Old English and Middle English Poetry

Description

Originally published in 1977, Old English and Middle English Poetry provides a historical approach to English poetry. The book examines the conditions out of which poetry grew and argues that the functions that it was assigned are historically integral to an informed understanding of the nature of poetry. The book aims to relate poems to the intellectual and formal traditions by which they are shaped and given their being. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying or working in the fields of literature and history alike. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Original Title Page Original Copyright Page Contents General editor’s preface Introduction Abbreviations Chapter 1: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition Germanic traditions The ‘heroic’ poems Beowulf: heroic and Christian traditions Beowulf: methods, style and form Beowulf: Latin and monastic background Beowulf: date and provenance Chapter 2: Anglo-Saxon religious poems Scriptural poems Saints’ lives Devotional poems Homiletic poetry Meditative poems: the ‘elegies’ Chapter 3: Late Old English poetry and the transition ‘Classical’ poetry in late Old English Poetry and prose ‘Popular’ poetry Transitional verse and prose Transitional verse Transitional ‘prose’ Chapter 4: Poetry in the early Middle English period English and Anglo-Norman Clerical tradition: poetry of the ‘schools’ The friars’ miscellanies Poetry of popular instruction Lazamon Thirteenth-century romance and chronicle Chapter 5: Some fourteenth-century books and writers MS Harley 2253 Collections of religious verse The Vernon MS The Auchinleck MS and the romances Chapter 6: Alliterative poetry The alliterative revival Early poems of the revival The techniques of alliterative verse The Morte Arthure Other historical poems The Gawain-poems ‘Classical’ poetry: conclusion Piers Plowman The Piers Plowman group Other alliterative poems Stanzaic alliterative poems Chapter 7: Court poetry Chaucer at court The Chaucer circle Chaucer: language, techniques and literary background Chaucer as a narrative poet John Gower Fifteenth-century courtly tradition Chapter 8: The close of the Middle Ages The fifteenth century John Lydgate The formal poetic tradition Religious poetry Drama Romances and popular poetry The Transition Scots poetry Chapter 9: Conclusion Appendix 1 Technical terms, mainly metrical Appendix 2 Chronological Table Notes Index