Originally published in 1989, Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages is an anthology of texts looking at the tradition of alliterative poetry in medieval English literature. The book presents lesser known alliterative Middle English poems, which are unmodernised and include explanatory footnotes designed to give clarity to the text and enable critical response to the texts. The book illustrates the great range and variety of alliterative verse, both rhymed and unrhymed. The poems range from descriptions of armies, bloody battles, dramatic storms and dreams of goddesses. Whatever the subject, social and political satire, theological controversy and moral admonition is always given a lively and interesting setting. The book contains a succinct and incisive introductory material and a carefully selected bibliography which will encourage further reading.

Most students of American literature probably can recall the playful French nom de plume--Monsieur de l'Aubépine--that Nathaniel Hawthorne occasionally employed to disguise some of his early attempts at authorship. But very few will know that Monsieur de l'Aubépine enjoyed a surprisingly intelligent critical reception in France during his lifetime. No fewer than six--often startling--essays about the American author appeared in leading French periodicals from 1852 to 1864. The French Face of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Michael Anesko and N. Christine Brookes, recuperates these lost (or forgotten) critical assessments, making available to English readers for the first time the full texts of these extraordinary contemporaneous French critical essays. Besides offering elegantly rendered (and helpfully annotated) translations of the essays, Anesko and Brookes analyze them in relation to their immediate historical context and examine their unexpected relevance to later critical trends and arguments. Literary scholarship in our own time calls more and more for the enlargement of perspective and the adaptation of our reading practices to dismantle the narrower limits of nationalist traditions. The French Face of Nathaniel Hawthorne is a remarkable body of work that can help scholars better understand the complexity of transatlantic cultural exchange in the nineteenth century.

Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages explores the formal composition, public performance, and popular reception of vernacular poetry, music, and prose within late medieval French and English cultures. This collection of essays considers the extra-literary and extra-textual methods by which vernacular forms and genres were obtained and examines the roles that performance and orality play in the reception and dissemination of those genres, arguing that late medieval vernacular forms can be used to delineate the interests and perspectives of the subaltern. Via an interdisciplinary approach, contributors use theories of multimodality, translation, manuscript studies, sound studies, gender studies, and activist New Formalism to address how and for whom popular, vernacular medieval forms were made.

The meter of Middle English alliterative poetry, Thomas Cable contends, holds the key to a reinterpretation of both Old English meter and iambic pentameter, which in turn provides a new understanding of Middle English meter itself. Drawing upon recent insights in linguistics, Cable articulates a revolutionary theory of rhythm in English poetry from its beginnings through the Renaissance and beyond. Cable's discussion moves from the rhythms of Old English poetry and prose to the poetry of Chaucer and the Alliterative Revival, to Shakespeare and T. S. Eliot. He demonstrates that Middle English poetry does not show the continuity of tradition that standard authorities have asserted. With the Norman Conquest of 1066 came a clear break, and what followed was a drastic misreading by the poets of what had come before. Throughout the book, Cable constantly asks fundamental questions regarding the intentions of the poet, the impact of the perceived metrical tradition upon that poet, and, with reference to Peircean abduction, the possibility of constructing any metrical theory, especially one from the distant past. The answers and their implications—metrical, cognitive, and philosophical—provide the foundation for a new understanding of the creation and evolution of English versification from the seventh century to the present. The English Alliterative Tradition is a major and controversial study in medieval English poetics that illustrates and clarifies key ideas of the New Philology. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Old and Middle English, prosody, and historical linguistics.

A guide to the literature written in English from the death of Chaucer to the early sixteenth century from one of the period's pre-eminent literary scholars. Includes a valuable chronology, an informative introductory survey, and detailed sections on prose, poetry, Scottish writing, and drama.

One of the earliest great stories of English literature after ?Beowulf?, ?Sir Gawain? is the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts King Arthur's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging the knights to a wager. Simon Armitrage, one of Britain's leading poets, has produced an inventive and groundbreaking translation that " helps] liberate ?Gawain ?from academia" (?Sunday Telegraph?).

This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written 500 to 1500 A.D., a period that gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential works, such as Dante's Commedia, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. While its emphasis is upon medieval English texts and society, this reference also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and Middle Age culture. Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory, and of genre entries, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. Each entry concludes with a brief biography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.

The Court in English Alliterative Poetry, 1350-1450 explores certain links between literature and society in the portrayal of courtly society in a group of alliterative texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn, Morte Arthure, Wars of Alexander and the Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy. The book examines the social function of the texts and how they affect their audience.

Vita mortuorum in memoria vivorum — volume 5 of the Beyond Language series is dedicated to the memory of Professor Jacek Fisiak, one of the titans in English historical linguistics in Poland and beyond. For over 40 years, he taught at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, where he established a stronghold of English studies in Europe. His efforts were appreciated with medals, awards, honorific titles, and mentoring positions amongst academic bodies. “The present In Memoriam volume undoubtedly counts among the all-encompassing and much-expected individual and collective acts of commemoration to recognize the authority of Professor Jacek Fisiak—the great scientist, the indefatigable Organizer, Manager and Mentor, relentless of any adversity or difficulty; the person whose countless contributions and merits in the history of Polish humanities – especially in the field of philological sciences and English studies in Poland – cannot be overestimated. […] On the one hand, the articles included in the volume yield a multidimensional testimony of the authors' scientific kinship with Professor Fisiak's broad scientific interests. On the other, they present a whole range of individual philological inquiries, starting from texts whose synthetic theoretical overtones prove the rich experience of their authors, through the articles of a more general nature, to prolegomena stimulating further in-depth scientific analyses. […]” (from the review by prof. Grzegorz Kleparski)_____TABLE OF CONTENTS_____Jacek Fisiak 1936–2019____ MENTOR in Academia: The Master in Title and Reality―by Joanna M. Esquibel____PART II. Old and Middle English Literature | Campbell’s “Art of Parallelism” in Old English Poetry: A Reappraisal―by Rory McTurk | The Question of Beowulf’s Relation to Fairy Tales Revisited―by Andrzej Wicher | Cornish Symptoms in the Old English Orosius―by Andrew Breeze | When a Lexical Borrowing Becomes an Ideological Tool: The Case of Saint Erkenwald―by Letizia Vezzosi | Medieval Multitasking: Hoccleve Translates Christine de Pizan and Imitates Chaucer, For Example his Binomials―by Hans Sauer | Mimetic Desires in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur―by Barbara Kowalik____PART III. Old and Middle English language and historical linguistics | Selected Elements of Language Change―by Aleksandra R. Knapik | For and Against Anglo-Frisian: The Linguistic Debate on the Matter―by Katarzyna Buczek | On Speech and Discourse Communities in the Viking Age―by Piotr P. Chruszczewski | East Anglia as an Old English and Middle English Dialect Area―by Peter Trudgill | Middle English Voiced Fricatives Revisited―by Piotr Gąsiorowski | From Where Did the Death of the English Inflection Come?―by Janusz Malak | On the Expansion of the Old Norse Root hap- in Middle English―by Rafał Molencki | So that in Clauses of Result and Purpose in Old English and Middle English―by Jerzy Nykie____PART IV. Adapting Earlier English for Modern Times | Adapting Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Drama for Theatre―by Magdalena Kizeweter, Anna Wojtyś | Medieval Modernism and the New Age Magazine: Creating Modernity While Turning to the Past―by Dominika Buchowska____PART V. Modern English, contrastive studies, and translation studies | Variation in the Use of the 3rd Person Singular Marker in American Private Letters from the mid-19th Century―by Radoslaw Dylewski, Magdalena Bator, Joanna Rabęda | The NAD Phonotactic Calculator: An Online Tool to Calculate Cluster Preferability Across Languages―by Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Dawid Pietrala | Event Construal in Some English Middle and Reflexive Constructions and Their Polish Counterparts―by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk | Problems in Studying Loan-Translations―by Alicja Witalisz | When do nouns control sentence stress placement?―by Aleksander Szwedek____PART VI. Notes on Contributors | Index

'[The book offers] meticulous case studies of authorial technique with much relevant historical detail. Discussion of sound symbolism is laudably precise and informative. [...] Glossed illustrative passages are provided throughout to maintain contact with a large potential audience. [...] The overall quality of the book cannot be ignored. This is an outstanding work of literary analysis.' Geoffrey Russom, Brown University