This essential Middle English textbook, now in its third edition, introduces students to the wide range of literature written in England between 1150 and 1400. New, thoroughly revised edition of this essential Middle English textbook. Introduces the language of the time, giving guidance on pronunciation, spelling, grammar, metre, vocabulary and regional dialects. Now includes extracts from 'Pearl' and Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'. Bibliographic references have been updated throughout. Each text is accompanied by detailed notes.

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.

The purpose of this book is to provide an authoritative duie to a number of important authors and genres of Middle English prose.

What does it mean to contemplate? In the Middle Ages, more than merely thinking with intensity, it was a religious practice entailing utter receptiveness to the divine presence. Contemplation is widely considered by scholars today to have been the highest form of devotional prayer, a rarified means of experiencing God practiced only by the most devout of monks, nuns, and mystics. Yet, in this groundbreaking new book, Eleanor Johnson argues instead for the pervasiveness and accessibility of contemplative works to medieval audiences. By drawing together ostensibly diverse literary genres—devotional prose, allegorical poetry, cycle dramas, and morality plays—Staging Contemplation paints late Middle English contemplative writing as a broad genre that operated collectively and experientially as much as through radical individual disengagement from the world. Johnson further argues that the contemplative genre played a crucial role in the exploration of the English vernacular as a literary and theological language in the fifteenth century, tracing how these works engaged modes of disfluency—from strained syntax and aberrant grammar, to puns, slang, code-switching, and laughter—to explore the limits, norms, and potential of English as a devotional language. Full of virtuoso close readings, this book demonstrates a sustained interest in how poetic language can foster a participatory experience of likeness to God among lay and devotional audiences alike.

Originally published in 1981, Middle English Prose is an edited collection providing an index of research and scholarship on Middle English prose. The book is split into specific thematic areas of scholarship covering such areas as editorial technique and middle English mystical prose, as well as focusing more in detail on specific prose such as Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ. Each chapter contains a collection of useful sources and an editorial analysis and description on each source. Even today, this will provide a useful and valuable resource for researchers of the medieval period.

With its contextualizing introduction, notes, and gloss, this edition makes the Prose Merlin available to any student of Arthurian legend, no matter their level of proficiency in Middle English. Written in the latter half of the fifteenth century, the Prose Merlin is the first work of Arthurian literature written in English prose. The highly original poem, though based upon the French Vulgate cycle tradition of Arthurian legends, is full of episodes, motifs, and characters found nowhere else in the entire Arthurian corpus. Beginning with the story surrounding Merlin's birth, and charting the course of his fantastical life until his ambiguous death, Prose Merlin is an enchanting text for any class studying Arthuriana.

Latest volume in a series which is a monumental achievement (Review of English Studies)