Originally published in 1977, Old English and Middle English Poetry provides a historical approach to English poetry. The book examines the conditions out of which poetry grew and argues that the functions that it was assigned are historically integral to an informed understanding of the nature of poetry. The book aims to relate poems to the intellectual and formal traditions by which they are shaped and given their being. This book will be of interest to students and academics studying or working in the fields of literature and history alike.
Author(s): Derek Pearsall
Series: Routledge Library Editions: The Medieval World 39; The Routledge History of English Poetry 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: xiv+352
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Contents
General editor’s preface
Introduction
Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition
Germanic traditions
The ‘heroic’ poems
Beowulf: heroic and Christian traditions
Beowulf: methods, style and form
Beowulf: Latin and monastic background
Beowulf: date and provenance
Chapter 2: Anglo-Saxon religious poems
Scriptural poems
Saints’ lives
Devotional poems
Homiletic poetry
Meditative poems: the ‘elegies’
Chapter 3: Late Old English poetry and the transition
‘Classical’ poetry in late Old English
Poetry and prose
‘Popular’ poetry
Transitional verse and prose
Transitional verse
Transitional ‘prose’
Chapter 4: Poetry in the early Middle English period
English and Anglo-Norman
Clerical tradition: poetry of the ‘schools’
The friars’ miscellanies
Poetry of popular instruction
Lazamon
Thirteenth-century romance and chronicle
Chapter 5: Some fourteenth-century books and writers
MS Harley 2253
Collections of religious verse
The Vernon MS
The Auchinleck MS and the romances
Chapter 6: Alliterative poetry
The alliterative revival
Early poems of the revival
The techniques of alliterative verse
The Morte Arthure
Other historical poems
The Gawain-poems
‘Classical’ poetry: conclusion
Piers Plowman
The Piers Plowman group
Other alliterative poems
Stanzaic alliterative poems
Chapter 7: Court poetry
Chaucer at court
The Chaucer circle
Chaucer: language, techniques and literary background
Chaucer as a narrative poet
John Gower
Fifteenth-century courtly tradition
Chapter 8: The close of the Middle Ages
The fifteenth century
John Lydgate
The formal poetic tradition
Religious poetry
Drama
Romances and popular poetry
The Transition
Scots poetry
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Appendix 1 Technical terms, mainly metrical
Appendix 2 Chronological Table
Notes
Index
