Books in the Illinois Medieval Studies series

Opening not only a reconsideration of genre in medieval European lyric, this book also re-examines the notion of "genre" itself, showing that it should be considered as an historical phenomenon influenced by the cultures in which the lyrics arose. It also explores the relations of medieval lyric genres to their historical contexts.

Exploding the myth that the Bible was largely unknown to medieval lay folk, this title presents a comprehensive catalog of Middle English biblical literature: a body of work that, because of its accessibility and familiarity, was the primary biblical resource of the English Middle Ages.

Uses modern linguistics to tackle the problem of interpreting a written language that relied neither on punctuation nor on capitalization to mark clause boundaries and subordination. This linguistic re-interpretation provides new insight into the rules that govern syntactic relationships and indicates how these rules differ for prose and verse.