English Poets in the Late Middle Ages

English Poets in the Late Middle Ages PDF Author: John A. Burrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351219324
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together a selection of lectures and essays in which J.A. Burrow discusses the work of English poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and Hoccleve, as well as the anonymous authors of Pearl, Saint Erkenwald, and a pair of metrical romances. Six of the pieces address general issues, with some reference to French and Italian writings ('Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages', for example, or 'The Poet and the Book'); but most of them concentrate on particular English poems, such as Chaucer's Envoy to Scogan, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Langland's Piers Plowman, and Hoccleve's Series. Although some of the essays take account of the poet's life and times ('Chaucer as Petitioner', 'Hoccleve and the 'Court''), most are mainly concerned with the meaning and structure of the poems. What, for example, does the hero of Ipomadon hope to achieve by fighting, as he always does, incognito? Why do the stories in Piers Plowman all peter out so inconclusively? And how can it be that the narrator in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess so persistently fails to understand what he is told?

English Poets in the Late Middle Ages

English Poets in the Late Middle Ages PDF Author: John A. Burrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351219324
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together a selection of lectures and essays in which J.A. Burrow discusses the work of English poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries: Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and Hoccleve, as well as the anonymous authors of Pearl, Saint Erkenwald, and a pair of metrical romances. Six of the pieces address general issues, with some reference to French and Italian writings ('Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages', for example, or 'The Poet and the Book'); but most of them concentrate on particular English poems, such as Chaucer's Envoy to Scogan, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Langland's Piers Plowman, and Hoccleve's Series. Although some of the essays take account of the poet's life and times ('Chaucer as Petitioner', 'Hoccleve and the 'Court''), most are mainly concerned with the meaning and structure of the poems. What, for example, does the hero of Ipomadon hope to achieve by fighting, as he always does, incognito? Why do the stories in Piers Plowman all peter out so inconclusively? And how can it be that the narrator in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess so persistently fails to understand what he is told?

Imagined Romes

Imagined Romes PDF Author: C. David Benson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271083956
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores the conflicting representations of ancient Rome—one of the most important European cities in the medieval imagination—in late Middle English poetry. Once the capital of a great pagan empire whose ruined monuments still inspired awe in the Middle Ages, Rome, the seat of the pope, became a site of Christian pilgrimage owing to the fame of its early martyrs, whose relics sanctified the city and whose help was sought by pilgrims to their shrines. C. David Benson analyzes the variety of ways that Rome and its citizens, both pre-Christian and Christian, are presented in a range of Middle English poems, from lesser-known, anonymous works to the poetry of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate. Benson discusses how these poets conceive of ancient Rome and its citizens—especially the women of Rome—as well as why this matters to their works. An insightful and innovative study, Imagined Romes addresses a crucial lacuna in the scholarship of Rome in the medieval imaginary and provides fresh perspectives on the work of four of the most prominent Middle English poets.

Making of the English Literary Canon

Making of the English Literary Canon PDF Author: Trevor Ross
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773566996
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Get Book Here

Book Description
An indigenous canon of letters, Ross argues, had been both the hope and aim of English authors since the Middle Ages. Early authors believed that promoting the idea of a national literature would help publicize their work and favour literary production in the vernacular. Ross places these early gestures toward canon-making in the context of the highly rhetorical habits of thought that dominated medieval and Renaissance culture, habits that were gradually displaced by an emergent rationalist understanding of literary value. He shows that, beginning in the late seventeenth century, canon-makers became less concerned with how English literature was produced than with how it was read and received.

William Langland's "Piers Plowman"

William Langland's Author: William Langland
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812215618
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A gifted poet has given us an astute, adroit, vigorous, inviting, eminently readable translation. . . . The challenging gamut of Langland's language . . . has here been rendered with blessed energy and precision. Economou has indeed Done-Best."—Allen Mandelbaum

Ovid in the Middle Ages

Ovid in the Middle Ages PDF Author: James G. Clark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107002052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores the extraordinary influence of Ovid upon the culture - learned, literary, artistic and popular - of medieval Europe.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (A New Verse Translation)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (A New Verse Translation) PDF Author:
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393334155
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
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?).

Beowulf and Other Old English Poems

Beowulf and Other Old English Poems PDF Author: Constance Hieatt
Publisher: Bantam Classics
ISBN: 0307434826
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Unique and beautiful, Beowulf brings to life a society of violence and honor, fierce warriors and bloody battles, deadly monsters and famous swords. Written by an unknown poet in about the eighth century, this masterpiece of Anglo-Saxton literature transforms legends, myth, history, and ancient songs into the richly colored tale of the hero Beowulf, the loathsome man-eater Grendel, his vengeful water-hag mother, and a treasure-hoarding dragon. The earliest surviving epic poem in any modern European language. Beowulf is a stirring portrait of a heroic world–somber, vast, and magnificent.

Chaucer and Langland

Chaucer and Langland PDF Author: John M. Bowers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the political, social, and religious factors that contributed to the formation of a literary canon in fourteenth-century England. This book tracks the reputations of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland into the fifteenth century, when studies of 14th-century literature became configured in terms of a double, antagonistic dynamic.

The History of English Poetry

The History of English Poetry PDF Author: Thomas Warton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 654

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid

A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid PDF Author: John F. Miller
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118876180
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid presents more than 30 original essays written by leading scholars revealing the rich diversity of critical engagement with Ovid’s poetry that spans the Western tradition from antiquity to the present day. Offers innovative perspectives on Ovid’s poetry and its reception from antiquity to the present day Features contributions from more than 30 leading scholars in the Humanities. Introduces familiar and unfamiliar figures in the history of Ovidian reception. Demonstrates the enduring and transformative power of Ovid’s poetry into modern times.