- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
Other sellers (Hardcover)
-
All (13) from $35.18
-
New (8) from $73.06
-
Used (5) from $35.18
More About This Textbook
Overview
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
"It is difficult, indeed, to imagine a more expansive and authoritative introduction to the study of English literature than English Literature in Context."Kenneth Womack, The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona
" … an excellent and invaluable guide, sure to enhance the student’s encounter with major works and authors on an English degree course. If there’s one book students should have alongside them as they study the primary sources, this is it."
Elaine Treharne, Florida State University
" … a brilliantly designed textbook, thoughtfully conceived and appealingly presented, clearly showing how literature is vibrantly alive in and to the world in which it was written. Both students and teachers will find this book of great use and genuine interest."
David Scott Kastan, Columbia University
"A fine survey course text or supplementary reading."
American Reference Books Annual
Product Details
Meet the Author
Read an Excerpt
Cambridge University Press
9780521839921 - English Literature in Context - by Paul Poplawski
Excerpt
1 Medieval English, 500–1500
VALERIE ALLEN
What should we call this period of ‘medieval literature’ that straddles nearly a millennium and two languages? The ‘Dark’ and ‘Middle Ages’ (of which ‘medieval’ is simply the Latinate form), were terms applied retrospectively and pejoratively by writers in the seventeenth century to describe the period between classical and Renaissance learning; the ‘medievals’ generally perceived themselves as modern, sometimes even corruptly sophisticated in comparison to earlier, simpler days. ‘Literature’ is equally problematic, not existing as a word in English until the fourteenth century. For most of the period, that body of writing containing what we now call ‘literature’ encompassed without division texts that today we categorise as religious, historical, legal and medical. Poets were certainly popular figures, but their business was often primarily to commemorate historical events. Their poems, even if they contained marvels, had little to do with ‘fiction’ as we understand it; and even if they were well crafted, had little to do with any abstract notion of the aesthetic. ‘Medieval’ ‘literary’ art had no theory of itself but rather entailed verbal skill used in the service of a person (queen, bishop, overlord, patron), institution (monastery, the Church,the Crown) or for an occasion (coronation, feast, holy day, battle). Such art did not exist for its own sake but to serve the purpose in hand and to fill a belly.
Furthermore, how do we name a period that so lacks internal coherence? It moves from a Germanic tribal economy to late Old English feudalism, to the ‘high’ feudalism of the Normans, to the emergence of the state bureaucracy, centralisation of power, and urban economy that brought England to the eve of its precociously early capitalism. It starts at a moment when the essentially urbanised experience of theatre is inconceivable, and ends at a time when Old English heroic poetry is largely unintelligible both culturally and linguistically. We can indeed explain each historically formative event in terms of the conditions created by previous events, and thereby construct the past as a linear sequence of cause and effect that stretches both before the medieval era and after it. Yet taking this medieval period as a discrete historical epoch in its own right, we must ask what its literature distinctively meant. History and literature are divided in modern disciplinary parlance and then united in an artificial synthesis imposed on a body of medieval writing that recognised no such distinction in the first place. Literature is not some constant that progresses unchanged through the eras; its very meaning changes according to the epoch in which it occurs. We must ask what made its dominant genres – heroic poetry, romance, saint’s life, mystery play – assume the form they did when they did. We must consider the possibility that literature as we understand it today simply does not map on to the medieval landscape of poetic and scribal production. To read medieval literature well is thus to read medieval literature historically. The history of medieval literature is less an adjunct to the study of medieval literature, by way of explanation of obscure terms and quaint manners, than its very foundation.
Chronology
Key
Unless designated otherwise, all texts are in English (whether Old or Middle).
Note
There is often a lag between the date in which a work was composed and the earliest surviving manuscript of it. Anglo-Saxon poetry is particularly vulnerable to this kind of delayed date of record. The Dream of the Rood, for example, is known to have existed in some form by the late seventh century, but the manuscript in which it exists dates from some three hundred years later.
Edgar, brother of Eadwig, King of England
Dunstan (− 988), Archbishop of Canterbury
Stephen, Henry I’s nephew, claims throne from Matilda, Henry’s daughter.
Intermittent civil war
(− 1225) Katherine Group (alliterative prose): Seinte Marherete, Seinte Iuliene, Seinte Katerine, Sawles Warde and Hali Meiðhad (MS. Bodley 34)
LaȜamon’s Brut, derived from Bede and Wace
John signs Magna Carta, grants concessions to barons, liberties to towns
Civil war; Prince Louis of France besieges Rochester
Jews expelled from England
Statute (Quia Emptores) bars granting of new feudal rights (sub-infeudation), except by the Crown, and makes land held in ‘fee simple’ (fully ‘owned’) freely transferable
Of Arthour and of Merlin (in Auchinleck Ms.), non-alliterative romance
Harrowing of Hell, semi-dramatic verse dialogue
Metrical romances: Havelok the Dane, Arthour and Merlin, Kyng Alisaunder, Sir Tristrem, Amis and Amiloun
Cursor Mundi, biblical poem
Lay Folks’ Catechism
Land of Cockaigne
Richard Rolle (− 1349), devotional writing (L. and vernacular)
Auchinleck manuscript (London): large miscellany of religious and didactic poetry, including A Pennyworth of Wit; romances, including: Sir Orfeo, Kyng Alisaunder, Floris and Blaunchefleur, Degare, Arthour and Merlin, Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild
Harley lyrics, large collection of lyrics, religious, amatory, satiric, political
Pride of Life, morality play
Romances: Tale of Gamelyn, Athelston, William of Palerne, Stanzaic Morte Arthur, Sir Isumbras, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Octavian, Sir Amadace
Richard Ledred, L. account of witch trial of Alice Kyteler, Kilkenny, Ireland
Black Death
Jean Froissart in England (− 1367)
‘Good’ Parliament attempts reform of court corruption
John Wycliffe preaches disendowment of clergy
Black Prince dies
Earliest record of York mystery plays
John Barbour’s (Scots) poem, The Bruce
‘Bad’ Parliament, flat-rate poll tax
Richard II, grandson of Edward III
Cloud of Unknowing
Romances: Apollonius of Tyre; Thomas Chestre, Sir Launfal
Peasants’ Revolt
University of Oxford condemns Wycliffe’s teachings
Thomas Usk (d. 1388), Testament of Love
John Gower, Vox Clamantis (L.)
Sir John Clanvowe, Boke of Cupide
Piers Plowman, C-text
Alliterative Parlement of the Thre Ages and St Erkenwald
Alliterative Morte Arthure
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience, Cleanness
Vernon manuscript, compilation of earlier vernacular religious works: Ancrene Riwle, Speculum Vitae, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Piers Plowman A-text, Northern Homily Cycle, South English Legendary
Edward, Duke of York, The Master of Game, hunting treatise
Nicholas Love, Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ
© Cambridge University Press
Table of Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xix
Medieval English, 500-1500 Valerie Allen 1
Chronology 2
Historical overview 12
Literary overview 33
Texts and issues 50
Readings 72
Reference 97
The Renaissance, 1485-1660 Andrew Hiscock 110
Chronology 110
Historical overview 117
Literary overview 145
Texts and issues 170
Readings 183
Reference 207
The Restoration and eighteenth century, 1660-1780 Lee Morrissey 211
Chronology 212
Historical overview 216
Literary overview 243
Texts and issues 264
Readings 281
Reference 301
The Romantic period, 1780-1832 Peter J. Kitson 306
Chronology 306
Historical overview 311
Literary overview 327
Texts and issues 349
Readings 372
Reference 393
The Victorian age, 1832-1901 Maria Frawley 403
Chronology 404
Historical overview 408
Literary overview 429
Texts and issues 458
Readings 488
Reference 507
The twentieth century, 1901-1939 Paul Poplawski 519
Chronology 520
Historical overview 527
Literary overview 546
Texts and issues 559
Readings 572
Reference 586
The twentieth century, 1939-2004 John Brannigan 593
Chronology 593
Historical overview 601
Literary overview 618
Texts and issues 632
Readings 643
Reference 656
Index 664