A study of John Trevisa's rhetorical arguments for the value, necessity, and authority of translation in his English 'Polychronicon'. John Trevisa was one of the most prodigious translators living in England in the fourteenth century. His numerous translations of works from Latin into English helped to ensure the creation and perpetuation of late-medieval vernacular history, literature, and culture in Britain. His translation of the 'Polychronicon', a universal history of the world originally compiled byRanulf Higden, is both his magnum opus and his opportunity to present rhetorical arguments for the value, necessity, and authority of translation. Through his paratextual 'Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk on Translation' and prefatory letter to Lord Thomas Berkeley as well as his intertextual explanatory notes to the 'Polychronicon', John Trevisa explores the tasks of the translator.

What would medieval English literature look like if we viewed it through the lens of the compendium? In that case, John Trevisa might come into focus as the major author of the fourteenth century. Trevisa (d. 1402) made a career of translating big informational texts from Latin into English prose. These included Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon, an enormous universal history, Bartholomaeus Anglicus's well-known natural encyclopedia De proprietatibus rerum, and Giles of Rome's advice-for-princes manual, De regimine principum. These were shrewd choices, accessible and on trend: De proprietatibus rerum and De regimine principum had already been translated into French and copied in deluxe manuscripts for the French and English nobility, and the Polychronicon had been circulating England for several decades. This book argues that John Trevisa's translations of compendious informational texts disclose an alternative literary history by way of information culture. Bold and lively experiments, these translations were a gamble that the future of literature in England was informational prose. This book argues that Trevisa's oeuvre reveals an alternative literary history more culturally expansive and more generically diverse than that which we typically construct for his contemporaries, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. Thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century European writers compiled massive reference books which would shape knowledge well into the Renaissance. This study maintains that they had a major impact on English poetry and prose. In fact, what we now recognize to be literary properties emerged in part from translations of medieval compendia with their inventive ways of handling vast quantities of information.

This is the first edition of the Middle English version of an influential treatise on governance entitled De Regimine Principum. The first volume contains a critical text of the Middle English prose and second will provide an introduction, textual notes and a glossary. Aegidius Romanus (Giles of Rome), an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at the University of Paris, composed the Latin treatise that underlies the Middle English text toward the end of the reign of the French king Philip III (1270-85). The work was addressed to the king’s son, who succeeded his father as Philip IV, know as "the Fair" (1285-1314). This edition first published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain vereint erstmals wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zu Multilingualität und Interkulturalität im mittelalterlichen Britannien und bietet mehr als 600 fundierte Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Zusammenhängen und Einflüssen in der Literatur vom fünften bis sechzehnten Jahrhundert. - Einzigartiger multilingualer, interkultureller Ansatz und die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse. Das gesamte Mittelalter und die Bandbreite literarischer Sprachen werden abgedeckt. - Über 600 fundierte, verständliche Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Texten, kritischen Debatten, Methoden, kulturellen Zusammenhängen sowie verwandte Terminologie. - Repräsentiert die gesamte Literatur der Britischen Inseln, einschließlich Alt- und Mittelenglisch, das frühe Schottland, die Anglonormannen, Nordisch, Latein und Französisch in Britannien, die keltische Literatur in Wales, Irland, Schottland und Cornwall. - Beeindruckende chronologische Darstellung, von der Invasion der Sachsen bis zum 5. Jahrhundert und weiter bis zum Übergang zur frühen Moderne im 16. Jahrhundert. - Beleuchtet die Überbleibsel mittelalterlicher britischer Literatur, darunter auch Manuskripte und frühe Drucke, literarische Stätten und Zusammenhänge in puncto Herstellung, Leistung und Rezeption sowie erzählerische Transformation und intertextuelle Verbindungen in dieser Zeit.

Although most modern scholars doubt the historicity of King Arthur, parts of the legend were accepted as fact throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval accounts of the historical Arthur, however, present a very different king from the romances that are widely studied today. Richard Moll examines a wide variety of historical texts including Thomas Gray's Scalacronica and John Hardyng's Chronicle to explore the relationship between the Arthurian chronicles and the romances. He demonstrates how competing and conflicting traditions interacted with one another, and how writers and readers of Arthurian texts negotiated a complex textual tradition. Moll asserts that the enormous variety and number of existing chronicles demonstrates the immense popularity of the historical Arthur in medieval England. Since these chronicles were the dominant source of Arthurian information for the late medieval reader, they provide an invaluable, and neglected, interpretive context for modern readers of Malory and other later medieval romances. The first monograph to look at the impact of these historical texts on Arthurian literature, Before Malory is also the first to show how canonical vernacular romances interacted with chronicle texts that have since dropped out of the canon.

Authors of the Middle Ages is a new series designed for research and reference. Each part, by an expert on the subject, gives an account of the facts known about a particular Author’s life and immediate historical context, together with a review of subsequent scholarship. This is supported by citation of all known contemporary references; a dated and classified list of manuscripts and editions; a bibliography of secondary sources; and appendices listing or printing the key literary and documentary sources. The aim is to combine, in one compact work, a bibliography of a medieval author with all the information needed for further research. Each will be available individually, or in a collection with three other contemporary Authors. Authors of the Middle Ages is divided into two sub-series, English Writers of the Late Middle Ages and historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West.

This essential Middle English textbook, now in its third edition, introduces students to the wide range of literature written in England between 1150 and 1400. New, thoroughly revised edition of this essential Middle English textbook. Introduces the language of the time, giving guidance on pronunciation, spelling, grammar, metre, vocabulary and regional dialects. Now includes extracts from 'Pearl' and Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'. Bibliographic references have been updated throughout. Each text is accompanied by detailed notes.