The Oxford Anthology of English Literature Volume 1: Medieval English Literature

by Trapp, J. B.; Gray, Douglas; Boffey, Julia

• ISBN13: 9780195134926
• ISBN10: 0195134923
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Medieval English Literature is the first volume of the comprehensive Oxford Anthology of English Literature to be published in a second, expanded, and fully revised edition. It provides an authoritative and representative selection from the vast riches of Anglo-Saxon and Middle Englishliterature of the period between AD 700 and AD 1500. The texts are presented either in full or in ample selections, helpfully and fully glossed and annotated according to the most recent scholarship. They are situated in their cultural context through general and particular introductions and throughthe carefully chosen illustrations, many of them new. Texts, annotations, introductions, and the bibliography have been thoroughly revised and brought up to date, and there is a full glossary of literary and historical terms. Anglo-Saxon poetry appears in modern verse translation. In addition to the whole of Beowulf (Edwin Morgan's translation), elegies, The Dream of the Rood, and The Battle of Maldon, there is a sampling of wisdom literature and of biblical epic made with particular reference to the situation ofwomen in Anglo-Saxon society. The generous choice of Chaucer's poetry, in a lightly modernized, glossed text, now includes, as well as the General Prologue and the tales of the Miller, the Nun's Priest, the Wife of Bath (with her Prologue), the Franklin, and the Pardoner, an extract from The Legendof Good Women, and others from the Scottish Chaucerians Henryson and Dunbar. For romance, the whole of the third book of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and the entire text of Sir Orfeo, both glossed, have been added to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (revised translation by Keith Harrison). Theselections from Malory's Morte Darthur have been augmented, as have the translated extracts from The Visions of Piers Plowman (with the account of the Harrowing of Hell). Modernized versions of the Chester Play of Noah and the Seven Deadly Sins episode from The Castle of Perseverance join the SecondShepherds' Play and Everyman in the Theater section. Ballads and lyric poetry have also been changed and amplified to link with a notable innovation: the section entitled Women's Writing and Women's Experience, an introduction to Middle English prose written by and for women.

Table of Contents

Editors' Preface	viii
Introduction: Medieval English Literature	xi
Old English Poetry	1	(110)
Caedmon's Hymn	1	(1)
Beowulf	2	(76)
Judith	78	(3)
from The Death of Holofernes	79	(2)
Elegies	81	(8)
The Wanderer	81	(4)
The Wife's Complaint	85	(1)
The Husband's Message	86	(2)
Wulf and Eadwacer	88	(1)
Enigmas and Wisdom	89	(1)
The Queen and the Frisian Wife	89	(1)
Riddles	90	(3)
Genesis B	93	(1)
from The Temptation of Eve	93	(1)
The Dream of the Rood	94	(6)
The Battle of Maldon	100	(11)
Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1343--1400	111	(221)
The Canterbury Tales	122	(26)
General Prologue	124	(24)
The Miller's Prologue and Tale	148	(19)
The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale	167	(19)
Two Other Fox Stories	186	(1)
from The Bestiary	186	(1)
from Robert Henryson, Fables	187	(5)
The Fox and the Wolf	188	(4)
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale	192	(33)
William Dunbar	225	(4)
from The Two Married Women and the Widow	225	(4)
The Franklin's Prologue and Tale	229	(23)
Gentilesse	252	(1)
The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale	252	(18)
from The Legend of Good Women	270	(6)
The Legend of Thisbe of Babylon	271	(5)
Troilus and Criseyde	276	(48)
Robert Henryson	324	(5)
The Complaint of Cresseid	325	(4)
Chaucer's Words unto Adam, His Own Scribe	329	(1)
Chaucer's Retractions	330	(2)
Romance	332	(107)
Sir Orfeo	333	(16)
Thomas the Rhymer	349	(3)
The Land of Cokaygne	352	(4)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight	356	(61)
Sir Thomas Malory	417	(22)
from Morte Darthur	417	(1)
[The Birth of Arthur and the Sword in the Stone]	418	(5)
[The Fair Maid of Astolat]	423	(10)
[The Death of Arthur]	433	(6)
The Visions of Piers Plowman	439	(21)
from The Prologue	441	(6)
from Passus I	447	(6)
from Passus XVIII	453	(7)
Theater	460	(70)
The Wakefield Second Shepherds' Play	466	(21)
The Chester Play of Noah	487	(9)
Everyman	496	(22)
from The Castle of Perseverance: The Seven Deadly Sins	518	(12)
Women's Writing and Women's Experience	530	(17)
Ancrene Wisse (A Guide for Anchoresses)	534	(1)
Holy Maidenhood (A Letter on Virginity)	534	(4)
Saint Scholastica	538	(2)
The Book of Margery Kempe	540	(5)
What So Men Sayn	545	(2)
Middle English Lyrics	547	(22)
Spring	549	(1)
Now Springs the Spray	550	(1)
Sumer Is Ycomen In	550	(1)
The Thrush and the Nightingale	551	(5)
Alison	556	(1)
Separated Lovers	557	(1)
Western Wind	558	(1)
He Is Far	558	(1)
I Have a Young Sister	558	(1)
The Maid of the Moor	559	(1)
The Agincourt Carol	560	(1)
Bring Us in Good Ale	561	(1)
I Have Set My Heart So High	562	(1)
All Too Late	562	(1)
A Woman Sat Weeping	563	(1)
Divine Love	564	(1)
I Sing of a Maiden	565	(1)
Of One That Is So Fair and Bright	566	(1)
Adam Lay Ybounden	567	(1)
Corpus Christi Carol	568	(1)
Ballads	569	(16)
The Cherry-Tree Carol	571	(2)
The Two Magicians	573	(2)
The Carpenter's Wife [The Demon Lover]	575	(1)
The Wife of Usher's Well	576	(2)
The Unquiet Grave	578	(1)
Lord Randal	579	(1)
The Three Ravens	580	(1)
The Birth of Robin Hood	581	(2)
Sir Patrick Spence	583	(2)
William Dunbar, c. 1460--c. 1514/15	585	(4)
Lament for the Makers	585	(4)
William Caxton, 1415/24--1492	589	(6)
The Proem to The Canterbury Tales	590	(2)
from The Preface to The Aeneid	592	(3)
Glossary	595	(20)
Suggestions for Further Reading	615	(8)
Author and Title Index	623	(2)
First-Line Index	625