Table of Contents
List of Figures x
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction 1 Corinne Saunders
Part I Old English Poetry 11
Contexts 13
1 The World of Anglo-Saxon England 15 Andy Orchard
2 The Old English Language and the Alliterative Tradition 34 Richard Dance
3 Old English Manuscripts and Readers 51 Rohini Jayatilaka
4 Old English and Latin Poetic Traditions 65 Andy Orchard
Genres and Modes 83
5 Germanic Legend and Old English Heroic Poetry 85 Hugh Magennis
6 Old English Biblical and Devotional Poetry 101 Daniel Anlezark
7 Old English Wisdom Poetry 125 David Ashurst
8 Old English Epic Poetry: Beowulf141 Daniel Anlezark
Part II Middle English Poetry 161
Contexts 163
9 The World of Medieval England: From the Norman Conquest to the Fourteenth Century 165 Conor McCarthy
10 Middle English Language and Poetry 181 Simon Horobin
11 Middle English Manuscripts and Readers 196 Ralph Hanna
Genres and Modes 217
12 Legendary History and Chronicle: Lazamon’s Brut and the Chronicle Tradition 219 Lucy Perry
13 Medieval Debate-Poetry and The Owl and the Nightingale 237 Neil Cartlidge
14 Lyrics, Sacred and Secular 258 David Fuller
15 Macaronic Poetry 277 Elizabeth Archibald
16 Popular Romance 289 Nancy Mason Bradbury
17 Arthurian and Courtly Romance 308 Rosalind Field
18 Alliterative Poetry: Religion and Morality 329 John Scattergood
19 Alliterative Poetry and Politics 349 John Scattergood
Poets and Poems 367
20 The Poet of Pearl, Cleanness and Patience 369 A. V. C. Schmidt
21 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 385 Tony Davenport
22 Langland’s Piers Plowman 401 Lawrence Warner
23 Chaucer’s Love Visions 414 Helen Phillips
24 Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde 435 Alcuin Blamires
25 Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales 452 Corinne Saunders
26 The Poetry of John Gower 476 R. F. Yeager
Part III Post-Chaucerian and Fifteenth-Century Poetry 497
Contexts 499
27 England in the Long Fifteenth Century 501 Matthew Woodcock
28 Poetic Language in the Fifteenth Century 520 A. S. G. Edwards
29 Manuscript and Print: Books, Readers and Writers 538 Julia Boffey
Poets and Poems 555
30 Hoccleve and Lydgate 557 Daniel Wakelin
31 Women and Writing 575 C. Annette Grisé
32 Medieval Scottish Poetry 592 Douglas Gray
33 Courtiers and Courtly Poetry 608 Barry Windeatt
34 Drama: Sacred and Secular 626 Pamela King
Epilogue: Afterlives of Medieval English Poetry 647 Corinne Saunders
Index 661