Search results for ""medieval institute publications""

On several counts, one particular collection of French lyrics made in France in the late fourteenth century, University of Pennsylvania MS 15, is the most likely repository of Chaucer's French poems. It is the largest manuscript anthology extant of fourteenth-century French lyrics in the formes fixes (balade, rondeaux, virelay, lay, and five-stanza chanson) with by far the largest number of works of unknown authorship.

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Despite its title, Caxton's Game and Playe of the Chesse does not, in fact, have much to say about a game or about playing it ... Instead, the work uses the chessboard and its pieces to allegorize a political community whose citizens contribute to the common good. Readers first meet the king, queen, bishops (imagined as judges), knights, and rooks, here depicted as the king's emissaries. They are then introduced to the eight different pawns, who represent trades that range from farmers to messengers ... Paired with each profession is a list of moral codes ... These pairings reinforce the idea of a kingdom organized around professional ties and associations, ties that are in turn regulated by moral law. - from the Introduction

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Whereas some literary motifs such as the tyrant, the beggar, and the crone have equivalents in the real world, the Loathly Lady is a creature of the imagination. Yet she is not merely a whimsical fantasy. This volume concentrates on the medieval English Loathly Lady tales, which develop the motif as a vehicle for social ideology. One of the primary agendas of this collection is to promote the non-canonical Loathly Ladies as worthwhile subjects for scholarly consideration. The examinations here of the medieval English Loathly Lady tales engage with a myriad of concerns, including anxieties about virginity and sex, power and assimilation, beauty and beastliness. These broad examinations of this enigmatic literary motif are an excellent contribution to the field and will be of great interest to scholars.

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The Temple of Glas takes the form of an elusive and suspenseful-but for that reason all the more sensational-dream vision that demands close attention to detail and the dynamic way in which the meaning of events unfolds. Seducing readers with possibilities remains what the poem does best, and that special magnetism speaks not only to the provenance and textual history of Lydgate's text but also to its literary qualities.

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At the forefront of the medieval wisdom tradition was The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, a long prose text that purports to be a compendium of lore collected from biblical, classical, and legendary philosophers and sages. Dicts and Sayings was a well-known work that traveled across many lands and was translated into many languages. It became popular in England in the fifteenth century, and cemented its place in English literary history on 18 November 1477, when William Caxton printed an edition of Dicts and Sayings that was perhaps the first book ever printed in England. Dicts and Sayings is presented as a series of truisms handed down from a wise speaker to a receptive audience. The text introduces its audience to a long series of eminent wise men, with each philosopher's words of wisdom being preceded by a biographical story that ranges from a few words to several manuscript pages.

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Continuing work begun by previous scholars, New Directions in Boethian Studies brings together recent studies from the diverse perspective of recent scholarship published during the first decade of Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society, a journal which seeks to make sound editions of texts and commentaries, both Latin and vernacular, more readily available to scholars. The book is divided into five sections according to the following areas of study: 1) aspects of Boethius’s Latin De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2) vernacular translations of the Consolatio, 3) multidisciplinary perspectives on Boethius in art and literary history, 4) multidisciplinary perspectives on Boethius in art and literary history, and 5) ongoing efforts to find and edit unpublished translations and major studies of Boethius’s works. The study of Boethius, his works, and his influence continues to expand as scholars turn their attention to interdisciplinary and heretofore neglected areas of research. The essays and the critical edition presented in this collection represent the ongoing discussions of established and emerging scholars who are drawn to Boethius, undeniably one of the most central and seminal thinkers in the Western tradition.

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The poems in this volume were prized and preserved because of their association with Chaucer's name and have been, paradoxically, almost entirely ignored by modern readers for the same reason. Many of these pieces are worthy of study, not only in the context of Chaucerian reception, but also as specimens of the kinds of vernacular poetry that circulated in late medieval manuscripts and which remained in print, largely by the accidental virtue of their association with Chaucer, throughout the Renaissance and well into the nineteenth century. The various genres represented in this sampler (the dream vision, good counsel, female panegyric, mass parody, proverbial wisdom, lover's dialogue, prochecy, advice to princes, elegiac complaint, courtly parody, and anti-feminist satire) attest to the diversity of late medieval literary tastes and to the flexibility of the courtly idiom. In the sixteenth century both Chaucer's poetry and the diverse works with which it circulated appear to have continued to have been valued for their perceived courtly qualities. Chaucer's early scribal and print editors also appear to have prized his sphere of influence (attested to by imitation, continuation, and emendation) and his adaptability to contemporary social and political needs.

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John Lydgate's The Siege of Thebes, written c. 1421–22, is the only Middle English poetic text that recounts the fratricidal struggle between Oedipus's sons Eteocles and Polynices as they contend for the lordship of Thebes. The text reflects the problem of poetic authority and the political and ethical themes of Lydgate's poetic career in the 1420s, when he was writing as a Lancastrian propagandist and as unofficial royal poet.

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The Wallace catalogs the sheer brutality of war. We are regaled with such detailed accounts of the sacking of towns and the burning down of buildings full of screaming inhabitants that the smells and sounds, as well as the terrible sights, of war are graphically conveyed in language which seems designed not only to express Wallace's rage and Hary's antipathy but also to incite hatred of the English in his readers.

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Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection maintains a secure place among the major religious treatises composed in fourteenth-century England. This guide to the contemplative life, written in two books of more than 40,000 words each, is notable for its careful explorations of its religious themes and also as a monument of Middle English prose. Its popularity is attested by the fact that some forty-two manuscripts containing one or both of the books survive, with a relatively large number of manuscipts with Book I alone, which suggests it may have been the more popular of the two. Hilton (born c. 1343) was a member of the religious order known as the Augustinian Canons. There is reason to believe that be was trained in canon law and studied at the University of Cambridge. He was the author of a number of works in English and Latin, all much shorter than The Scale. He died at the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire in 1396. On the basis of the content of certain of his works it can be safely inferred that he was actively involved in some of the religious controversies current in England in the 1380s and 1390s, and his principal concern, evident in The Scale , is to defend orthodox belief, especially in the conduct of the contemplative life.

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In Paying the Piper Elizabeth Baldwin studies the early music situation in a single county, Cheshire, from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the Civil War, focusing on music outside the regular control of the church and looking not only at the trained professional but at music makers, from the performers at guild feasts to the gentleman who takes music lessons and the alehousekeeper who plays the pipes. Baldwin attempts to set the performer of music in a social, economic, legal, and possibly political context. Who was performing music, where, when, and why? What instruments were played, and by whom? What attitudes were there towards music, and how did they vary according to circumstances and religious affiliation? Did Cheshire's special status with respect to the Statute of Vagabonds really make any difference to the performers in the county?

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In Paying the Piper Elizabeth Baldwin studies the early music situation in a single county, Cheshire, from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the Civil War, focusing on music outside the regular control of the church and looking not only at the trained professional but at music makers, from the performers at guild feasts to the gentleman who takes music lessons and the alehousekeeper who plays the pipes. Baldwin attempts to set the performer of music in a social, economic, legal, and possibly political context. Who was performing music, where, when, and why? What instruments were played, and by whom? What attitudes were there towards music, and how did they vary according to circumstances and religious affiliation? Did Cheshire’s special status with respect to the Statute of Vagabonds really make any difference to the performers in the county?

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Wyclif sought the restoration of an idealized past even if that meant taking revolutionary steps in the present to recover what had been lost. His 1377-78 On the Truth of Holy Scripture represents such an effort in reform: the recognition of the inherent perfection and veracity of the Sacred Page which serves as the model for daily conduct, discourse, and worship, thereby forming the foundation upon which Christendom itself is to be ordered.

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Shoaf here presents a hitherto neglected Middle English text for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms: Thomas Usk's The Testament of Love. Left unpublished since the nineteenth century, Usk's modern edition includes glosses, notes, and a contextualizing introduction to assist students of all levels in approaching Usk's Middle English poem. The fourteenth-century work describes Love descending to Usk's prison cell, and the two engaging in a long, theological conversation reminiscent of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. Notable for its idiosyncratic imagery, wide variety of themes, and Christian sentimentality, The Testament of Love is a fascinating text to be studied in any Middle English classroom.

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The contributions by distinguished American and British scholars to this volume recognize that early drama depended on specific developments in material culture in order to achieve its effects, which included both visual and auditory means of appealing to audiences. The discussions range from the parchment and paper on which the plays were written to the instruments which enhanced their production. Of special interest is Mary Remnant's survey of musical instruments available to producers; she is the recognized expert on medieval English instruments.

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For all its spiritual cheerfulness and obvious importance as a tale to conclude tales, a last word from a notable maker of words, The Parson's Tale seems to have inspired sentence and solaas in remarkably few critics. This volume rejects the tradition that assumes the tale to be of questionable literary value. The studies included span the range of Parson's Tale criticism from the textual, to the philological, to the hermeneutical. What they share is the assumption that if one is to understand the role of The Parson's Tale, one must begin by accepting the language and method by which Chaucer fashioned it. This rethinking of traditional scholarship on this crucial aspect of The Canterbury Tales will be of great interest to Chaucer scholars and students of medieval literature.

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The Easter Sepulchre is the English form of a monument known throughout Western Europe in the Middle Ages as the sepulchrum domini, the tomb of the Lord, the monument associated specifically with the commemorative Easter rites. The Easter Sepulchre stood in the place of Christ's tomb in Jerusalem, recreated in hundreds of churches in England for Holy Week and Easter each year. This volume discusses this important monument that stands at the intersection of several important aspects of medieval culture: its study impinges upon the fields of drama, liturgy, art history, and social history. The study is organized so as to trace individual threads - the representations of the Holy Sepulchre in art, the development of the commemorative Easter rites, and the form and iconography of the Easter Sepulchre - before describing the pattern that results when they are interwoven. This volume is of critical interest to those studying this monument, and sheds light on the intersections of medieval English developments in art, liturgy, drama, and popular religion.

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The publication of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur by William Caxton was a signal event in the history of English literature and printing. Compiled to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of that occasion, this volume contains critical studies of Malory's work, supplemented by essays that place that work in the larger context of Caxton's canon. The different approaches and methodologies in the essays reflect the variety of means through which an understanding of the Morte has been sought.

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The study of the early art of England can be frustrating for scholars, as the destruction by iconoclasm and neglect was very thorough in certain regions. This volume seeks to aid those studying the early art, including relics and musical iconography, of Coventry, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick, and other Warwickshire locations. Accompanied by 71 illustrations and 2 maps, the subject lists found within provide information from records and antiquarian accounts that should prove invaluable in visualizing the dimensions of the iconography of both lost and extant early art from the region.

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The study of the early art of England can be frustrating for scholars, as the destruction by iconoclasm and neglect was very thorough in certain regions. This volume seeks to aid those studying the early art, including relics and musical iconography, of Coventry, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick, and other Warwickshire locations. Accompanied by 71 illustrations and 2 maps, the subject lists found within provide information from records and antiquarian accounts that should prove invaluable in visualizing the dimensions of the iconography of both lost and extant early art from the region.

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The breadth of articles contained in this volume reflects the breadth of Bryce Lyon's scholarly interests. Topics include marriage rules as they relate to women and incest, Bernard of Clairvaux, Henry I, and executions in late medieval Paris. This collection honors Bryce Lyon and his considerable impact on medieval studies as a whole.

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Beginning in 1987, the yearbook was the preeminent venue for scholarship on "Piers Plowman"; on related poems in the tradition of didactic alliterative verse and on the historical, religious, and intellectual contexts in which such poems were produced in late medieval England. Each volume contains essays, reviews and an annotated bibliography.

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The third Morton W. Bloomfield Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 1993.

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This edition contains two poems valuable to the study of satire of social abuses in the fourteenth century: Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Both combine two genres of medieval poetry: dream visions and poetic debates. As the editor observes, the poem's perspectives are truly dizzying: on the one hand, economics, politics, ethics and social relations are seen as an interrelated set of universal, timeless principles; on the other, they appear as actual, contingent conditions that have resulted from specific acts in history. The editions include notes, glosses, an introduction, and a glossary, making them accessible to beginning and advanced students in Middle English alike.

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Beginning in 1987, the yearbook was the preeminent venue for scholarship on "Piers Plowman"; on related poems in the tradition of didactic alliterative verse and on the historical, religious, and intellectual contexts in which such poems were produced in late medieval England. Each volume contains essays, reviews and an annotated bibliography.

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Early Christianity understood the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) as the immediate outcome of the Jewish rejection of Jesus, a view later reinforced by the perception of permanent Jewish degradation evident in the continued exile and inferior status of Jews in the societies that hosted them. Aware of this view, Jews of Western Christendom interpreted their suffering in more triumphal ways. Hebrew narratives of the First Crusade (1096) depict the Christian understanding of Crusader attacks on Jewish communities as part of the ongoing degradation of Jews and evidence that they ought to convert to Christianity. Two important Hebrew sources, the Mainz Anonymous and the Solomon bar Simson Chronicle, counter this view with the perspective of a glorification of Jewish martyrdom found in the same events. By the mid-thirteenth century, the argument that Jewish suffering was a result of God's rejection of the Jews was paramount to Christian efforts to win over Jews in forced debates and forced sermons - instruments employed by such converts as Friar Paul and Alfonso of Valladolid. Jewish authors, such as Nahmanides (in his famous debate with Friar Paul) and Rabbi Mordechai ben Joseph of Avignon, asserted that Christian claims of divine favor were erroneous, and that God's promise of redemption for Jews was still valid. These methods to resist Christian assertions of superiority and affirm the grandeur of Jewish experience were essential for the continuity of Jewish life in the Middle Ages.

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The first of two volumes dedicated to the memory of Paul Remy and having as theme the scientific domain to which he had dedicated his research for nearly forty years: the Occitan literature and language.

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This book will serve as an invaluable research tool for students and scholars with an interest in art relating to early drama, as well as those whose interests lie more in local art history, specifically that of Chester. Though it may not contain the bumper-crop of surviving subject-art as a city such as York possesses, Chester nevertheless holds much of value and interest, as the list in this book aptly demonstrates. Richly illustrated and carefully arranged, this book is a tremendous catalog of surviving subject-art and will reward any scholar who pulls it from the bookshelf.

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Despite a good deal of research and writing concerning the development and intellectual transformation in the period of the early university, the subject remains in many respects enigmatic. This collection of essays in honor of Otto Gründler tackles many of the questions that run to the heart of the early university. The volume will be of interest to scholars of the period as well as anyone familiar with issues of today's academic profession, as the questions that confronted the early university are not so unfamiliar today: What exactly is the "life of the mind"? What should one learn in a university? What is learning itself "good for"? What is a discipline, and is it possible for disciplines to reinforce each other? Can some university disciplines be identified as givens, as forming an unquestionably self-evident basis for university study? And even that most basic question: What is a university after all? This collection of essays from experts in a range of fields confronts these questions in a broad, satisfying way that expands and clarifies the questions that are as relevant today as they were in the thirteenth century.

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Despite a good deal of research and writing concerning the development and intellectual transformation in the period of the early university, the subject remains in many respects enigmatic. This collection of essays in honor of Otto Gründler tackles many of the questions that run to the heart of the early university. The volume will be of interest to scholars of the period as well as anyone familiar with issues of today's academic profession, as the questions that confronted the early university are not so unfamiliar today: What exactly is the "life of the mind"? What should one learn in a university? What is learning itself "good for"? What is a discipline, and is it possible for disciplines to reinforce each other? Can some university disciplines be identified as givens, as forming an unquestionably self-evident basis for university study? And even that most basic question: What is a university after all? This collection of essays from experts in a range of fields confronts these questions in a broad, satisfying way that expands and clarifies the questions that are as relevant today as they were in the thirteenth century.

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This book brings together and translates from the medieval Latin a series of commentaries on the biblical book of Ruth, with the intention of introducing readers to medieval exegesis or biblical interpretation. . . . Ruth is the shortest book of the Old Testament, being only four chapters long. It is partly for this reason that it lends itself so well to a short book introducing medieval exegesis; but it is also of interest in itself. Ruth poses a number of exegetical problems, including the basic one of why such an odd book, in which God never appears as an actor, and with a central character who was not an Israelite but a Moabite outsider, and a woman at that, should find a place in the canon of Scripture.

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This fresh classroom edition of the Middle English poems of Laurence Minot, with its introduction, gloss, notes, and glossary, enables students of all levels to encounter Minot's poetry. A difficult figure to identify, Laurence Minot wrote a set of eleven poems celebrating English victories against the French between 1333 and 1352, soon after the conclusion of said victories. This volume offers students valuable insights into fourteenth-century English poetry and an inimitable English poet's perspective on the Hundred Years' War.

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This volume is the first to make the Middle English Breton lays available to teachers and students of the Middle Ages. Breton lays were produced by or after the fashion of Marie de France in the twelfth century and claim to be "literary versions of lays sung by ancient Bretons to the accompaniment of the harp." The poems edited in this volume are considered distinctly "English" Breton lays because of their focus on the family values of late medieval England. With the volume's helpful glosses, notes, introductions, and appendices, the door is opened for students to study Middle English poetry and the medieval family alike.

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This new edition makes available to students of English romance and of the Matter of Britain two significant Middle English Arthurian romances: Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem. The former, a late fifteenth century romance, tells of the adventures of Lancelot, bearing many similarities to the Vulgate Prose Lancelot, but also includes a lengthy section of political advice. The latter is an uncourtly, parodic poem about the knight Tristrem. With its introductions, glosses, notes, and glossary, this accessible edition enables students to enrich their sense of the texture of English treatments of the vast body of legends that grew around the court of Arthur.

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Depositions (or testimony) in marriage cases brought before fifteenth-century English church courts reveal the attitudes and feelings of medieval people towards the marital bond.

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Dedicated to Judson Boyce Allen-whose work ranged from the specialized study of manuscripts through the interpretation of particular literary texts to the broadest issues of history-essays in this collection deal with such varied subjects as word and meaning in different versions of commentaries, manuals for preaching, manuscript materials for fourteenth-century vernacular texts and the claim of auctour, rubrics accompanying manuscript texts of Petrarch's story of Griselda, and women as writers and readers of manuscripts. The essays are written by friends in tribute to a scholar whose work and life inspired many. The volume will be of interest to medievalist scholars of literature, manuscripts, and manuscript culture.

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When Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, his massive project, the Canterbury Tales, lay unfinished and unpublished. This volume includes five works that aim to fill in the gaps in this incomplete masterpiece. The pieces presented here date from the fifteenth century and survive in at least one manuscript collection of Chaucer's tales: John Lydgate's Prologue to the Siege of Thebes, The Ploughman's Tale, The Cook's Tale, Spurious Links, and The Canterbury Interlude and Merchant's Tale of Beryn. These pieces of Chaucerian apocrypha have been collected into one student-friendly edition, including introductions, notes, glosses, and a glossary to accommodate students of all levels of experience in Middle English.

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These texts are English versions of romances well known in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, but outside the modern canon of early English literature. Unlike Caxton's other romances, they do not belong to the matters of the Nine Worthies; they are independent narratives of love and adventure presenting two differing but complementary accounts of chivalry and courtly love. Following fifteenth-century fashions, they treat conventional materials with a degree of realism and imbue characters with subjectivity. "Blanchardyn," published at the behest of Margaret, mother of Henry VII, is militaristic and attentive to governance, and notable for its affective, redundant narration and sophisticated style. "Paris" features a linear plot, lively characters, and employs generic motifs to explore issues of social mobility, family dynamics, and female autonomy. Blanchardyn and Eglantine and Paris and Vienne were last edited in 1890 and 1957, respectively. This edition incorporates recent scholarship and criticism, including new critical editions of French texts closely related to Caxton's sources for both romances. Other relevant scholarly traditions include: studies of the two romances and late medieval romance in England and France; gender studies, especially the role of women in these narratives; scholarship relating to the owners and readers of Caxton's romances and associated manuscripts; studies of courtesy literature and its relationship to romance; and scholarship on Caxton, his career, publications, prose style, and language.

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The legend of Theophilus is a widely disseminated medieval miracle story. A good man gives in to Vain Glory, sells his soul to the Devil, has a terrible crisis of conscience, and is saved by the Virgin. The story is translated into most European languages and appears in stained glass, sculpture, and manuscripts. Gautier de Coinci writes the longest version of the legend; its colourful details reveal the medieval period's deep fear of hell and the Devil and its high hopes in the Virgin and the Church. Gautier de Coinci (1177–1236) was a French abbot and musical arranger, chiefly known for his devotion to the Virgin Mary. This is the first English translation of Gautier de Coinci's pre-Faustian version of the legend of Theophilus. It is presented in a facing-page translation with the original Old French, along with a full introduction and notes.

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The renowned scholar-poet John of Garland wrote the Integumenta Ovidii (“Allegories on Ovid”) in early thirteenth-century Paris at a time of renewed interest in Classical Latin literature. In this short poem, John offers a series of dense, highly allusive allegories on various Greek and Roman myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The text is here edited and translated for the first time in 90 years, drawing on the evidence of over two dozen manuscripts. The edition presents the original Latin text with facing-page modern English translation. Comprehensive explanatory notes help readers to understand John’s condensed allegories in their medieval context. Textual notes discuss the various difficulties in the transmitted text of the poem, and offer several improvements on the texts of the older editions.

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This volume makes available for the first time in English an edition of the medieval romance Blandin de Cornoalha, including the original Occitan text, a translation and an introduction to the work. Composed in the second half of the fourteenth century by an anonymous author, the story offers the first recording of the Sleeping Beauty folktale, incorporated into the adventures of two knights. Many elements in the romance are comic, suggesting that Blandin is not simply a tale of knights in battle, but also a parody of medieval romance in general.

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An edition of the early Middle English verse sequence contained in the thirteenth-century Oxford Jesus College MS 29 (II) with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales’s Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript. Made in the West Midlands, the Jesus 29 manuscript is the lengthiest all-English verse collection known to exist in the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics.

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The Destruction of Jerusalem, also called Titus and Vespasian, is a fifteenth-century fictionalised version of the historical Roman siege of Jerusalem. Marked by antisemitism, Christian nationalism and violence, this Middle English poem weaves together sources both medieval and classical, transforming first-century Romans into Christian agents of divine vengeance. This new edition expands our understanding of fall of Jerusalem narratives in later medieval England, bringing attention to a long-ignored English retelling of these first-century events that captivated Christian audiences. Here presented in the most comprehensive edition to date, the poem will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Middle English romance, the Crusades, medieval antisemitism and literary reimaginings of historical events. The edition will be of value particularly in courses focused on Crusades traditions, traditions of medieval anti-Semitism, vernacular theology, or late medieval depictions of difference more broadly. The work complements other volumes in the METS series such as The King of Tars, Richard Coer de Lion and Crusades romances such as Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances.

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Composed for King Henry VI in the middle of the Wars of the Roses, Of Knyghthode and Bataile adapts the most widely used military manual in the Middle Ages into English verse. That work is here edited by Michael Livingston and Trevor Russell Smith from all four surviving manuscripts, and presented with a contextualizing introduction and copious notes and glosses. Responding to both the evolution of warfare and the historical background of his own time, its anonymous poet produced what one critic has called "one of the most brilliant military poems of the fifteenth century."

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This edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances centre on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.

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This volume joins new editions of both texts of John Lydgate's The Dance of Death, related Middle English verse, and a new translation of Lydgate's French source, the Danse macabre. Together these poems showcase the power of the danse macabre motif, offering a window into life and death in late medieval Europe. In vivid, often grotesque, and darkly humorous terms, these poems ponder life's fundamental paradox: while we know that we all must die, we cannot imagine our own death.

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Guillaume de Machaut, a pioneer of a new school of lyric compositions, is the most important poet and composer of late medieval France. This volume provides a freshly prepared edition based on the most reliable manuscript of two of Machaut’s best known dits, the Remede de Fortune (Remedy for Fortune) and the Confort d’ami (Consolation from a Friend), both of which adapt the central ideas of Boethian philosophy to the love poetry tradition. Less well known than the Remede, the Confort d’Ami is an important political document and exemplifies one of the most significant of medieval literary forms, the regiment principum. The work is addressed to Machaut’s imprisoned patron, Charles of Navarre, who attempted to seize the throne of France upon his release. The music of the intercalated lyrics in the Remede is here included in situ in performance-accessible form, as are the manuscript illuminations in grisaille. Detailed commentaries on Machaut, these poetical works, the accompanying music, and the art program of the base manuscript are also included.

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