A new and comprehensive anthology of medieval lyrics and carols, in new editions, with introduction and commentary.

Contains over 180 poems, songs, and carols of medieval England in Middle English with extensive linguistic and critical notes.

Medieval Lyric is a colourful collection of lyrical poems, carols, and traditional British ballads written between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with some twentieth-century American versions of them. A lively and engaging collection of lyrical poems, carols, and traditional British ballads written in between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, together with some twentieth-century American versions of them. Introduces readers to the rich variety of Middle English poetry. Presents poems of mourning and of celebration, poems dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and to Christ, poems inviting or disparaging love, poems about sex, and more. Reader-friendly - uses modernized letter forms, punctuation and capitalization, and side glosses explaining difficult words. Opens with a substantial introduction by the editor to the medieval lyric as a genre, and features short introductions to each section and poem. Also includes an annotated bibliography, glossary, index of first lines, and list of manuscripts cited.

This Bibliography assembles annotation of collections and criticism of lyrics of religious and secular love, carols and songs, and rhymes of everyday life. The Middle English lyrics and short poems form a varied group that ranges over most aspects of life to include lyrics of religious and secular love, carols and songs, and mundane rhymes of everyday life. Thus there are expressionsof devotion, ethereal or earthly, theological expositions, and knowledge needed for life. The poems are disparate and generally anonymous, and their survival owes much to chance. The bibliography assembles neutral annotation of collections and criticism of the works, arranged chronologically to show the course of criticism and the growing appreciation of these poems and all they can tell us. The introduction considers these matters, problems of definitionof the genre, and the isolable lyrics, and seeks to reconcile some first impressions of the poems, as disparate and slight, with the rewards of close study. ROSEMARY GREENTREE is currently Visiting Research Fellow, Dept of English, University of Adelaide.

A collection attesting to the richness and lasting appeal of these short forms of Middle English verse.

What was the medieval English lyric? Moving beyond the received understanding of the genre, The Voices of Medieval English Lyric explores, through analysis, discussion, and demonstration, what the term "lyric" most meaningfully implies in a Middle English context. A critical edition of 131 poems that illustrate the range and rich variety of lyric poetry from the mid-twelfth century to the early sixteenth century, The Voices of Medieval English Lyric presents its texts - freshly edited from the manuscripts - in thirteen sections emphasizing contrasting and complementary voices and genres. As well as a selection of religious poetry, the collection includes a high proportion of secular lyrics, many on love and sexuality, both earnest and humorous. In general, major authors who have been covered thoroughly elsewhere are excluded from the edited texts, but some, especially Chaucer, are quoted or mentioned as illuminating comparisons. Charles d'Orléans and the Scots poets Robert Henryson and William Dunbar add an extra-national dimension to a single-language collection. Textual and thematic notes are provided, as well as versions of the poems in Latin or French when these exist. Adopting new perspectives, The Voices of Medieval English Lyric offers an up-to-date, accessible, and distinctive take on Middle English poetry.

Audelay's idiosyncratic devotional tastes, interesting personal life history, and declared political affiliations-loyalty to king, upholder of estates, anxiety over heresy-make him worthy of careful study beside his better-known contemporaries. Of particular note: MS Douce 302 preserves Audelay's own alliterative Marcolf and Solomon, a poem thought to be descended from Langland's Piers Plowman. The Audelay Manuscript also contains unique copies of other alliterative poems of the ornate style seen in Gawain and the Green Knight and The Pistel of Swete Susan. These pieces are Paternoster and Three Dead Kings, both set at the end of the book. Whether or not they are Audelay's own compositions, they seem certain to be his own selections. Audelay also displays a persistent habit of sequencing materials in generic and devotionally affective ways. His is a pious sensibility delicately honed by reverence for the liturgy and by an awe of God. That Audelay's poetry can awaken us to new poetic sensitivities in medieval devotional verse is reason enough to bring him into the ambit of canonical fifteenth-century English poets.