Description
Book SynopsisA new and completely revised edition of this authoritative work, intended to encourage personal appreciation and independent appraisal by students of English.
Trade ReviewThese strategies of pedagogy are as important as the scholarship and Swanton has written that rare hybrid, the textbook that can surprise the teacher, the monograph that the student can read without constant recourse to a dictionary of literary terms.
Chris Jones, TOEBI Newsletter * TOEBI Newsletter *
English Poetry Before Chaucer is interesting and thought-provoking. It is a fine guide to re-reading – not so much a handbook to early English literature as a true ‘companion’, one who enjoys showing you all his favourite haunts. […] Learned, insightful, sometimes eclectic, Swanton’s English Poetry Before Chaucer offers a wealth of specific reading on some important, and often-taught, poems.
Susan Yager, The Medieval Review Online * English Poetry Before Chaucer, The Medieval Review Online *
Michael Swanton’s book was welcomed in 1987 for several reasons: its lively independent engagement with critical issues, its determination to discuss particular texts in some detail rather than indulge in a uniform survey, and its refusal to treat the Norman Conquest as if it were some kind of insurmountable divide. Its value has not diminished . . . The chronology, bibliographies and notes on writers, works and sources are also particularly valuable, providing basic information which the student cannot readily find elsewhere.
Joyce M. HillTable of Contents
- Preface
- 1. Introduction: Anxiety and Assertion
- 2. Until the Dragon Comes Widsith, Deor, Waldere, The Fight at Finnsburh and Beowulf
- 3. Verbum de Verbo Caedmon's Creation-Hymn, Genesis A, Exodus and The Dream of the Rood
- 4. The Ruin of Time The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin and The Phoenix, 112
- 5. A Certain Heroism Guthlac A, Judith, The Battle of Maldon and Layamon's Brut
- 6. Things That Falleth to Ribaudrie Havelok, Sir Tristrem, Floris and Blauncheflur and Madam Sirith and the Weeping Bitch
- 7. Song and Singer Foweles in pe Frith, Lenten is Come with Love to Town, The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale, Thomas of Hales' Love-Song, Gabriel's Greeting to the Virgin Mary, Ubi Sount Qui Ante Nos Fuerount, The Follies of Fashion, A Song of Lewes, The Thrush and the Nightingale and The Owl and the Nightingale
- Epilogue: The Equal Hour
- Appendix: Early English Prosody
- Chronology
- Further Reading
- Writers, their Works and Sources
- (i) Writers and writings in English
- (ii) Writers and writings in languages other than English
- Index
