"An essential volume for medievalists and scholars of comparative literature, Medieval Lyric opens up a reconsideration of genre in medieval European lyric. Departing from a perspective that asks how medieval genres correspond with twentieth-century ideas of structure or with the evolution of poetry, this collection argues that the development of genres should be considered as a historical phenomenon, embedded in a given culture and responsive to social and literary change.".

Originally published in 1990, the main purpose of this anthology is to present the vernacular secular lyric of the Middle Ages, although it also includes Latin literature of the Middle Ages and the influence of the hymn.

Included among the sacred books of Judaism and Christianity alike, the Song of Songs does not mention God at all; on the surface it is a lyrical exchange between unnamed lovers who articulate the range of emotions associated with sexual love. Ann W. Astell here examines medieval reader response, both interpretive and imitative, to the Song. Disputing the common view that the literal meaning of Canticles had no value for medieval readers, Astell points to twelfth-century commentaries on the Song, as well as an array of Middle English works, as evidence that the Song's sensuous imagery played an essential part in its tropological appeal. Emphasizing the ways in which a complex fusion of the Song's carnal and spiritual meanings appealed rhetorically to a variety of audiences, Astell first considers interpretive responses to Canticles, contrasting Origen's dialectical exposition with the affective commentaries of the twelfth century—ecclesiastical, Marian, and mystical. According to Astell, these commentaries present Canticles as a marriage song that mirrors a series of analogous marriages, both within the individual and between human and divine persons. Astell describes interpretations of the Song of Songs in terms of the various feminine archetypes that the expositors emphasize—the Virgin, Mother, Hetaira, or Medium. She maintains that the commentat5ors encourage the auditor's identification with the figure of the Bride so as to evoke and direct the feminine, affective powers of the soul. Turning to literature influenced by the Song, she then discusses how the reading process is reinscribed in selected works in Middle English, including Richard Rolle's autobiographical writings, Pearl, religious love lyrics, and cycle dramas. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages provides an innovative model of reader response that opens the way for a deeper understanding of the literary influence of biblical texts.

The number of surviving medieval secular poems attributed to named female authors is small, some of the best known being those of the trobairitz the female troubadours of southern France. However, there is a large body of poetry that constructs a particular textual femininity through the use of the female voice. Some of these poems are by men and a few by women (including the trobairitz); many are anonymous, and often the gender of the poet is unresolvable. A "woman's song" in this sense can be defined as a female-voice poem on the subject of love, typically characterized by simple language, sexual candor, and apparent artlessness. The chapters in Medieval Woman's Song bring together scholars in a range of disciplines to examine how both men and women contributed to this art form. Without eschewing consideration of authorship, the collection deliberately overturns the long-standing scholarly practice of treating as separate and distinct entities female-voice lyrics composed by men and those composed by women. What is at stake here is less the voice of women themselves than its cultural and generic construction.

This book examines the relation of words and music in England and France during the three centuries following the Norman Conquest. The basic material of the study includes the chansons of the troubadours and trouvères and the varied Latin songs of the period. In addition to these 'lyric' forms, the author discusses the relations of music and poetry in dance-song, in narrative and in the ecclesiastical drama. Professor Stevens examines the ready-made, often unconscious, and misleading assumptions we bring to the study and performance of early music. In particular he affirms the importance of Number, in more than one sense, as a clue to the 'aesthetic' of the greater part of repertoire, to the relation of words and melody. and to the baffling problem of their rhythmic interpretation. This is the first wide-ranging study of words and music in this period in any language. It will be essential reading for scholars of the music and the literature of medieval Europe and will provide a basic and comprehensive introduction to the repertoire for students.

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

Is birdsong music? The most frequent answer to this question in the Middle Ages was resoundingly "no." In Sung Birds, Elizabeth Eva Leach traces postmedieval uses of birdsong within Western musical culture. She first explains why such melodious sound was not music for medieval thinkers and then goes on to consider the ontology of music, the significance of comparisons between singers and birds, and the relationship between art and nature as enacted by the musical performance of late-medieval poetry. If birdsong was not music, how should we interpret the musical depiction of birdsong in human music-making? What does it tell us about the singers, their listeners, and the moral status of secular polyphony? Why was it the fourteenth century that saw the beginnings of this practice, continued to this day in the music of Messiaen and others?Leach explores medieval arguments about song, language, and rationality whose basic terms survive undiminished into the present. She considers not only lyrics that have their singers voice the songs or speech of birds but also those that represent other natural, nonmusical, sounds such as human cries or the barks of dogs. The dangerous sweetness of birdsong was invoked in discussions of musical ethics, which, because of the potential slippage between irrational beast and less rational woman in comparisons with rational human masculinity, depict women's singing as less than fully human. Leach's argument comes full circle with the advent of sound recording. This technological revolution-like its medieval equivalent, the invention of the music book-once again made the relationship between music and nature an acute preoccupation of Western culture.

An anthology of 245 Middle English lyrics that includes modernized punctuation, capitalization, and obsolete letters, making the text easier to read and understand.