In this detailed study of English narrative verse the author describes and analyses the undisputed masterpieces of narrative (such as the works of the Gawain poet, Langland, Gower and Chaucer), as well as anonymous romances and specimens of religious and comic narrative which form the background to more well-known poems.

Orietta Da Rold provides a detailed analysis of the coming of paper to medieval England, and its influence on the literary and non-literary culture of the period. Looking beyond book production, Da Rold maps out the uses of paper and explains the success of this technology in medieval culture, considering how people interacted with it and how it affected their lives. Offering a nuanced understanding of how affordance influenced societal choices, Paper in Medieval England draws on a multilingual array of sources to investigate how paper circulated, was written upon, and was deployed by people across medieval society, from kings to merchants, to bishops, to clerks and to poets, contributing to an understanding of how medieval paper changed communication and shaped modernity.

Medieval England presents the political and cultural development of English society from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Wars of the Roses. It is a story of change, progress, setback, and consolidation, with England emerging as a wealthy and stable country, many of whose essential features were to remain unchanged until the Industrial Revolution. Edmund King traces his chronicle through the lives of successive monarchs, the inescapable central thread of that epoch. The momentous events of the times are also recreated, from the compiling of the Domesday Book, through the wars with the Scots, the Welsh, and the French, to the Peasants' Revolt and the disastrous Black Death.

The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower reviews the most current scholarship on the late medieval poet and opens doors purposefully to research areas of the future. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Working theories: medieval and modern," is devoted to the main theoretical aspects that frame Gower’s work, ranging from his use of medieval law, rhetoric, theology, and religious attitudes, to approaches incorporating gender and queer studies. The second part, "Things and places: material cultures," examines the cultural locations of the author, not only from geographical and political perspectives, or in scientific and economic context, but also in the transmission of his poetry through the materiality of the text and its reception. "Polyvocality: text and language," the third part, focuses on Gower’s trilingualism, his approach to history, and narratological and intertextual aspects of his works. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower is an essential resource for scholars and students of Gower and of Middle English literature, history, and culture generally.

An investigation into the depiction and reception of the figure of Alexander in the literatures of medieval Europe.

This multidisciplinary volume illustrates how representations of magic in fourteenth-century romances link the supernatural, spectacle, and morality in distinctive ways. Supernatural marvels represented in vivid visual detail are foundational to the characteristic Middle English genres of romance and hagiography. In Middle English Marvels, Tara Williams explores the didactic and affective potential of secular representations of magic and shows how fourteenth-century English writers tested the limits of that potential. Drawing on works by Augustine, Gervase of Tilbury, Chaucer, and the anonymous poets of Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, among others, Williams examines how such marvels might convey moral messages within and beyond the narrative. She analyzes examples from both highly canonical and more esoteric texts and examines marvels that involve magic and transformation, invoke visual spectacle, and invite moral reflection on how one should relate to others. Within this shared framework, Williams finds distinct concerns—chivalry, identity, agency, and language—that intersect with the marvelous in significant ways. Integrating literary and historical approaches to the study of magic, this volume convincingly shows how certain fourteenth-century texts eschewed the predominant trends and developed a new theory of the marvelous. Williams’s engaging, erudite study will be of special interest to scholars of the occult, the medieval and early modern eras, and literature.

The novel emerged, McKeon contends, as a cultural instrument designed to engage the epistemological and social crises of the age.