The History Book Club discussion

This thread is for discussion of Medieval Literature.



"Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (encompassing the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca. AD 500 to the beginning of the Florentine Renaissance in the late 15th century). The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Just as in modern literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane, touching all points in-between. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, and genre.

Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval...



Topics Include:

1 Languages

2 Anonymity

3 Types of writing
 3.1 Religious
 3.2 Secular
 3.3 Women's literature
 3.4 Allegory

4 Notable literature of the period

5 Specific articles
 5.1 By region or language
 5.2 By genre
 5.3 By period

Please feel free to add books, images pertaining to medieval literature, urls, etc that pertain to this subject area. No self promotion please.

What is Beowulf?

Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest. More than 3,000 lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its eponymous hero, and his successive battles with a monster, named Grendel, with Grendel’s revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure.

by Unknown (no photo)

Synopsis:

Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in ?Beowulf? and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.

The Poem of the Cid: Dual Language Edition

by Anonymous (no photo)

Synopsis:

A poem that details the adventures of the warlord and nobleman Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar - 'Mio Cid'. It tells of the Cid's unjust banishment from the court of King Alfonso, his victorious campaigns in Valencia, and the crowning of his daughters as queens of Aragon and Navarre - the high point of his career as a warmonger.

Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions

by Unknown (no photo)

Synopsis:

"Digenis Akritis" is Byzantium's only epic poem, telling of the exploits of a heroic warrior of "double descent" on the frontiers between Byzantine and Arab territory in Asia Minor in the ninth and tenth centuries. It survives partially in six versions, of which the two oldest are edited here. This edition and translation aims to highlight the nature of the lost poem, and to provide a guide through the maze of recent discussions about the epic and its background.

Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry (Publications for the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London, Vol 2)

by Roderick Beaton (no photo)

Synopsis:

No synopsis available on Goodreads.

Cancioneiro

by D. Dinis (no photo)

Synopsis:

A poesia galaico-portuguesa chegou até nós através de três Cancioneiros manuscritos: o da Biblioteca da Ajuda, dos últimos decénios do século XIII, o da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, antigo Colocci-Brancuti, [...], e o da Biblioteca do Vaticano, originário também da biblioteca de Angelo Colocci. D. Dinis é um dos autores representado nos Cancioneiros com maior número de composições: são da sua autoria 137 textos, nos vários géneros. Nasceu em Lisboa em 1261, tendo falecido em Santarém, em 1325. É filho de D. Afonso III de Portugal e de D. Beatriz de Castela, sendo neto por via materna de Afonso X, de quem terá herdado o génio poético.

Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

by Alfonso X (no photo)

Synopsis:

No synopsis available on Goodreads.

The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

Synopsis:

The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is even more remarkable. But Chaucer's genius needs no historical introduction; it bursts forth from every page of The Canterbury Tales.

If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts.

The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights

by Anonymous (no photo)

Synopsis:

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.

This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.

The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

Synopsis:

The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.

Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.

This Everyman’s edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.

The Decameron

by Giovanni Boccaccio

Synopsis:

The Decameron (c.1351) is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions.

Great adds Jose.

Songs of a Friend: Love Lyrics of Medieval Portugal: Selections from Cantigas de Amigo

(no image) Songs of a Friend: Love Lyrics of Medieval Portugal: Selections from Cantigas de Amigo by Barbara Hughes Fowler (no photo)

Synopsis:

Portugal enjoyed one of the richest and most sophisticated cultures of the Middle Ages, in part because of its vibrant secular literature. One popular literary genre of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the cantigas de amigo, love songs in which male poets wrote from a female perspective. More than five hundred of these mysterious poems depicting a young girl's love for an absent lover survive today. Until now, however, they have remained inaccessible except to a small circle of scholars.

The Greek Alexander Romance

by Pseudo-Callisthenes (no photo)

Synopsis:

Mystery surrounds the parentage of Alexander, the prince born to Queen Olympias. Is his father Philip, King of Macedonia, or Nectanebo, the mysterious sorcerer who seduced the queen by trickery? One thing is certain: the boy is destined to conquer the known world. He grows up to fulfil this prophecy, building a mighty empire that spans from Greece and Italy to Africa and Asia. Begun soon after the real Alexander's death and expanded in the centuries that followed, "The Greek Alexander Myth" depicts the life and adventures of one of history's greatest heroes - taming the horse Bucephalus, meeting the Amazons and his quest to defeat the King of Persia. Including such elements of fantasy as Alexander's ascent to heaven borne by eagles, this literary masterpiece brilliantly evokes a lost age of heroism.

Canzoniere: Selected Poems

by Francesco Petrarca

Synopsis:

This is a translation of 60 poems from Petrarch's Canzoniere, readable as English verse but also faithful to Petrarchan technique and structure, with a mixture of full rhyme and half-rhymes. The selection includes poetry from the first and second parts of the Canzoniere (known as 'in vita' and 'in mote') and includes samples of all the various forms - the dominant sonnet and canzone, and also the sestina and the madrigal, as well as the love poetry. The book also contains selections from the public and political poems, including the great patriotic canzone 'Italia mia' and the scathing anti-papal sonnets that appealed to Reformation England. The notes identify the major literary allusions and citations, elucidate imagery, point out links to petrarch's major prose and show the thematic repetitions and variations that combine to create the complex overall structure of the Canzoniere, revealing the Petrarchan influence on the English Renaissance. There is Italian text on the facing page, a full critical introduction, chronology of Petrarch's life, further reading, and full annotation.

Arthurian Romances

by Chrétien de Troyes

Synopsis:

Fantastic adventures abound in these courtly romances: Erec and Enide, Cligés, The Knight of the Cart, The Knight with the Lion, and The Story of the Grail.

The Romance of Tristan

by Béroul (no photo)

Synopsis:

One of the earliest extant versions of the Tristan and Yseut story, Beroul's French manuscript of The Romance of Tristan dates back to the middle of the twelfth century. It recounts the legend of Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and the king's Irish wife Yseut, who fall passionately in love after mistakenly drinking a potion. Their illicit romance remains secret for many years, but the relentless suspicion of the king's barons and the fading effects of the magic draught eventually lead to tragedy for the lovers. While Beroul's work emphasizes the impulsive and often brutal behaviour of the characters, its sympathetic depiction of two people struggling against their destiny is one of the most powerful versions of this enduringly popular legend.

The Song of Roland

by Anonymous (no photo)

Synopsis:

Nowhere in literature is the medieval code of chivalry more perfectly expressed than in this masterly & exciting poem, translated here by Dorothy L. Sayers, an expert in medieval literature perhaps best know for her sixteen crime novels.

Introduction
Poem
Feudal picture
Vassalage
Tokens
Chivalry
Rules of battle
Nurture & companionage
Horses & swords
Verse & the translation
Acknowledgements
Note on costume
Song of Roland
Note on Laisse 50

The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

by Pierre Abélard

Synopsis:

The story of the relationship between Abélard and Héloïse is one of the world’s most celebrated and tragic love affairs. It is told through the letters of Peter Abélard, a French philosopher and one of the greatest logicians of the twelfth century, and of his gifted pupil Héloïse. Through their impassioned writings unfolds the story of a romance, from its reckless, ecstatic beginnings through to public scandal, an enforced secret marriage and its devastating consequences. These eloquent and intimate letters express a vast range of emotions from adoration and devotion to reproach, indignation and grief, and offer a fascinating insight into religious life in the Middle Ages.

This is the revised edition of Betty Radice's highly regarded translation, in which Michael Clanchy, the biographer of Abélard, updates the scholarship on the letters and the lovers. This volume includes Abélard's remarkable autobiography and his spiritual advice to Héloïse and her nuns, as well as a selection of the 'lost love letters' of Abélard and Héloïse, letters between Héloïse and Peter the Venerable, two of Abélard's hymns, a chronology, notes and maps.

The "Cantigas de Santa Maria" (Music video)



Acting Group: Capella Reial de Catalunya (Hesperion XXI)

Maestro: Jordi Savall

Description: The "Cantigas de Santa Maria" are a set of 420 poems mid 13th century in the Galician-Portuguese language (very used at the time in the Iberian Peninsula as a cultural tongue just like the Occitan) whose authorship is unknown (the role of Alfonso X of Leon and Castile in their creation is highly debatable, but it's more likely he was the author of just some of these poems while the rest was done by the poets of his court) and which are mainly about the Virgin Mary and her miracles (despite some non-religious poems). They are accompanied by musical notation (very rare for the considered period), which allows for recreations of the probable way they were sung, however imperfect they might be (there are many studies under progress about this topic). Here is Jordi Savall's masterful reenactment (which I personally love, namely the "Santa Maria Strella do Dia").

Link: The "Cantigas de Santa Maria"

The Women Troubadours

by Meg Bogin (no photo)

Synopsis:

This is the first twentieth-century study of the women troubadours who flourished in Southern France between 1150 and 1250—the great period of troubadour poetry. The book is comprised of a full-length essay on women in the Middle Ages, twenty-three poems by the women troubadours themselves in the original Provencal with translations on facing pages, a capsule biography of each poet, notes, and reading list.

How parchment is made - Domesday - BBC Two




Description: Although the facilities aren't medieval, the process here presented of making parchments is very close to the one practised in the Middle Ages. It's very interesting and helps us to understand one of the reasons why parchment was so expensive in the medieval era.

Link: How parchment is made

Thank you Jose

The Travels

by Marco Polo

Synopsis:

Marco Polo (1254-1324) spent the best part of 20 years globe-trotting from the Polar Sea to Java, from Zanzibar to Japan and probably travelled more extensively than anyone before him. His travels began in 1271 when he accompanied his father and uncle on their second visit to China. There he worked as a diplomat, undertaking numerous missions in the service of Kubilai Khan.

Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories

by Unknown (no photo)

Synopsis:

They date from the thirteenth century and fall into two distinct groups. Hrafnkel's Saga, Thorstein the Staff-Struck, and Ale Hood are set in the pastoral society of native Iceland, the homely touch and stark realism giving the incidents a strong feeling of immediacy.

The remaining four - Hreidar the Fool, Halldor Sorrason, Audun´s Story, and Ivar´s Story - were written without first-hand knowledge of Scandinavia, and describe the adventures of Icelandic poets and peasants at the royal courts of Norway and Iceland. Pagan elements tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics give these stories their distinctive character and cohesion.

The Romance of the Rose

by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (no photo)

Synopsis:

This is a new translation of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life from predestination and optics, to the Franciscan controversy and the right way to deal with premature hair-loss.

Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings

by Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Synopsis:

Among the great works of world literature, perhaps one of the least familiar to English readers is the Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, the national epic of Persia. This prodigious narrative, composed by the poet Ferdowsi between the years 980 and 1010, tells the story of pre- Islamic Iran, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab invasion in the seventh century.

As a window on the world, Shahnameh belongs in the company of such literary masterpieces as Dante's Divine Comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, the epics of Homer- classics whose reach and range bring whole cultures into view. In its pages are unforgettable moments of national triumph and failure, human courage and cruelty, blissful love and bitter grief.

In tracing the roots of Iran, Shahnameh initially draws on the depths of legend and then carries its story into historical times, when ancient Persia was swept into an expanding Islamic empire. Now Dick Davis, the greatest modern translator of Persian poetry, has revisited that poem, turning the finest stories of Ferdowsi's original into an elegant combination of prose and verse. For the first time in English, in the most complete form possible, readers can experience Shahnameh in the same way that Iranian storytellers have lovingly conveyed it in Persian for the past thousand years.

Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition

by Martha Bayless (no photo)

Synopsis:

Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition surveys and analyzes Latin parodies of texts and documents--Biblical parody, drinker's masses, bawdy litanies, lives of saints such as Nemo (Nobody) and Invicem (One-Another), and nonsense texts--in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. This book also sketches in the background to the canonical works of medieval literature: Chaucer's fabliaux, French comic tales such as the Roman de Renart, and medieval satire in general.

Bayless' study shows with great clarity that parody was a significant and vibrant literary form in the Middle Ages. In addition, her research sheds new light on clerical culture. The clerics who composed these parodies were far from meddling guardians of somber piety; rather, they appeared to see no contradiction between merriment and devotion. The wide dissemination and long life of these drolleries--some circulated for a thousand years--indicate a taste for clerical amusement that challenges conventional views of medieval solemnity.

Parody in the Middle Ages surveys in detail five of the most common traditions of parody. It provides a complete list of all known medieval Latin parodies, and also provides twenty complete texts in an appendix in the original Latin, with English translations. These texts have been collated from over a hundred manuscripts, many previously unknown. The study brings to light both a form and many texts that have remained obscure and inaccessible until now.

Parody in the Middle Ages appeals to the modern audience not only for its cultural value but also for the same reason the parodies appealed to the medieval audience: they are simply very funny. This welcome new volume will be of particular interest to students of medieval satire and literary culture, to medieval Latinists, and to those who want to explore the breadth of medieval culture.

Thank you Jose

The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

Synopsis:

Boethius was an eminent public figure under the Gothic emperor Theodoric, and an exceptional Greek scholar. When he became involved in a conspiracy and was imprisoned in Pavia, it was to the Greek philosophers that he turned. The Consolation of Philosophy was written in the period leading up to his brutal execution. It is a dialogue of alternating prose and verse between the ailing prisoner and his 'nurse' Philosophy. Her instruction on the nature of fortune and happiness, good and evil, fate and free will, restore his health and bring him to enlightenment. This work was extremely popular throughout medieval Europe and his ideas were influential on the thought of Chaucer and Dante.

By the way, does someone a work in English about the "Coena Cypriani"? I wanted to post a translation or a study about it given its popularity in the Middle Ages (it was written probably between the 4th and 5th centuries AD). Thank you!

The Quest of the Holy Grail

by Anonymous (no photo)

Synopsis:

Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism, reinterpreting ancient Celtic myth as a profound spiritual fable. It recounts the quest of the knights of Camelot - the simple Perceval, the thoughtful Bors, the rash Gawain, the weak Lancelot and the saintly Galahad - as they journey through danger and temptation to reach the elusive Holy Grail. But only one of them is judged worthy to see the mysteries within the sacred vessel, and look upon the ineffable. Enfused with tragic grandeur and an aura of mysticism, The Quest is an absorbing and radiant allegory of man's perilous search for divine grace, and had a profound influence on later Arthurian romances and versions of the Grail legend.

The Book of the City of Ladies

by Christine de Pizan

Synopsis:

In dialogues with three celestial ladies, Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, Christine de Pizan (1365-ca. 1429) builds an allegorical fortified city for women using examples of the important contributions women have made to Western Civilization and arguments that prove their intellectual and moral equality to men. Earl Jeffrey Richards' acclaimed translation is used nationwide in the most eminent colleges and universities in America, from Columbia to Stanford.

Four Byzantine Novels: Theodore Prodromos, Rhodanthe and Dosikles; Eumathios Makrembolites, Hysmine and Hysminias; Constantine Manasses, Aristandros and Kallithea; Niketas Eugenianos, Drosilla and Charikles

by Elizabeth Jeffreys (no photo)

Synopsis:

Four of the earliest novels ever written— all from twelfth-century Constantinople— are now available in new translations in a single volume. These novels, perhaps the most attractive and unexpected products of the Byzantine millennium, have been largely neglected by scholars and readers. Placing the novels and their writers in their literary and historical contexts, this volume is the most recent step toward a critical restoration of these works that follow the romantic adventures of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus.

Lies, Slander and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker

by Edwin David Craun (no photo)

Synopsis:

Drawing on manuscript sources, this book examines how the medieval clergy developed the authority and persuasive force to attempt to govern the day-to-day speech of Western Christians. It explores, for the first time, how Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the "Patience" poet presented and judged these attempts to label some political, social and private speech as deviant and destructive--as lying, slander, blasphemy and other Sins of the Tongue.

The Utrecht Psalter, a 9th century masterpiece and the most valuable manuscript in the Netherlands, has been added to the Unesco Memory of the World Register

It can be viewed/read online (with Engl. translation) here:

http://psalter.library.uu.nl/?p=1&amp...

More on the manuscript:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utrecht...

by K. Van Der Horst (no portrait available)

Thanks, André! I need to add this to the Medieval Art folder - the Utrecht psalter is one of the "ex libris" of Carolingian art. :)

The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library

by Marcus Tanner (no photo)

Synopsis:

Seizing the Hungarian throne at the age of fifteen, Matthias Corvinus, the "Raven King,” was an effervescent presence on the fifteenth-century stage. A successful warrior and munificent art patron, he sought to leave as symbols of his strategic and humanist ambitions a strong, unified country, splendid palaces, and the most magnificent library in Christendom. But Hungary, invaded by Turkey after Matthias's death in 1490, yielded its treasures, and the Raven King’s exquisite library of two thousand volumes, witness to a golden cultural age, was dispersed first across Europe and then the world.

The quest to recover this collection of sumptuously illuminated scripts provoked and tantalized generations of princes, cardinals, collectors, and scholars and imbued Hungarians with the mythical conviction that the restoration of the lost library would seal their country's rebirth. In this thrilling and absorbing account, drawing on a wealth of original sources in several languages, Marcus Tanner tracks the destiny of the Raven King and his magnificent bequest, uncovering the remarkable story of a life and library almost lost to history.

The Etymologies Of Isidore Of Seville

by Isidore of Seville

Synopsis:

This work is a complete English translation of the Latin Etymologies of Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c.560 636). Isidore compiled the work between c.615 and the early 630s and it takes the form of an encyclopedia, arranged by subject matter. It contains much lore of the late classical world beginning with the Seven Liberal Arts, including Rhetoric, and touches on thousands of topics ranging from the names of God, the terminology of the Law, the technologies of fabrics, ships and agriculture to the names of cities and rivers, the theatrical arts, and cooking utensils. Isidore provides etymologies for most of the terms he explains, finding in the causes of words the underlying key to their meaning. This book offers a highly readable translation of the twenty books of the Etymologies, one of the most widely known texts for a thousand years from Isidore's time.

Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period

by M.J.L. Young (no photo)

Synopsis:

This volume of the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature deals with writings on learned subjects from the 'Abbasid period (8th to 13th centuries AD), the golden age of Arabic literature. These cover a wide area, from philosophy, theology and law, through grammar and lexicography, to mathematics, astronomy and medicine. There are separate chapters on six of the greatest scholars of the period, on the development of translations from Greek into Arabic, and on the Arabic literature of the Christians and Jews who lived under the rule of the 'Abbasid caliphate.

Women Readers in the Middle Ages

by D.H. Green (no photo)

Synopsis:

Throughout the Middle Ages, the number of female readers was far greater than is commonly assumed. D. H. Green shows that, after clerics and monks, religious women were the main bearers of written culture and its expansion. Moreover, laywomen played a vital part in the process whereby the expansion of literacy brought reading from religious institutions into homes, and increasingly from Latin into vernacular languages. This study assesses the various ways in which reading was practised between c.700 and 1500 and how these differed from what we mean by reading today. Focusing on Germany, France and England, it considers the different categories of women for whom reading is attested (laywomen, nuns, recluses, semi-religious women, heretics), as well as women's general engagement with literature as scribes, dedicatees, sponsors and authors. This fascinating study opens up the world of the medieval woman reader to new generations of scholars and students.

Geoffrey Chaucer

by Peter Brown (no photo)

Synopsis:

Geoffrey Chaucer lived through a period of extraordinary upheaval: a protracted war with France, a devastating plague, the peasants' revolt, religious controversy, and the overthrow of the king. This compact and comprehensive volume--a new work in Oxford's Authors in Context series--offers a wide-ranging account of the medieval society from which works such as The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde sprang, and shows how these and other works capture that society in fictional form. Peter Brown examines significant aspects of the literary scene, such as patronage, audience, and performance, helping to place Chaucer's practices in their historical framework, and Brown frames Chaucer's treatment of love, paganism, and reality within their intellectual and philosophical contexts. The book also examines the modern reception of Chaucer in film and television adaptations. By placing this great medieval writer's work in the context of his cultural experience, this volume provides the perfect critical companion to Chaucer's life and poetry. The book also includes a chronology of Chaucer's life, suggestions for further reading, websites, illustrations, and a comprehensive index.

Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages

by Joachim Bumke (no photo)

Synopsis:

Every aspect of "courtly culture" comes to life in Joachim Bumke's extraordinarily rich and well-documented presentation. A renowned medievalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of original sources and a passion for history, Bumke overlooks no detail, from the material realities of aristocratic society -- the castles and clothing, weapons and transportation, food, drink, and table etiquette -- to the behavior prescribed and practiced at tournaments, knighting ceremonies, and great princely feasts. The courtly knight and courtly lady, and the transforming idea of courtly love, are seen through the literature that celebrated them, and we learn how literacy among an aristocratic laity spread from France through Germany and became the basis of a cultural revolution. At the same time, Bumke clearly challenges those who have comfortably confused the ideals of courtly culture with their expression in courtly society.

Thank you Samantha for updating the Medieval threads.

The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

by C.S. Lewis

Synopsis:

Hailed as the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind, this work paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The Writings of Medieval Women, 2nd Edition: An Anthology

by Marcelle Theibaux (no photo)

Synopsis:

"Royal and saintly women are well-represented here, with the welcome addition of women from the Mediterranean arc...Garland has done a solid job of presenting this book." -- Arthuriana
"The Anthology gives a fine sense of the great range of women's writing in the Middle Ages." -- Medium Aevum

King Arthur in Legend and History

by Richard White

Synopsis:

In this volume, Richard White has collected a diverse selection of medieval Arthurian literature and history, culling from Latin, English, Welsh, French and German sources, presenting many passages translated into English for the first time. White's selections enable the reader to understand how the rich Arthurian tapestry evolved over a period of more than 500 years, King Arthur in Legend and History also includes a chronology of key Arthurian texts, maps, an appendix of Arthurian Courts, a list of sources, suggestions for further reading and a bibliography.

The Classical Heritage in Islam (Arabic Thought and Culture)

by Franz Rosenthal (no photo)

Synopsis:

'The Classical Heritage In Islam' reveals that the Muslim adoption of Greek works and ideas was not blind imitation or the haphazard acceptance of traditions but rather an original synthesis and a unique achievement.

Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch

by Dorothy Verkerk (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Ashburnham Pentateuch is an early medieval illuminated manuscript of the Old Testament whose pictures are among the oldest surviving and most extensive biblical illustrations.

Dorothy Verkerk reveals how its colorful and complex illustrations of Genesis and Exodus explained important church teachings.

She provides a key to understanding the relationship between the text and pictures.

Arguing that the manuscript was created in Italy, Verkerk also solves a mystery that has baffled scholars over the last century.

The Mabinogion

by author:Unknown|4699102] (no photo)

Synopsis:

The Mabinogion (Welsh pronunciation: mabɪˈnɔɡjɔn) is a collection of 11 prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs and early medieval historical traditions. While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each of the tales is the product of a developed medieval Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written.