Books in the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature series

In this book Nicole Rice analyses late medieval prose guides that disseminated the idea of religious discipline to a lay audience. By considering the themes of spiritual discipline, religious identity, and orthodoxy in Langland and Chaucer, the study also sheds new light on Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales.

D. H. Green challenges the prevailing view of the Middle Ages as a static period in which attitudes to women were uniformly negative. Focusing on the great German romances Erec, Tristan and Parzival he explores strategies used by vernacular writers to debate and challenge the undoubted antifeminism of the day.

Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England is the first book combining literary, linguistic and historical evidence from Old English and Latin to offer a new account of who Anglo-Saxon poets were and how they worked, showing the crucial importance of poets' social roles and their engagement in poetic communities.

Lawrence Warner explores the history of the production and reception of the great medieval poem, Piers Plowman. He examines the many ways in which scholars, editors and critics manufactured an archive, over 500 years, which was then regarded as providing factual data about the poem. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.

This wide-ranging study is the first to demonstrate how English literature continued to engage with crusading from the medieval tales of Richard the Lionheart all the way to Shakespeare. It provides a richer understanding of the impact of the crusades on narrative patterns and the beginning of the modern era.

This study discusses how depictions of etymology and ancient documents were employed by twelfth-century poets, translators, bureaucrats and historians to portray Britain's past. A series of detailed case studies demonstrate how the vernacular hence became an important site for the construction of dynastic, institutional and ethnic identities.

Daniel Wakelin's authoritative survey of manuscripts and their corrections combines challenging ideas about medieval scribes and about medieval attitudes to literature. Focusing particularly on the works of Chaucer, Hoccleve and Lydgate, this book will change the way in which both medieval literature and the history of the book are studied.

Virginie Greene explores the influence of philosophy and logic on major works of medieval literature, including those by Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, and Chretien de Troyes. Greene examines these Old French 'logical fictions' as essential objects of thought and modes of thinking in Western philosophy.

An important collection of essays by expert scholars in the field that explores the impact of the recent shift towards cultural approaches to manuscript studies. It offers practical and theoretical analysis of the medieval manuscript book in its cultural contexts, from production to transmission to its continued adaptation.

A comprehensive account of the English language from 500 to 1500, which integrates literary and linguistic approaches to explore how we think about language. Drawing on a wide range of examples, this collection of essays by leading academics is accessible to scholars and students of medieval English language, literature, and history.

This comprehensive study traces the evolution of verse structure in Old and Middle English poetry from the earliest alliterative poems to iambic pentameter. It provides a general theory of poetic form with a glossary of technical terms and explores how poetic form is perceived by the human mind.

Romance is often thought to be largely removed from the concerns of history. This wide-ranging collection of essays by eminent scholars challenges this view by offering the first comprehensive investigation of the fascinating interplay between romance and history from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

Recent studies of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers Plowman point towards a new understanding of English literary history in the Middle Ages. This book explains why alliterative meter has resisted modern efforts at comprehension, how it differed from accentual-syllabic forms, and why it died out.

An important collection of essays by expert scholars in the field that explores the impact of the recent shift towards cultural approaches to manuscript studies. It offers practical and theoretical analysis of the medieval manuscript book in its cultural contexts, from production to transmission to its continued adaptation.

The first comprehensive study of how European books were made and used in the historical period known as the 'long twelfth century' (1075-1225). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach, blending book history (codicology, palaeography, art-history) and contextual studies (reading, libraries) with text-based investigations in such fields as medicine, classics, and philosophy.

This exploration of literary form in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer delivers a timely and fresh approach to the study of one of the best known medieval English poets. This definitive collection of essays offers a variety of approaches to Chaucer and to the analysis of form.

Focusing on one of the most influential poems in the European literary tradition, this collection brings together specialised chapters on medieval intellectual history, legal history, psychology, ethics, and logic. Re-evaluates the significance of the Roman de la Rose: indispensable reading for literary specialists and intellectual historians.

A comprehensive account of the English language from 500 to 1500, which integrates literary and linguistic approaches to explore how we think about language. Drawing on a wide range of examples, this collection of essays by leading academics is accessible to scholars and students of medieval English language, literature, and history.

This collection conducts an intersectional investigation of affects, feelings, and emotions in non-religious late Middle English literatures. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Gavin Douglas, eight chapters by leading scholars examine the coexistence of emotion and affect in Late Medieval representations of feeling.

This book is for students and scholars of medieval literature and for readers interested in the public intellectuals of the past. It provides new accounts of major authors like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and invites readers to make comparisons with current debates about the public humanities.

This engaging study explores how early medieval writers reflected on the nature of education and the acquisition of wisdom. By studying representations of teaching and learning in five early English texts, Irina Dumitrescu sheds light on the underappreciated emotional and cognitive complexities of Anglo-Saxon instruction.

This collection conducts an intersectional investigation of affects, feelings, and emotions in non-religious late Middle English literatures. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Gavin Douglas, eight chapters by leading scholars examine the coexistence of emotion and affect in Late Medieval representations of feeling.

The first comprehensive study of how European books were made and used in the historical period known as the 'long twelfth century' (1075-1225). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach, blending book history (codicology, palaeography, art-history) and contextual studies (reading, libraries) with text-based investigations in such fields as medicine, classics, and philosophy.

This exploration of literary form in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer delivers a timely and fresh approach to the study of one of the best known medieval English poets. This definitive collection of essays offers a variety of approaches to Chaucer and to the analysis of form.

Introduces readers interested in insular spirituality and hagiography to the major texts associated with the cult of the great northern English saint, Cuthbert. The first sustained analysis of this textual tradition from 690-1500, emphasizing his ascetic evolution, and association with changing perceptions of northernness and nationhood.

The first monograph in English on the medieval Scandinavian reception and re-interpretation of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. Contextualizes the canonical Prose Edda by drawing on a range of less well known texts. Translations are provided of all quotations from medieval texts.

Through new readings of canonical Middle English texts in relation to broader traditions and practices of the body and the senses, knowledge and ethics, this study offers an original contribution towards a history both of the human body and of medieval Christianity.

Focusing on the Clerk, Merchant, Franklin and Squire sequence in The Canterbury Tales, this book explores Chaucer's meditation on the fraught relation between the value of literature and the values underlying various non-literary ways of earning a living. It will appeal to scholars and students of medieval studies.