English Poets In The Late Middle Ages

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?

Authors of the Middle Ages is a series designed for research and reference. The aim is to combine, in one compact work, a biography of a medieval author with all the information needed for further research. The series is divided into two sub-series. The first, edited by M.C. Seymour, focuses on EnglishWriters of the Late Middle Ages and the second, edited by Patrick Geary, deals with Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West. William Caxton was the first English printer and publisher of printed books. He translated many books into English and by the prologues and epilogues added to many of his printed works he helped to establish literary tastes and fashions at the end of the medieval period. The life of Reginald Peacock, bishop, heretic and author, reflects the many controversies of 15th-century England. Drawing on many contemporary sources and based on fresh research. Wendy Scase offers a new interpretation of an enigmatic writer. Douglas Gray traces the lives of the two poets Robert Henryson and William Dunbar. Among the several distinguished poets of late-medieval Scotland. Henryson stands out for his humanity, learned wit and imaginitive power; while Dunbar was one of the most spectacular, flamboyant and versatile Scottish poets of the Middle Ages. This study gives an account of the little that is known of their lives and extensively details both their works and later scholarship. John Capgrave (1393-1464) was an Augustinian friar, Cambridge theologian, hagiographer and chronicler who became Prior Provincial of his order. His life, presented here in the light of fresh research and with full documentation, illuminates the importance of the order in the troubled times of mid 15th-century England.

Originally published in 1939, Early Middle English Literature is a comprehensive overview of various aspects of early Middle English literature. The book examines authorship and provenance and the effect this had upon the literature of the period. This text examines literature from the period of 1066 to 1300 and addresses the transition between Old and Middle English and looks at the effect the transition of language during this period from Anglo-French to English, had on the literature of the time.

The first study of the poetics of vocational crisis in Langland, Hoccleve, and Audelay, and many unattributed works, The Clerical Proletariat and the Resurgence of Medieval English Poetry discusses class, meritocracy, the gig economy, precarity, and the breaking of intellectual elites, speaking to both past and present employment urgencies.

This book traces the evolution of traditional English verse structures from their Old and Middle origins to the Modern English period.