Like the Bible upon which it is based, the metrical paraphrase is unlikely to be a text read cover-to-cover by the faint-hearted. The Paraphrase is, in several ways, a remarkable artifact of the Chaucerian period, one that can reveal a great deal about vernacular biblical literature in Middle English, about readership and lay understandings of the Bible, about the relationship between Christians and Jews in late medieval England, about the environment in which the Lollards and other reformers worked, about perceived roles of women in history and in society, and even about the composition of medieval drama. The Paraphrase-poet's proclamation that he intends to write stories "for sympyll men" (line 19) to understand the Scriptures and be engaged by them-"That men may lyghtly leyre / to tell and undertake yt" (lines 23-24)-thus combines the profit of sacred literature with the pleasure of the secular. This is Horace's utile et dulce ("both useful and pleasing") principle at its clearest, a singular example of the didacticism that characterizes so much of medieval literature, an aesthetic of pedagogic efficacy that is inseparably linked to the essential component of true pleasure in the text.

The medieval poem Cursor Mundi is a biblical verse account of the history of the world, offering a chronological overview of salvation history from Creation to Doomsday. Originating in northern England around the year 1300, the poem was frequently copied in the north before appearing in a southern version in substantially altered form. Although it is a storehouse of popular medieval biblical lore and a fascinating study in the eclectic use of more than a dozen sources, the poem has until now attracted little scholarly attention. This five-part collaborative edition presents the Arundel version of the poem with variants from three others. In addition it provides a discussion of sources and analogues, detailed explanatory notes, and a bibliography.

The medieval poem Cursor Mundi is a biblical verse account of the history of the world, offering a chronological overview of salvation history from Creation to Doomsday. Originating in northern England around the year 1300, the poem was frequently copied in the north before appearing in a southern version in substantially altered form. Although it is a storehouse of popular medieval biblical lore and a fascinating study in the eclectic use of more than a dozen sources, the poem has until now attracted little scholarly attention. This five-part collaborative edition presents the Arundel version of the poem with variants from three others. In addition, it provides a discussion of sources and analogues, detailed explanatory notes, and a bibliography. Published in English.

This volume makes accessible for students of the Middle Ages Middle English verses about heroic women from the Old Testament. Included are The Storie of Asneth, The Pistel of Swete Susan, The Story of Jephthah and his Daughter, and The Story of Judith. These poems exhibit the attitudes of Late Medieval England towards heroic women, and offer an unusually positive depiction of Judiasm. With extensive notes, glosses, and introductions, these verses are valuable to teachers and students of Middle English.

Since the publication of Kennedy's monumental Bibliography of Writings on the English Language, no bibliography has systematically surveyed the Old and Middle English scholarship accumulated over the past 60 years. Tajima's work aims to meet the need for an updated bibliography of Old and Middle English language studies; it lists books, monographs, dissertations, articles, notes, and reviews on Old and Middle English language. The items have been listed into fourteen fairly broad categories: (1) Bibliographies, (2) Dictionaries, glossaries and concordances, (3) Histories of the English language, (4) Grammars (historical, Old English and Middle English), (5) General and miscellaneous studies, (6) Language of individual authors or works, (7) Orthography and punctuation, (8) Phonology and phonetics, (9) Morphology, (10) Syntax, (11) Lexicology, lexicography and word-formation, (12) Onomastics, (13) Dialectology, (14) Stylistics.

"Book and Verse is guide to the variety and extent of biblical literature in England, exclusive of drama and the Wycliffite Bible, that appeared between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. Entries provide detailed information on how much of what parts of the Bible appear in Middle English and where this biblical material can be found."--BOOK JACKET.