Books in the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture series

This study places the Scottish compilation of saints' legends within the hagiographic landscape of medieval Britain. -- .

This study brings new methodologies of literary geography to bear upon the unique contents of a codex known as British Library MS Harley 2253. The Harley manuscript was produced upon England's Welsh March, by a scribe whose generation died in the Black Death. It contains a diverse set of writings: love-lyrics and devotional literature, political songs and fabliaux, saints' lives, courtesy texts, bible stories and travelogues. These works alternate between languages (Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Latin) but operate in conversation with one another. The introduction explores how this fragmentary miscellany keeps being sutured into 'whole'-ness by commentary upon it. Individual chapters examine different genres and social groupings and demonstrate that there are many Harley landscapes still waiting to be discovered. It will be of great value to those studying literary history, medieval studies, cultural geography, gender studies, Jewish studies and book history.

Visions and ruins explores the production of cultural memory in the Middle Ages and the uses the medieval past has been put to in modernity. Working with texts in Old English, Middle English and Latin, as well as visual and material culture, it traces connections in time, place, language and media to explore the temporal complexities of cultural production and subject formation. The book interrogates critical, poetic, artistic and political archives to reveal exchanges of cultural energy and influence between past and present, offering new ways of knowing the medieval past and the contemporary moment.

The first collection devoted solely to early medieval riddles, Riddles at work showcases recent research in this popular, new field. It brings together studies of Old English and Latin riddles, authors at various stages of their careers and a range of approaches, aiming to map out both the state of the field now and its future directions. -- .

This volume looks at how Leif Eiriksson's visit to Vinland around the year 1000 has been reimagined in the modern era, taking on a range of media from scholarly works on history and mythology to novels, films and comic books. More broadly, it asks why medieval contact has become a modern cultural touchstone. -- .

Dating Beowulf explores the difficulties and pleasures of intimacy with Beowulf -philological and speculative, playful and serious - and how they organise themselves in an array of interrelated critical practices. Opening avenues for future work, it complicates urgent questions in the discourses of literary theory and Old English studies. -- .

This book places us at the heart of medieval religious life, standing inside the church with the medieval laity in order to ask what it meant to them and why. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches, it examines the interplay of vernacular literature, ritual and material culture at the centre of parish life. -- .

This book traces affinities across the digital-medieval divide to explore how reading functioned as a nexus for concerns about literacy, audiences' agency, literary culture and media formats. Interactive reading offered writers ways to make readers work to their benefit, even as these practices enabled audiences to make reading work for themselves. -- .

This is the first English translation of the canonical Old French text Le Chevalier au barisel. It includes the original text and a facing-page translation, as well as an extensive introduction and notes. -- .

This book investigates the role of 'texts' - including books, maps, stones and caskets - in the conveyance and transformation of knowledge throughout the Middle Ages. It contains original contributions by top medievalists, who explore the topic from different yet complementary angles, offering interdisciplinary approaches to a variety of subjects. -- .

Rethinking the South English legendaries offers theoretically fresh approaches to the major vernacular collection of saints' lives in the English Middle Ages, combining leading scholars and new voices in the field. The volume creates a new platform for thinking about this richly dynamic but so far critically underappreciated medieval bestseller. -- .

A groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales, and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities. -- .

Examines the teaching of the theology of Christ's ascension in Anglo-Saxon literature, offering the only comprehensive examination of how patristic ascension theology is transmitted, adapted and taught to Anglo-Saxon audiences -- .

These essays by senior scholars in medieval studies celebrate the career of J.J. Anderson, editor, critic, and co-founder of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture series, who taught in medieval studies at the University of Manchester for forty years. The essays are rooted in medieval literature but frequently range beyond the confines

Greenery blends current ecological concerns with informed analysis of medieval literature to arrive at new readings of late medieval English texts, some canonical (eg Malory's Morte D'Arthur, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Chaucer's Knight's and Franklin's Tales) some less frequently studied (lyrics, Patience, Sir Orfeo).

This is the most complete translation ever attempted of these moral tales, and will be a valuable source text for all scholars and students of medieval literature. -- .

Author of The Canterbury Tales and foundation of the English literary tradition, Geoffrey Chaucer has been popular with readers, writers and scholars for over 600 years. More than 4600 books, essays, poems, stories, recordings and websites pertaining to Chaucer were published between 1997 and 2010, and this bibliography identifies each of them separately, providing publication information and a descriptive summary of contents. The bibliography also offers several useful discovery aids to enable users to locate individual items of interest, whether it be a study of the Wife of Bath's love life, a video about Chaucer's language, advice on how to teach a particular poem by Chaucer, or a murder mystery that features Chaucer as detective. Useful for scholars, teachers and students alike, this volume is a must for academic libraries.

Explores how sanctity and questions of literariness are intertwined across a range of medieval genres. -- .

Argues for new relationships between Chaucer's poetry and works by others -- .

The story of Noah's Flood is one of the Bible's most popular stories, and other flood myths are preserved by cultures across the world. This book presents the first comprehensive study of the incorporation of the Flood myth into the literary and historical imagination of the Anglo-Saxons, ranging from the works of Bede to Beowulf. -- .

This unique collection of essays explores medieval and early modern Troilus texts from Chaucer to Shakespeare. -- .

The so-called Travels of Sir John Mandeville (c. 1356) was one of the most popular books of the late Middle Ages, highly influencing European perceptions of exotic lands and peoples at the onset of the Age of Discoveries. -- .

This collection gathers leading international scholars in the humanities, who offer cutting-edge responses to the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer for the current critical moment. The range of methodological approaches exemplifies significant trends in medieval literary and medievalism studies, providing a springboard for future research. -- .

This major new literary study offers a fresh view of the significance of a famous group of fourteenth-century poems, 'Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. It is written in a jargon-free style designed to appeal to specialist, non-specialist and student readers alike. -- .

This book explores the voices of nonhuman things in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture, making a valuable contribution to 'thing theory'. -- .

The book argues that the temporal privilege of the medieval masks the extent to which the medieval and medievalistic are mutually constitutive and ultimately dependent not on absolutist epistemological claims but on how feelings and temperaments affect the way we approach the Middle Ages. -- .

This study explores how writers reconciled provocative biblical stories with late-medieval culture. Highlighting the many variations and points of conflict across renditions of the same story, the book unfolds a creative theological discourse through which writers attempted to re-construct Christian belief and practice. -- .

This study investigates the 'exceptional' staging of the life of Catherine of Siena by a female actor and a female patron in 1468 Metz. Integrating new approaches to drama, gender and patronage, it offers an original paradigm of female performance that positions women at the core of public culture. -- .