LibGuides: Medieval British Literature: Read the Lit

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Beowulf Beowulf is the earliest surviving poem in Old English. Although the authorship is anonymous it is believed to have been written before the 10th century AD. The only extant European manuscript of the Beowulf text is placed at around 1010. The epic tells the tale of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf as he struggles against three adversaries; the monster Grendel, Grendel's mother and an unnamed dragon. The epic was recently released as a blockbuster film starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, John Malkovich, Crispin Glover, Alison Lohman, and Angelina Jolie.
Beowulf and Other Old English Poems (includes Battle of Maldon) The best-known literary achievement of Anglo-Saxon England, Beowulf is a poem concerned with monsters and heroes, treasure and transience, feuds and fidelity. Composed sometime between 500 and 1000 C.E. and surviving in a single manuscript, it is at once immediately accessible and forever mysterious. And in Craig Williamson's splendid new version, this often translated work may well have found its most compelling modern English interpreter. Williamson's Beowulf appears alongside his translations of many of the major works written by Anglo-Saxon poets, including the elegies "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer," the heroic "Battle of Maldon," the visionary "Dream of the Rood," the mysterious and heart-breaking "Wulf and Eadwacer," and a generous sampling of the Exeter Book riddles. Accompanied by a foreword by noted medievalist Tom Shippey on Anglo-Saxon history, culture, and archaeology, and Williamson's introductions to the individual poems as well as his essay on translating Old English, the texts transport us back to the medieval scriptorium or ancient mead hall to share an exile's lament or herdsman's recounting of the story of the world's creation. From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom, to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, the world becomes a place of rare wonder in Williamson's lines. Were his idiom not so modern, we might almost think the Anglo-Saxon poets had taken up the lyre again and begun to sing after a silence of a thousand years.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer's fourteenth-century masterpiece The Canterbury Tales is such a rollicking good read that you'll forget many critics and scholars also regard it as one of the most important literary works in English. A group of pilgrims are traveling together to visit a holy shrine at the Canterbury Cathedral. Along the way, they decide to hold a storytelling contest to pass the time, with the winner to be awarded a lavish feast on the return trip. The tales offered up in turn by each of the travelers run the full gamut of human emotion, ranging from raucous and ribald jokes to heartrending tales of doomed romance. Even if you don't consider yourself a fan of classic literature, The Canterbury Tales is worth a read.
Also available in print: PR1870.A1 W7 2008
The Lays of Marie de France by Marie De France The twelve "lays" of the mysterious medieval poet Mariede France are here presented in sprightly English verse by poet andtranslator David R. Slavitt. Traditional Breton folktales were the rawmaterial for Marie de France's series of lively but profoundconsiderations of love, life, death, fidelity and betrayal, and luckand fate. They offer acute observations about the choices that womenmake, startling in the late twelfth century and challenging even today.Combining a keen wit with an impressive technical bravura, the lays area minor treasure of European culture. ... It was with some shame that he explained how, in the wood, he lived on whatever prey he could capture and kill. She digested this and then inquired of him what his costume was in these bizarre forays. "Lady, werewolves are completely naked," was his reply. She laughed at this (I can't guess why) and asked him where he hid his clothes-- to make conversation, I suppose.
Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory The wizard Merlin foretells that King Arthur's bastard son Mordred will one day bring about the ruin of Camelot. At Merlin's urging, Arthur tries to have the boy killed. Arthur then marries the fair Gwenyvere, who brings the Round Table with her as part of her dowry. But Gwenyvere falls in love with Arthur's favorite knight, Launcelot . Meanwhile, Mordred--who survived the attempt on his life--plots to bring down his father's kingdom. When Mordred exposes Launcelot and Gwenyvere's affair, it threatens to divide Arthur's knights and shatter the fellowship of the Round Table. First published in England in 1485, this epic is credited with combining the disparate Arthurian legends into a cohesive, definitive canon. This is an unabridged version of Sir Thomas Malory's tale of swords, quests, honor, and betrayal.
Robin Hood: The Forresters Manuscript, British Library Additional MS 71158 by Stephen Thomas Knight The discovery of the Forresters Manuscript in 1993 cast new light on the Robin Hood ballad tradition. Dating from about 1670, it contains twenty-one ballads, with two versions of one, providing texts clearly superior to those available in Child's classic ballad collection: for example, the action of Robin Hood and Queen Katherine and The Noble Fisherman, obscure for centuries, is now clear in versions fuller than those apparently cut down tofit the size for broadside publication.Other Forresters texts of high interest are radically variant texts of Robin Hood and Allin a Dale, Robin Hood and the Bishop and The King's Disguise and Friendship with Robin Hood, the last two offering texts some seventy years earlierThis edition offers a full diplomatic text in original spelling with light modern punctuation, textual introductions, notes on text and meaning, glossary and bibliography. A General Introduction discusses the tendencies of the manuscript asa whole, and a Manuscript Description is provided by HILTON KELLIHER, Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the British Library.STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales at Cardiff.IHER, Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the British Library.STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales at Cardiff.IHER, Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the British Library.STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales at Cardiff.IHER, Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the British Library.STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales at Cardiff.
Piers Plowman by William Langland William Langland's 14th-century poem Piers Plowman, a disturbing and often humorous commentary on corruption and greed, remains meaningful today. The allegorical work revolves around the narrator's quest to live a good life, and takes the form of a series of dreams in which Piers, the honest plowman, appears in various guises. Characters such as Conscience, Fidelity and Charity, alongside Falsehood and Guile, are instantly recognizable as our present-day politicians and celebrities, friends and neighbors. Social issues are confronted, including governance, economic relations, criminal justice, marital relations and the limits of academic learning, as well as religious belief and the natural world. This new verse translation from the Middle English preserves the energy, imagery and intent of the original, and retains its alliterative style. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Geoffrey Chaucer 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.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer David Wright's new translation of The Canterbury Tales into modern verse--the first to appear in over thirty years--makes one of the greatest works of English literature accessible to all readers while preserving the wit and vivacity of Chaucer's original text.
The Book of Margery Kempe : the autobiography of the madwoman of God by Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe is the story of a boisterous worldly mystic, that will appeal to modern women. Margery, the mother o fourteen, wife of a debt-ridden & lusty husband, & a hoarder of "secret" sin, brings the world of medieval women alive to contemporary readers.
The Lais of Marie de France by Marie De France Marie de France (fl.late twelfth century) is the earliest known French woman poet, and her laisare among the finest examples of the genre. Laisare short stories in verse based on Breton tales, depicting a moment of crisis in a love relation always intense and refined, and often far more complicated than our received view of courtly love might lead us to suppose.
Geoffrey of Monmouth by Michael J. Curley We know of the Pearl poet only from the four extraordinary poems composed sometime during the late fourteenth century and preserved in a small handwritten manuscript held in the British Library. Sandra Pierson Prior here presents a thorough introduction to these four treasures: Pearl, a dream poem mourning the death of a young maiden; Cleanness and Patience, retellings of biblical narratives stressing their respective virtues; and the famous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a brilliantly conceived Arthurian romance.
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory; Stephen H. A. Shepherd No other edition accurately represents the actual (and likely authorial) divisions of the text as attested to by its two surviving witnesses--Caxton's 1485 print and, especially, the famous Winchester Manuscript. The Winchester Manuscript is now generally agreed to be the more authentic of the two earlier texts. The Norton Critical Edition is the first edition of Malory to recover important elements of this manuscript: paragraphing marginal annotations hierarchies of narrative division as signaled by size and decorative intricacy of initial capitals and font changes The Norton Critical Edition also represents, in black-letter font, the striking rubrication of proper names in the Winchester Manuscript, reconstructing for readers something of an authentic medieval reading experience, one which gives visual support to Malory's extraordinary representation, in character and setting, of a chivalric ideal. No other student edition of Malory contains such extensive contextual and critical support.