The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance
The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance

Author: Ad Putter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-06

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 1317885554

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The Middle English popular romances enjoyed a wide appeal in later medieval Britain, and even today students of medieval literature will encounter examples of the genre, such as Sir Orfeo, Sir Tristrem, and Sir Launfal. This collection of twelve specially commissioned essays is designed to meet the need for a stimulating guide to the genre. Each essay introduces one popular romance, setting it in its literary and historical contexts, and develops an original interpretation that reveals the possibilities that popular romances offer for modern literary criticism. A substantial introduction by the editors discusses the production and transmission of popular romances in the Middle Ages, and considers the modern reception of popular romance and the interpretative challenges offered by new theoretical approaches. Accessible to advanced students of English, this book is also of interest to those working in the field of medieval studies, comparative literature, and popular culture.

Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance
Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance

Author: Corinne J. Saunders

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1843842211

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"This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.

Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England
Secrecy and Surveillance in Medieval and Early Modern England

Author: Annette Kern-Stähler

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag

Published: 2020-01-20

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 382339326X

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This volume explores practices of secrecy and surveillance in medieval and early modern England. The ten contributions by Swiss and international scholars (including Paul Strohm, Sylvia Tomasch, Karma Lochrie, and Richard Wilson) address in particular the intersections of secrecy and surveillance with gender and identity, public and private spheres, religious practices, and power structures. Covering a wide range of English literary texts from Old English riddles to medieval romances, the Book of Margery Kempe, and the plays and poems of Shakespeare, these essays seek to contribute to our understanding of the practices of secrecy, exclusion, and disclosure as well as to the much-needed historicisation of Surveillance Studies called for in the opening article by Sylvia Tomasch. ---

English Poets in the Late Middle Ages
English Poets in the Late Middle Ages

Author: John A. Burrow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 1351219324

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This volume brings together a selection of lectures and essays in which J.A. Burrow discusses the work of English poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and Hoccleve, as well as the anonymous authors of Pearl, Saint Erkenwald, and a pair of metrical romances. Six of the pieces address general issues, with some reference to French and Italian writings ('Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages', for example, or 'The Poet and the Book'); but most of them concentrate on particular English poems, such as Chaucer's Envoy to Scogan, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Langland's Piers Plowman, and Hoccleve's Series. Although some of the essays take account of the poet's life and times ('Chaucer as Petitioner', 'Hoccleve and the 'Court''), most are mainly concerned with the meaning and structure of the poems. What, for example, does the hero of Ipomadon hope to achieve by fighting, as he always does, incognito? Why do the stories in Piers Plowman all peter out so inconclusively? And how can it be that the narrator in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess so persistently fails to understand what he is told?

York Notes Companions: Medieval Literature
York Notes Companions: Medieval Literature

Author: Carole Maddern

Publisher: Pearson UK

Published: 2014-08-28

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 1292003820

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This volume spans five centuries of post-Conquest literature, written at a time in which enormous social, political and linguistic changes transformed life in Britain. Medieval genres such as Arthurian romance, lyrics, dream narratives and mystery plays are brought to life and accompanied by discussions of key debates such as “Gender and Power”, “The Emergent Individual” and “Society and Class”. Bringing together historical contexts and critical theory, this is essential reading for any student of medieval literature.

A Companion to Middle English Prose
A Companion to Middle English Prose

Author: Anthony Stockwell Garfield Edwards

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9781843840183

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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, historical prose, 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.

Medieval Oral Literature
Medieval Oral Literature

Author: Karl Reichl

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-11-30

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 3110241129

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Medieval literature is to a large degree shaped by orality, not only with regard to performance, but also to transmission and composition. Although problems of orality have been much discussed by medievalists, there is to date no comprehensive handbook on this topic. ‘Medieval Oral Literature’, a volume in the ‘De Gruyter Lexikon’ series, was written by an international team of twenty-five scholars and offers a thorough discussion of theoretical approaches as well as detailed presentations of individual traditions and genres. In addition to chapters on the oral-formulaic theory, on the interplay of orality and writing in the Early Middle Ages, on performance and performers, on oral poetics and on ritual aspects of orality, there are chapters on the Older Germanic, Romance, Middle High German, Middle English, Celtic, Greek-Byzantine, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Turkish traditions of oral literature. There is a special focus on epic and lyric, genres that are also discussed in separate chapters, with additional chapters on the ballad and on drama.

New Medieval Literatures 16
New Medieval Literatures 16

Author: Alexis Kellner Becker

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2016-03

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1843844338

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6 Mixed Feelings in the Middle English Charlemagne Romances: Emotional Reconfiguration and the Failures of Crusading Practices in the Otuel Texts -- 7 Circularity and Linearity: The Idea of the Lyric and the Idea of the Book in the Cent Ballades of Jean le Seneschal -- 8 'What shal I calle thee? What is thy name?': Thomas Hoccleve and the Making of 'Chaucer'

A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance
A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance

Author: Raluca L. Radulescu

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 184384270X

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Popular romance was one of the most wide-spread forms of literature in the Middle Ages, yet despite its cultural centrality, and its fundamental importance for later literary developments, the genre has defied precise definition, its subject matter ranging from tales of chivalric adventure, to saintly women, and monsters that become human. The essays in this collection provide contexts, definitions, and explanations for the genre, particularly in an English context. Topics covered include genre and literary classification; race and ethnicity; gender; orality and performance; the romance and young readers; metre and form; printing culture; and reception.

Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 29
Fifteenth-Century Studies Vol. 29

Author: Edelgard E. DuBruck

Publisher: Camden House

Published: 2004-03-08

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9781571132963

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New essays on topics from love and sexuality to physical handicaps, old age, good and bad fortune, women's virtues, art and literature, and the writing of manuscripts. Fifteenth-Century Studies has appeared annually since 1977. It publishes essays on all aspects of life in the 15th century, including literature, drama, history, philosophy, art, music, religion, science, and ritual and custom. The editors strive to do justice to the most contested medieval century, a period that defies consensus on fundamental issues. In this volume the standard synopsis of research on 15th-c. theater is followed by essays on reflection/meditation on love and sexuality, physical handicaps, old age, betrayal, and false accusations. Contributors investigate good and bad fortune and human reactions to it, as well as women's virtues. Essays deal with poetry, prose, and drama, while others explore art, looking at illuminations, fresco, and tapestry from the vantage point of hagiography and romance. Finally, there is an essay on scribes, codices, and manuscripts from the perspective of New Philology. Contributors: E. DuBruck, C. Azuela, D.E. Booton, L.V. Gerulaitis, R. Hyatte, S. Jefferis, V. Minet-Mahy, C. Politis, M.J. Seaman, E. I. Wade. Edelgard E. DuBruck is professor emerita in the Modern Languages Department at Marygrove College, and Barbara I. Gusick is professor emerita of English at Troy University-Dothan, Dothan, Alabama.