This Bibliography assembles annotation of collections and criticism of lyrics of religious and secular love, carols and songs, and rhymes of everyday life. The Middle English lyrics and short poems form a varied group that ranges over most aspects of life to include lyrics of religious and secular love, carols and songs, and mundane rhymes of everyday life. Thus there are expressionsof devotion, ethereal or earthly, theological expositions, and knowledge needed for life. The poems are disparate and generally anonymous, and their survival owes much to chance. The bibliography assembles neutral annotation of collections and criticism of the works, arranged chronologically to show the course of criticism and the growing appreciation of these poems and all they can tell us. The introduction considers these matters, problems of definitionof the genre, and the isolable lyrics, and seeks to reconcile some first impressions of the poems, as disparate and slight, with the rewards of close study. ROSEMARY GREENTREE is currently Visiting Research Fellow, Dept of English, University of Adelaide.

Medieval Lyric is a colourful collection of lyrical poems, carols, and traditional British ballads written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with some twentieth-century American versions of them. A lively and engaging collection of lyrical poems, carols, and traditional British ballads written in between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with some twentieth-century American versions of them. Introduces readers to the rich variety of Middle English poetry. Presents poems of mourning and of celebration, poems dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and to Christ, poems inviting or disparaging love, poems about sex, and more. Reader-friendly - uses modernized letter forms, punctuation and capitalization, and side glosses explaining difficult words. Opens with a substantial introduction by the editor to the medieval lyric as a genre, and features short introductions to each section and poem. Also includes an annotated bibliography, glossary, index of first lines, and list of manuscripts cited.

Stevick's classic work remains the only text of its kind aimed at fostering the linguistic competence necessary to understand its poems in Middle English. The wide range of lyric poems in the book are normalized to a Chaucerian dialect. The introduction has been revised to take into account the scholarship and criticism published since the first edition appeared in 1964. It gives the background for the poetry, explains how and why the texts are normalized, and reviews significant critical scholarly studies of the works. Included is a section on morphology and grammar that introduces students to the language of the lyrics, and a section on the evolving meter of Middle English. "A fine piece of work. . . . Learned, wide-ranging, and judicious." -- John B. Friedman, author of The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought "An impressive collection. Stevick's decision to normalize the texts makes it highly accessible." -- Ralph Hanna III, University of California, Riverside

He shows the men and women who sang and played in medieval Europe as the heirs of both a Roman and a Germanic lyric tradition, united but differentiated from country to country; he introduces the scholars and musicians from the Byzantine world and the Paris schools, the German courts and Italian city-states, and he brilliantly presents their work, both sacred and profane.

Originally published in 1977, Old English and Middle English Poetry provides a historical approach to English poetry. The book examines the conditions out of which poetry grew and argues that the functions that it was assigned are historically integral to an informed understanding of the nature of poetry. The book aims to relate poems to the intellectual and formal traditions by which they are shaped and given their being. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying or working in the fields of literature and history alike.