Middle English Literature

Middle English Literature is a student guide to the most influential critical writing on the subject. The guide brings together a cross–section of key critical work, in order to demonstrate how different schools of thought have treated major interpretative concerns, including authorship, textual form, genre, and literature and history. Extracts from some of the major authorities in the field introduce readers to such diverse approaches as New Criticism, textual criticism, genre criticism, historicism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. These extracts treat a wide range of texts, from ‘The Owl and the Nightingale’ and Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, to Malory’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’ and the Paston letters. Brief overviews from the editor place the pieces in context. By enabling readers to research the critical reception of key works, and to forge new connections between different approaches, this guide steers them through the rich critical terrain of Middle English studies.

Contents Arranged by Middle English Text/Author. Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Authorship:. John Lydgate: The Critical Approach: Derek Pearsall (1970). Literary Theory and Literary Practice: Alastair Minnis. Authority: Tim William Machan (1994). 2. Textual Form:. The Hoole Book: Derek Brewer (1963). Division and Failure in Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Hugh White (1988). 3. Genre:. Middle English Narrative Genres: Paul Strohm (1980). The Religious Tradition: Piero Boitani (1982). 4. Language, Style, Rhetoric:. Early Middle English Narrative Style: A.C. Spearing (1987). The Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women: Diane Watt (1993). Three Languages: Thorlac Turville–Petre (1996). 5. Allegory:. Patristic Criticism: The Opposition: E. Talbot Donaldson (1960). The Poets: Siegfried Wenzel (1967). Intellectual and Religious Interpretations: Kathryn Hume (1975). Allegorical Buildings in Medieval Literature: Jill Mann (1994). 6. Literature and History:. Constructing Social Realities: Helen Barr (2001). Economics: John Bowers (2001). 7. Gender:. Sexual Economics: Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe: Sheila Delany (1983). Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in the Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich’s Showings: Elizabeth Robertson (1993). No Pain, No Gain: Violence as Symbolic Capital in Malory’s Morte Darthur : Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Schichtman (1998). 8. Identity:. Characterisation in the Mystery Cycles: A Critical Prologue: David Mills (1983). ‘In Arthurus Day’: Community, Virtue, and Individual Identity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: David Aers (1988). Troilus and Criseyde and Subjectivity: Lee Patterson (1991). Afterword. Bibliography. Index

Roger Dalrymple is Tutorial Fellow in English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Language and Piety in Middle English Romance (2000) and Associate Editor of the journal Arthurian Literature