows of archetypal figures, yet inspires modern psychoanalytic interpretations, and entertains while teaching a moral-religious lesson. The heart of this edition is the Middle English text, with a Modern English verse translation on facing pages and extensive notes at the bottom of the pages. A discussion of the manuscript, the anonymous poet and his other poems, the structure of the poem and its audience, themes, characterization, and purpose serves as a valuable introduction to the classic. With this translation, Vantuono aims to follow the original as closely as possible without sacrificing the poem's essential meaning and mood. The notes reveal the literal sense of the Middle English vocabulary where necessary changes were made for poetic effect. The reader is therefore able to compare the Middle English original, the translation, and the notes to learn about the old language, the content of the poem, the poet's artistry, and the process of translation.

This edition of the anonymously-authored, Middle English poem, Pearl, is offered with a verse translation, Middle English text, and a commentary. On each page, the Middle English text is faced with a Modern English verse translation. The book is designed for classroom use, specialists and others.

This comprehensive, critical edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the fruit of William Vantuono's research on the fourteenth-century romance. In combining fantasy and realism, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight praises court life with an undercurrent of satire against a declining chivalric ideal. The poem calls up from the mythic past the shadows of archetypal figures, yet inspires modern psychoanalytic interpretations, and entertains while teaching a moral-religious lesson. The heart of this edition is the Middle English text, with a Modern English verse translation on facing pages and extensive notes at the bottom of the pages. A discussion of the manuscript, the anonymous poet and his other poems, the structure of the poem and its audience, themes, characterization, and purpose serves as a valuable introduction to the classic. With this translation, Vantuono aims to follow the original as closely as possible without sacrificing the poem's essential meaning and mood. The notes reveal the literal sense of the Middle English vocabulary where necessary changes were made for poetic effect. The reader is therefore able to compare the Middle English original, the translation, and the notes to learn about the old language, the content of the poem, the poet's artistry, and the process of translation.

The anonymous author of the poem Pearl is rated with Langland and Chaucer as one of the greatest Middle English poets. And, while a number of editions of this poem have been published, including E. V. Gordon's 1953 edition and Marie Borroff's 1977 verse translation, no edition until now has included a verse translation, Middle English text, and commentary in one volume. William Vantuono's edition of Pearl is certain to become a classroom standard because it contains for the first time a Middle English text with a facing-page Modern English verse translation as well as extensive scholarly apparatus. Pearl is the first of four poems in a manuscript dated around 1400 A.D. The other three poems in this manuscript are Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. According to Vantuono's introduction, it is conceivable that Pearl was written for a nobleman, perhaps the poet's patron, who had lost a young daughter. However, many unanswered questions remain about the circumstances surrounding the poet and his writing of Pearl: Was he a layman or a priest? Is Pearl primarily elegy or allegory? Was the pearl-maiden his daughter, and if she was, can that fact be reconciled with the possibility that the poet was a clergyman? This volume contains an extensive commentary covering all matters from minute textual problems to the various debates about the poem's theme and genre. Appendices discuss versification, dialect and language, and sources and analogues; two bibliographies list over 500 items through the early 1990s; and the book concludes with a full glossary. Pearl: An Edition with Verse Translation will appeal to scholars confronted with the tasks of studying and teaching medieval literature to students in college and university classrooms. It is a book designed for specialists and non-specialists, students, and general readers.