Contradictions: From Beowulf to Chaucer
Contradictions: From Beowulf to Chaucer

Author: Theodore M. Andersson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1351948768

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume brings together a series of key essays by Larry D Benson, well-known for his work in editing the Riverside Chaucer. Of the studies selected, the opening three deal with Old English, recasting the possibilities for the critical study of Beowulf, above all the relation between oral and written literary production. The following ten essays turn to Middle English literature, with the focus first on Chaucer, and the evolution of his works and his language, then on the social and cultural context of medieval chivalric texts. Throughout, Professor Benson approaches his subjects with a skeptical intent, even a seeming contrariness in seeking to contradict received views, but in fact with the purpose of questioning in order to understand more deeply. Scattered in their original publications, and with one hitherto unpublished, together these studies present a powerful argument for this questioning approach to fundamental issues and constitute a major contribution to the study of the literary and cultural history of the medieval world. Larry D Benson is Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English, Harvard University.

Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

Author: Laura C. Lambdin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 1136594256

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written 500 to 1500 A.D., a period that gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential works, such as Dante's Commedia, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. While its emphasis is upon medieval English texts and society, this reference also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and Middle Age culture. Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory, and of genre entries, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. Each entry concludes with a brief biography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.

Charles Olson's Reading
Charles Olson's Reading

Author: Ralph Maud

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9780809319954

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Maud (English, Simon Fraser U.) offers a narrative account of the life and work of poet Charles Olson, focusing on the poet's lifelong reading material as a basis for understanding his work. Drawing on an annotated listing of his library, as well as his childhood books and poetry by his contemporaries, he links the books to the poet's intellectual and poetic development at each stage of his career. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 1, 600-1660
The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 1, 600-1660

Author: George Watson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1974-08-29

Total Pages: 1322

ISBN-13: 9780521200042

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 1 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.

A Handbook to Literature
A Handbook to Literature

Author: William Harmon

Publisher: Prentice Hall

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 698

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thedefinitive,contemporary reference on literature and literary criticism in English, this handbook provides an alphabetical listing of more than 2,000 important terms and facts in literature, linguistics, rhetoric, criticism, printing, bookselling, and information technology.Covers a wide range of terms, most centered in literature, but extending into other areas, such as film, radio, TV, printing, linguistics and literary theory, music, graphic arts, classical studies, and computing and information science terms.For anyone interested in literature and literary criticism.

The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English
The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English

Author: Elaine Treharne

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13: 0191613592

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English brings together the insights of these new fields and approaches with those of more familiar texts and methods of study, to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of medieval literature today. It also returns to first principles in posing fundamental questions about the nature, scope, and significance of the discipline, and the directions that it might take in the next decade. The Handbook contains 44 newly commissioned essays from both world-leading scholars and exciting new scholarly voices. Topics covered range from the canonical genres of Saints' lives, sermons, romance, lyric poetry, and heroic poetry; major themes including monstrosity and marginality, patronage and literary politics, manuscript studies and vernacularity are investigated; and there are close readings of key texts, such as Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Ancrene Wisse and key authors from Ælfric to Geoffrey Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet.

Chaucer and War
Chaucer and War

Author: John H. Pratt

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9780761815884

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Chaucer and War, John Pratt studies Chaucer's attitude toward the warfare of his age and how his major poetry reflects this attitude. Using biographical information, reliable fourteenth-century sources, and Chaucer's own writings, Pratt explores Chaucer's use of war through such works as the Knight's Tale, the Squire's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde. Pratt gives an overview of the military picture during Chaucer's time, examines Chaucer's knowledge of military weapons and his use of this knowledge in his poetry, and evaluates the poetry based on references, word usage, and historical context among others. Pratt concludes that Chaucer, despite his English-Christian perspective, was a writer who knew a good deal about warfare on a global scale, and supported warfare when he felt the cause was just. A strikingly unique perspective from the current evaluations of Chaucer's work, Chaucer and War will be of value to students and scholars of Chaucer and medieval history and literature, as well as those with an interest in the Middle Ages.