reviews & further information

The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve

Last edited in 1878, the two poems edited in this volume are medieval English versions of the legendary lives of Adam and Eve, telling of their attempts to regain the Paradise they had just lost and their life after the Fall, and merging with the related legends of the history of the Cross before Christ.  The poems are important as part of a very large European tradition of vernacular adaptations of the Adambook, known in its Latin form (the immediate source) as the Vita Adae et Evae, with analogues in many other languages.  Once very well known, these stories largely disappeared after the Reformation.  The works are of equal interest not only in the general area of medieval English literature, but also in the study of Old Testament apocrypha itself.

This new edition offers readable texts of the two poems, accompanied by a detailed set of notes which contextualise the poems within their apocryphal traditions, traditions which have echoes in a wide variety of other medieval works, ranging from continental world-chronicles to the Cornish Ordinalia and to the English mystery-cycles.  The Introduction includes a substantial review of the development of the Adam and Eve legend in medieval European vernacular and is a contribution to scholarship in its own right.  

• First new edition since 1878

• Introduction includes a substantial review of the development of the Adam and Eve legen in medieval European vernacular

• A volume in the acclaimed series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies

Market:  Medievalists.  Theologians.  Research students concerned with medieval studies, especially English, but also theology and comparative studies.

Editors: B.O. Murdoch is Professor of German at the University of Stirling.  He has published widely on medieval and modern literature in German and Celtic, including Adam’s Grace (Brewer, 2000) and The Germanic Hero (Hambledon, 1996).  J.A. Tasioulas is a Fellow in English at Newnham College, Cambridge and has written on Chaucer and medieval drama and edited The Makars (Canongate, 1999), a collection of the poems of Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas.

CONTENTS

Preface                                                               
Introduction                                                                 
The texts and their manuscripts                                     
Dates and dialects                                                       Metre                                                                 
Sources and literary relationships                         
Bibliography                                                       
THE AUCHINLECK LIFE OF ADAM                      
THE CANTICUM DE CREATIONE                           
Notes on the Poems                                            
Glossary                                                             
Index of Persons and Places                              

The Art of The Book

"The University of Exeter Press is to be congratulated on having published such a well-produced book.  Not the least of its delights are the excellent eight colour and ninety-eight black-and-white plates, which put the poorly-printed and over-priced offerings of older university presses to shame."
The Ricardian, Vol. 12, No. 153, June 2001

"The authors have been well served by the publishers, who have produced an attractively presented text with a generous selection of illustrations."
The Library, 2I.3, September 1999

"...of serious value to all concerned with the arts as inspiration and servant of religion, especially in the late Middle Ages."
Theology March/April 1999

"...the oldest manuscripts dealt with are of the early fourteenth century, the latest of the early sixteenth, and the geographical spread is from Italy to the Netherlands...But all are interesting, and the book, edited by Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir, is well presented and handsomely illustrated."
TLS February 26 1999

This collection of articles, by scholars with established reputations in the field, focuses on medieval books designed for use in Christian worship, both public and private. Examples are drawn from French, Italian and Dutch work of the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. The contributors explore the various ways in which text and imagery complement and re-enforce one another, and the importance of music and chant is also addressed. The interdisciplinary focus ensures that it will be of wide interest to scholars in many different fields.

• Original contributions by scholars with established reputations in the field
• No other volume deals with the same material
• Much of the visual material previously unpublished or inaccessible

Market: Scholars with an interest in medieval studies; art history; Church history; manuscript studies; liturgical studies; painting, illumination and illustration; history of the book; women's history; social history; cultural studies. Book collectors. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in the above subjects.

Comparable Books: Medieval Texts and Images: Studies of Manuscripts from the Middle Ages, Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (Harwood, 1991). Women and the Book, Jane Taylor and Lesley Smith (British Library, 1997).

Editors: Margaret Manion is Professor Emeritus, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne. Her publications include a facsimile edition of The Wharncliffe Hours (Thames & Hudson); Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections (with Vera F. Vines) (Thames & Hudson). Bernard Muir is Reader in Medieval Language and Literature in the English Department, University of Melbourne. His publications include The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry (Exeter); A Pre-Conquest English Prayerbook (Boydell).

Beowulf

" . . . few comprehensive discussions of the poem can equal Professor Wrenn's introduction, in which the numerous complicated but necessary matters are explained in a brilliantly clear and readable fashion."Speculum

This timely new edition of Beowulf strives to retain the four distinctive features of the previous editions: textual conservatism, concise presentation, concentration on the needs of literary students, and Wrenn's superb erudition and experience. For the most part it leaves intact Wrenn's basic intentions and editorial decisions; with rare exceptions, they have been altered only because of new evidence that Wrenn could not have seen.

Market: Undergraduates, teachers and scholars of Old English and Medieval English literature.

Editors: W.F. Bolton is Emeritus Professor of English, Rutgers University. The late C.L. Wrenn was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.

A Beowulf Handbook

The most revered work composed in Old English, Beowulf is a landmark of European literature. This handbook supplies a wealth of insights into all major aspects of this wondrous poem and its scholarly tradition and offers both a rapid survey of trends in the study of Beowulf and a more sustained exploration of selected problems. Each chapter begins with a brief summary of its contents followed by a chronology of the most important books and articles on the particular topic it treats.

The book has been written to accommodate the needs of a broad audience, from non-specialists who wish simply to read and enjoy Beowulf to scholars at work on their own research, and this paperback edition is aimed at students of Old English. This is a volume in the acclaimed series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, and will prove an indispensable guide for many years to come.

The acclaimed and comprehensive edition of Beowulf edited by C.L. Wrenn and W.F. Bolton is available in the EMTS series, ISBN 0 85989 518 1, price £7.99.

"A Beowulf Handbook presents an impressively detailed digest and assessment of the history of the perceived major areas of Beowulf scholarship and criticism, as they have developed from the earliest days of the recovery of the poem to the 1990s, and it gives an informed overview of the current state of scholarly debate about the poem."

"...this book...will gratefully be consulted by all who are seriously involved in Beowulf research."
English Studies Volume 80 Number 2 April 1999

"This is a good book for scholars and graduate students working on Beowulf at any level and should become one of the poem's standard research tools."

". . . a must for every university library where study of Old English is pursued. It would serve extremely well as recommended reading for any seminar in Beowulf, and appropriate parts of it should be required wherever serious attention is given to textual and philological investigation of the poem."
Arthuriana, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1998)

"This work fills a need long felt by students of Beowulf. In its eighteen well-organized, clear, and concise chapters, A Beowulf Handbook outlines major moments in scholarship on a wide variety of issues pertaining to the study of Beowulf . . . it is able to serve as both a reference work and an introduction."
Envoi, Fall 1997, Vol. 6.2

An illustrated volume in the series Exeter Medieval Texts And Studies

Market: Students, teachers and scholars of Old English. Academic libraries. Some general readers with an interest in Old English poetry.

Editors: Robert E. Bjork is a professor of English at Arizona State University. John D. Niles is a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: On Beowulf, Truth, and Interpretation John D. Niles
2. Date, Provenance, Author, Audiences Robert E. Bjork and Anita Obermeier (Arizona State University)
3. Textual Criticism R.D. Fulk (Indiana University)
4. The Prosody of Beowulf Robert P. Stockwell (University of California, Los Angeles) and Donka Minkova (University of Califonia, Los Angeles)
5. Diction, Variation, the Formula Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (University of Notre Dame)
6. Rhetoric and Style Ursula Schaefer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
7. Sources and Analogues Theodore M. Andersson (Stanford University) 8. Structure and Unity Thomas A. Shippey (St Louis University)
9. Christian and Pagan Elements Edward B. Irving, Jr (Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania)
10. Digressions and Episodes Robert E. Bjork
11. Myth and History John D. Niles
12. Symbolism and Allegory Alvin A. Lee (McMaster University, Ontario)
13. The Social Milieu John M. Hill (United States Naval Academy)
14. Gender Roles Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (University of Denver)
15. The Hero and the Theme George Clark (Queen's University, Ontario)
16. Beowulf and Contemporary Critical Theory Seth Lerer (Stanford University)
17. Beowulf and Archaeology Catherine M. Hills (University of Cambridge)
18. Translations, Versions, Illustrations Marijane Osborn (University of California, Osborn)
List of Abbreviations
Works Cited

Deformed Discourse

"A stimulating and convincing insight into the philosophical and literary significance of teratology, the study of monsters, in the European Middle Ages . . .  This study can be used in at least two ways.  First, it can be seen as a well-argued and well-documented monograph which makes sense of a complex set of ideas and images.  Secondly, it can be used an an encyclopaedic introduction to many neglected aspects of mediaeval iconography and as a vade mecum for the shadowy but fascinating world of the monstrous."
The Downside Review , vol.118, no. 410 (January 2000)

" . . . a cogent and satisfying work . . . which will have a continued impact in the ongoing discussion of monsters in the Middle Ages."
Religion and Literature, Vol. 29.3 (Autumn 97)

"This fundamental study marks a milestone in the history of research on the monstrous in the Middle Ages and on Western ways of thinking. I can state without hesitation that Williams has produced a magnum opus on this subject, with a highly personal approach, providing an overview of all previous works on the monster and the philosophical, theological, aesthetic, and literary context. His vision is at once encyclopedic, critical, and completely fresh . . . This is clearly the work of a researcher in full maturity. Its many qualities place it in the front rank."
[translation] Claude-Claire Kappler, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris.

Market: Scholars of Medieval literature, history and art. Folklorists and anthropologists. Designers. Art historians.

Author: David Williams is Professor of English, McGill University, Canada.

CONTENTS

PART ONE: THEORY

1. The Context of the Monstrous
2. The Language of the Monstrous

PART TWO: TAXONOMY

3. The Body Monstrous
4. Nature Monstrous
5. Monstrous Concepts

PART THREE: TEXTS

6. Three Heroes (Oedipus, The Romance of Alexander, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
7. Three Saints (Saint Denis, Saint Christopher, Saint Wilgeforte)
8. Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

The Dream of the Rood

Swanton provides a helpful description of the poem’s text and of its manuscript context, the Vercelli Book.  His introduction includes material pertaining to the Ruthwell Cross and its relationship with The Dream of the Rood, a discussion of the doctrinal and iconographic backgrounds of the poem, and a comprehensive overview of its structural, thematic and stylistic concerns.
The Year’s Work in English Studies, March 1999

English Poetry Before Chaucer

Michael Swanton

A new and completely revised edition of this authoritative work, intended to encourage personal appreciation and independent appraisal by students of English.  This is a stimulating introduction to the poetry composed in an age that witnessed fundamental cultural developments: the emergence of the English from among the warring tribes of Europe, their conversion to Christianity, the development of feudalism and the chivalric myth, the military adventure of the Crusades, and the growth of a vigorous citizen class in the burgeoning towns of England. 

‘Swanton writes with real intelligence and great energy, and many of his brief essays on individual works become quite powerful statements . . . he is a sympathetic and at times superb reader of the poetry.’  Speculum  

• New revised edition of the authoritative work previously published by Longman as English Literature Before Chaucer

• Intended to encourage independent appraisal by students

• A volume in the series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies

Market: Students of English.  Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in the subject.

Author: Michael Swanton is Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Exeter.  

Contents

Preface

1 Introduction: Anxiety and Assertion                                                                               
2 Until the Dragon Comes                                                                        
Widsith, Deor, Waldere, The Fight at Finnsburh and Beowulf
3 Verbum de Verbo                                                                                                     
Cædmon’s Creation Hymn, Genesis A, Exodus and The Dream of the Rood
4 The Ruin of Time                                                                                                  
The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin and The Phoenix
5 A Certain Heroism                                                                                                         
Guthlac A, Judith, The Battle of Maldon and Layamon’s Brut
6 Things That Falleth to Ribaudrie
Havelok, Sir Tristrem, Floris and Blancheflour and Madam Sirith and the Weeping Bitch
7 Song and Singer                                                                                    
I Walk with Sorrow, Lenten is Come with Love to Town, The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale, Thomas of Hales’ Love-Song, Gabriel’s Greeting to the Virgin Mary, Ubi Sount Qui Ante Nos Fuerount, The Follies of Fashion, A Song of Lewes, The Thrush and Nightingale and The Owl and the Nightingale

Epilogue: The Equal Hour                                                                                                    
Appendix: Early English Prosody                                                                                              
Chronology                                                                                                                            
Further Reading                                                                                                                     
Notes on Individual Writers, Works and Sources                                                          
(i)  Writers and writings in English
(ii)   Writers and writings in languages other than English
Index                                                              

The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry

The interactive edition of The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry will be an invaluable acquisition of historical and literary significance for most libraries and an indispensable reference work for medievalists and other scholars interested in literature, codicology and Anglo-Saxon society. The set of CDs will contain the revised second edition of The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry. This will be linked to a full-colour digital facsimile of Exeter Cathedral, Dean & Chapter MS 3501, commonly known as 'The Exeter Book', and images of various other related historical documents. Also included will be a new codicological report (with images) on the manuscript's current binding. The images used in the facsimile are based upon extremely high resolution original scans, each of which is approximately 100 MB in size; they often provide more information than is available from a physical examination of the manuscript itself.

The Electronic Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry will be available as a special package with a hard copy (in 2 volumes) of the revised second edition. This second edition will include many newly-discovered alterations to the poetic texts in addition to the four hundred new readings listed in the apparatus of the first edition. The Bibliography has been updated and reorganised and the Commentary will include discussion of critical works that have appeared since 1994. The CD-ROM and the 2-volume set will also be available as separate items.

The Idea of the Vernacular

The book also includes five essays which propose new definitions of medieval literary theory and discuss the politics of Middle English writing. It also provides headnotes, notes, two maps, bibliography, a substantial 55-page glossary and indices grouping the works by date, region, literary genre, profession or background of author, intended audience or patron, and frequency of survival in manuscripts or early printed editions.

• Only collection offering a large Middle English sampler combined with a view of the literary context
• Many of the texts are previously unedited, or are not easily available
• Contextualizes major writers such as Chaucer, Langland, Malory

Editors: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne is Senior Lecturer in English, University of Liverpool; Nicholas Watson is Professor of English, University of Western Ontario; Andrew Taylor is Assistant Professor of English, University of Saskatchewan; Ruth Evans is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Wales, Cardiff.

CONTENTS 

Introduction
PART ONE: AUTHORIZING TEXT AND WRITER
1.1 Robert Mannyng, Chronicle: Prologue
1.2 John Barbour, The Bruce: Prologue
1.3 Geoffrey Chaucer, Complaint of Venus: Envoi
1.4 Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love: Prologue (Extract)
1.5 John Walton , Translation of Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy: Prefacio Translatoris
1.6 Thomas Hoccleve, The Complaint: Prologue and Extract
1.7 John Lydgate, Troy Book: Prologue (Extract)
1.8 John Metham, Amoryus and Cleopes: Prologue and Ending
1.9 George Ashby, Active Policy of a Prince: Prologue
1.10 Guy de Chauliac, Cyrurgie: Prologue (Extract)
1.11 Osbern Bokenham, Legends of Hooly Wummen: Prologus
1.12 Speculum Devotorum (Myrowre to Devout Peple): Prefacyon (Extract)
1.13 Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love (Short Text): Prologue and Chapter 6
1.14 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe: Two Prologues
1.15 The General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible: Chapter 12 (Extract)
1.16 Reginald Pecock, Prologue to the Donet and The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy (Extracts)
PART TWO: ADDRESSING AND POSITIONING THE AUDIENCE
2.1 Northern Homily Cycle: Prologue
2.2 John Trevisa, Dialogue Between the Lord and the Clerk on Translation (Extract) and Epistle to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, on the Translation of Higden's Polychronicon
2.3 Thomas Norton, Ordinal of Alchemy: Prohemium
2.4 On Translating the Bible into English (Extract)
2.5 The Holi Prophete David Seith (Three Extracts)
2.6 The Knowing of Woman's Kind in Childing: Translator's Prologue
2.7 John Capgrave, Life of St. Gilbert: Prologue
2.8 Bishop Fox, The Rule of Seynt Benet: Prefatory Letter
2.9 The Amesbury Letter: Prologue
2.10 William Caxton, Translation of Christine de Pizan's Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyvalrye: Prologue
2.11 John Gower, Confessio Amantis: Prologue, Two Versions (Extracts)
2.12 Knyghthode and Bataile: Proem
2.13 The Nightingale: Prose Introduction and Proem
2.14 The Croxton Play of the Sacrament: Banns
2.15 South English Legendary: Prologue
2.16 William Caxton, Translation of Geoffroy de la Tour-Landry, Book of the Knight of the Tower: Prologue
2.17 Spektakle of Luf: Prologue
PART THREE: MODELS AND IMAGES OF THE READING PROCESS
3.1 A Talking of the Love of God: Prologue
3.2 Pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquies: Prologue and Digression
3.3 The Cloud of Unknowing: Prologue
3.4 Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love (Long Text): Explicit
3.5 The Orchard of Syon: Prologue
3.6 Pore Caityf: Prologue
3.7 The Prick of Conscience: Prologue (Extract)
3.8 Richard Rolle, The English Psalter: Prologue
3.9 Dives and Pauper: Part One, Chapters 1-3 (Extract)
3.10 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: Prologue (Extract)
3.11 Sermon of Dead Men: Peroration
3.12 The Mirror of Our Lady: Three Prologues
3.13 The Wars of Alexander: Opening
3.14 Cursor Mundi: Prologue (Extract)
3.15 John Skelton, Translation of Poggio Bracciolini, Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus: Prologue (Extract)
3.16 Gavin Douglas, Eneados: Book V, Prologue
3.17 William Caxton, Reynard the Fox: Prologue
3.18 Robert Henryson, Fables: Prologue
3.19 William Langland, Piers Plowman: C Text, Passus XV (Extract)
3.20 Mechtild of Hackeborn, The Book of Ghostly Grace: Epilogue (Extract)
3.21 Eleanor Hull, A Commentary on the Penitential Psalms: Psalm 50 (Selections)
3.22 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe: Book I, Chapters 58-59 (Extract)
3.23 King James I of Scotland, The Kingis Quair: Opening
3.24 Brian Anslay, Translation of Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies: Chapter 1, with Dedicatory Verses by Henry Pepwell
PART FOUR: FIVE ESSAYS
4.1 The Notion of Vernacular Theory Ruth Evans, Andrew Taylor, Nicholas Watson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
4.2 The Politics of Middle English Writing Nicholas Watson
4.3 Authors, Scribes, Patrons, and Books Andrew Taylor
4.4 Historicizing Postcolonial Criticism: Cultural Difference and the Vernacular Ruth Evans
4.5 An Afterword on the Prologue Ruth Evans

Judith

"We have here a Judith edition for the twenty-first century, and fortunately it is a good one. This is a fine, full edition of a splendid Old English poem; and if Griffith had definitively solved every conceivable textual, critical, and literay historical problem, it would in a way be disappointing. As it is, we have a new edition of the poem to read and work with, and a new generation of students can read Judith with more enjoyment and much more scholarly confidence than they could before."
Speculum, Oct 2000

"This edition will certainly establish itself as a key resource for the teaching and study of a poem which has attracted increasing interest in recent years.  It is an edition which sets out to meet the requirements of a different generation from that which Timmer served."
Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April 2000

"This is a superb contribution to Old English scholarship, packed with useful and new information, attractively presented and priced. Judith, a lively narrative poem, has finally found an editor responsive to its charms, one apparently incapable of thoughtlessness, neglect, or unkindness. Much devotion has gone into the making of this edition, along with impeccable judgement.

"Griffith is probably unmatched in his sensitivity to and appreciation of the sounds, syntax, and style of Judith. And he makes at least as many original observations as there are lines in the poem.

"In this new edition, the poem - in all its comic inventiveness and flouting of convention - is more alive and appealing than at any time in the three-hundred years since it first appeared in public."
Notes and Queries March 1999

" . . . Mark Griffith's excellent new edition . . . His ninety-three-page introduction is a model guide to the major technical areas in Anglo-Saxon studies: codicology, language, dating, source-study and metrics (including a brilliantly lucid exercise in the analysis of metrical grammar, the area which perhaps offers the most stimulating contribution to stylistics in the modern analysis of Old English) . . . He has set a new benchmark for producers of modern editions of the Old English poems."
Times Literary Supplement, September 25 1998

Undergraduates frequently find the fine Old English poem JUDITH the most stimulating of the surviving texts from the Anglo-Saxon period. In the past thirty years it has attracted a wide range of literary criticism both in the UK and the US. Feminist critics of English literature have been particularly interested by the ways in which the poet has adapted the traditional masculine heroic ethos of Old English poetry to a story figuring a violently active female protagonist.

Yet there is no available edition of Judith which is either comprehensive or up to date, or which at all explains how and why the poem is worthy of our attention. This new edition aims to fill this gap. It will include a full Introduction and commentary by the editor, plus a comprehensive glossary, bibliography and appendices.

• Completely new edition of this important text
• Definitive edition: comprehensive and up to date
• Undergraduate teaching text

Market: Undergraduate and graduate students of English. Scholars of medieval studies. Academic libraries.

Editor: Mark Griffith is a Fellow and Tutor in English at New College, Oxford.

King Arthur's Death

Layamon's Brut

Layamon’s Brut is a landmark in English literature, the first major work in English after the Norman Conquest, and the precursor of a rich Arthurian literature, from Malory to Tennyson and on to our own time.  This edition combines a fully-edited version of the original text with a close parallel prose translation, together with a lengthy Introduction, textual notes and a full and up-to-date bibliography.

Written c.1200–1220, the Brut develops the themes of its principal source, Robert Wace’s Roman de Brut, itself a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s bestseller, the Historia Regum Britanniae, in a metre and idiom reminiscent of Old English.  It demonstrates the fundamental strength of a native culture which survived two centuries of French dominance to re-emerge as a fusion of a national tradition and continental influences. 

• Facing-page translation in modern English, plus lengthy Introduction, textual notes, commentary and full bibliography

• Unique edition of the most important part of Layamon's Brut

• Other editions either present unedited texts or no original text and modern verse translations to not give a precise guide to the meaning of the original

Market:  Students of medieval history, medieval literature and Arthurian studies.  Scholars, teachers and research students of Middle English and Arthurian studies.  Academic libraries.   General readers interested in Arthurian studies.

Editors: W.R.J. Barron is Senior Research Fellow in the School of English, University of Exeter.  He was President of the International Arthurian Society (British Branch) and Director of its Vinaver Trust. His books include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Manchester, 1998) and Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Vol. II (series editor)(Wales, 1999). S.C. Weinberg is a senior lecturer in English Language and medieval English literature at the University of Manchester.  Her other books include Poetry of John Gower: Selections (Carcanet, 1983).

The Mary Play

The Mary Play is a beautiful and engaging piece of late medieval stagecraft. It is rich in music and spectacle and is the only English play which deals with Mary's parents and her early life; the only play which centres on a prayer, the Ave Maria; the only play which in its devotional intensity reflects the central concerns of late fifteenth century lay piety. Two recent productions have demonstrated its effectiveness as drama.

The Mary Play comes from Norfolk and matches theatrically the elaborate painting, stained glass and carving of that area. The Marian shrine of Walsingham is part of its local context.

This edition, a new volume in the series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, presents the play as a single entity rather than as a number of pageants in a cycle play. The introduction describes the manuscript, its language, place and staging. There is an extensive commentary which places the play in its intellectual and theatrical contexts, and a complete glossary.

• Brings to life otherwise distant characters of the Bible
• Only play to deal with the early life of the Virgin Mary
• Useful teaching text for courses in drama, history, and English
• Rich in music and spectacle; recent productions have demonstrated effectiveness as a staged drama

Market: Students and scholars of history; English; drama. Academic libraries.

Editor: Peter Meredith is Professor of Medieval Drama in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He is currently President of the Société Internationale pour l'Etude du Théâtre Médiévale, a co-editor of Medieval English Theatre and a member of the Executive Board of the Toronto-based research project Records of Early English Drama.

Medieval Translator IV

This is the fourth volume in a ground-breaking series of studies of medieval translation theory and practice. These essays represent exciting new work in the important and expanding field of translation studies. They range widely across a variety of literary works of the European Middle Ages and variously invite the reader to situate specific examples of medieval translational practice in a wider cultural and historical frame, by exploring such issues as gender, ethnic identity and medieval authorship.

Readership: Academics and scholars of medieval translation theory and practice, and of translation in general.

ROGER ELLIS is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Wales, College of Cardiff. He has published articles, books and papers on medieval translation theory, and on religious and other literature of the later Middle Ages. RUTH EVANS is Lecturer in English Literature, University of Wales, College of Cardiff. She has published articles on medieval drama, medieval translation, and courtly literature and is co-editor of The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (1993), a collection of feminist re-readings of medieval texts.

"It is in the Middle Ages that translation first becomes a self-conscious process; and translation is at the heart of medieval culture. But just as no medievalist can escape involvement in Translation Studies, no student of Translation Studies should be able to ignore the medieval contribution to the subject . . . While the study of translation may be a focus for the study of power relations and the rest, it is worth remembering many translators love what they translate. All the contributors here are sensitive to the wider issues their work might imply, and what is striking in the best of them is the sympathy with which they approach texts that were after all concerned as something other than academic exercises."
Translation and Literature, 1997

‘My Compleinte’ and Other Poems

‘The wealth of detail noticed and reported on by Ellis is absolutely staggering . . . It is a serious work, offered by a committed textual scholar who has investigated all the complex issues of authority and transmission . . . it allows us to bring into the classroom data about the complex and unique history of textual transformation for Hoccleve’s works, a real “behind the scenes” look at medieval authorship and composition . . . One thing is certain, the reader will know Hoccleve well as poet, translator and scribe after reading this edition cover to cover, all the way through, as Hoccleve long ago exhorted us to do. Ellis’s edition, bursting at the seams with historical, textual and critical detail, a feast of both matter and art, will doubtlessly be a major factor in the renaissance of Hoccleve studies.’
The Medieval Review

Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1426) was one of Chaucer’s first disciples and is represented in this book by a selection of his works, newly edited from his own copies and fully annotated.   It provides students and other readers new to his work with a very fair indication of his range and achievement as original writer and translator and includes a full Introduction and marginal glosses.  It also provides those more familiar with his work with a fuller account than has hitherto been available of the manuscripts both of Hoccleve’s own texts and, when he was translating from Latin or French, from his sources.

Some of the themes and topics explored, with Hoccleve’s light and witty touch, include women (for them or against them); money (always short of it, and as likely as not to be paid in counterfeit coin); isolation and suffering (causes various, but always painful); the pains of hell and the joys of heaven; the serendipitous nature of literary production; the writer as translator, reporter, or even as gossip.

• A 'student-friendly' edition of Hoccleve, filling a gap in the market

• A distinctive contribution to scholarship in its Introduction and textual apparatus

• Provides a complete modern edition of the Series, Hoccleve's best-known work, as well as some of his earlier, more lighthearted poems

Market: Undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in medieval English and Renaissance literature.  Scholars of medieval English.  Academic libraries.  Some scholars and students of translation studies.

Nicholas Love: The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ 

Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an important work of late medieval English vernacular theology, and is made available here in a modern paperback "Reading Text" edition, complete with a short Introduction, explanatory notes and glossary, followed by a longer hardback: the "Full Critical Edition". 

The critical edition is not merely a revision of Michael Sargent’s 1992 Garland best-text edition, now out of print, but a new and completely critical edition that uses the Garland volume only as its starting-point. Although based on the same manuscript, and containing much of the same introductory material, this edition includes the results of a complete collation of the 71 known surviving manuscripts and early prints. This collation demonstrates that the text exists in two separate authorial versions, of which the first, which incorporated a separate, independent translation of the Passion section, may not in the first instance have included the "Treatise on the Sacrament". The second version, on which the edition is based, is an authorial revision, undertaken, perhaps, after Love had met with Archbishop Arundel for approval of his text.

The Introduction discusses the evidence for the process of composition of the text, and places Love's Mirror, properly, at the centre of current scholarly discussion of the development of vernacular theology in late medieval England and the consequences of Arundel's anti-Lollard Lambeth Constitutions.  

• A new critical edition of an important and much sought-after text

• Includes a full introductory discussion of the text and its historical setting

• A volume in the acclaimed series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies

Market: Specialist scholars in Middle English literature and in medieval English Ecclesiastical History.  Graduate, and some undergraduate, students in these fields.  Theologians and the devotional market.

Editor: Michael Sargent is Professor in the Department of English, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.  He has published a number of books, including De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer, 1989) and Nicholas Love at Waseda (Boydell & Brewer, 1997).

The Old English Life of St Mary of Egypt: An edition of the Old English text with modern English parallel-text translation 

Mary of Egypt, a penitent prostitute and figure of female autonomy and authority, is a disconcerting and unconventional saint, especially in an Anglo-Saxon context.  She is not the kind of model of idealized female virtue normally favoured by leading churchmen in Anglo-Saxon England, and yet her life occurs in the manuscript of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, probably the most influential vernacular collection of saints’ lives of its period. 

The story of Mary has been unduly neglected by students and teachers of Old English, but, with its gripping and intense narrative, it raises exciting issues in the study of medieval literature and culture, issues concerning gender, spirituality, cultural history and other current preoccupations.

This edition makes the Old English Life conveniently and authoritatively available to today’s readers.   The text is presented in an uncluttered manner with facing-page modern English translation and is accompanied by a detailed introduction and concise commentary and a full glossary.  A text and facing-page translation of the Latin source used by the Old English writer are also given.  

• Student-friendly, with facing-page translation and accompanying commentary and glossary

• The substantial Introduction includes discussion of issues of gender, culture, spirituality

• A volume in the acclaimed series Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies

Market:  Undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval English and related subjects.  Scholars of medieval English, history and saints’ lives. 

Editor: Hugh Magennis is Professor of Old English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast.  He has published widely on Anglo-Saxon and related writings, and his books include The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers (Durham, 1994) and (with Mary Clayton) The Old English Lives of St Margaret (Cambridge, 1994).

The Owl and the Nightingale

edited by Neil Cartlidge  

"[Cartlidge] provides a complete glossary and exhaustive bibliography, and an entertaining appendix of comparable works on owls, nightingales, hawks and jealous husbands. His parallel-text translation is exemplary: transparent and lucid, and with more claim to expressive grace than Cartlidge makes for it. This is an edition equally valuable for the student and the specialist."
Times Literary Supplement, March 2002

The Owl and the Nightingale is one of the first and greatest long comic poems in the English language and one of the best-known and most accomplished of all medieval literary texts.  By turns both gleefully trivial and allusively serious, it has been described by literary critics as a "most miraculous piece of writing", "a marvel of literary art" and "a truly amazing phenomenon".  There is no other edition currently in print and this is the first new English edition of the poem since 1960. 

The book contains a lively parallel-text translation in modern English, as well as a glossary, notes and Introduction.   The edition has involved a complete reconsideration of the poem’s complex textual history, its linguistic provenance and the practices of its scribes, as well as its possible sources.

• Parallel-text translation in modern English, plus comprehensive glossary, detailed notes and an Introduction

• First new English edition since 1960

• Reconsiders the poem's textual history and its possible sources

Market: Undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in medieval English and courses on the history of the English language.  Scholars of medieval English.  Academic libraries. 

Editor: Neil Cartlidge is lecturer in Old and Middle English, University College Dublin.

Piers Plowman

This edition remains the only complete edition of the C-text of Piers Plowman to appear since that of Skeat (1886).

"...a fine edition which will make the C Version more accessible and comprehensible, and, I hope, more widely read."
Review of English Studies

"...Pearsall gives a great deal of aid with the social and political context of Piers, ranging from straightforward explanation of personal allusions or glosses on the detail of fourteenth-century ecclesiastical organization to fruitful comment on the largest questions about Langland's society."
English Language Notes

"For the first time it is possible to see the C-text purged of scribal ineptitudes and arguably as Langland's maturest work ... The effect, at times, is that of the bright colours of a Renaissance painting emerging from under the dirt, varnish and academic pieties of generations."
English

Poems of the Pearl Manuscript

The appearance of a revised edition of Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron’s The Poems of The Pearl Manuscript is very welcome.  This new text, an updating of the 1987 edition (itself a revision of the original 1978 publication), allows the editors to update the notes in the light of recent scholarship and generally to streamline the layout of the text . . .  The bibliography has also been updated, while a number of older works have been discreetly removed from the lists.  Such changes keep the edition abreast of recent developments in the field and mean that it is likely to remain the best single-volume edition of the Gawain Poet’s works for some time to come.
The Year’s Work in English Studies, March 1999

This fourth edition of The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript has been newly revised and updated taking account of some of the more important textual and interpretative notes and articles published on the poems since the publication of the third edition in 1996.  The bibliography has also been revised and updated. 

• Classic student teaching text—over 600 copies sold each year

• ‘Likely to remain the best single-volume edition of the Gawain Poet’s works for some time to come.’  From a review of the third edition in The Year’s Work in English Studies

•   ‘A single-volume scholarly edition, with notes and glossary, of the four great poems, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has long been needed . . . Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron have made an excellent job of it; re-reading the poems in conjunction with their sensible well-pointed comments has enhanced my understanding in several respects.  The volume will deservedly achieve the status of a standard collected edition.’  From a review of the first edition in The Times Higher Educational Supplement

  Market:  Students, teachers and scholars of medieval literature.  Academic libraries.  

Editors: Malcolm Andrew is Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University Belfast.  Ronald Waldron is Emeritus Reader in English Language and Medieval Literature at King’s College, University of London.

Reading Texts and Images : Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage

This book is a collection of specially-commissioned art-historical essays on the theme of manuscript studies by some of the world’s leading art historians and curators of manuscripts.  It is expected to be even more successful and well-received than the comparable volume from University of Exeter Press, The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship, edited by Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir. 

The contributors are writing on their particular area of manuscript study, with the Wharncliffe Hours and the Book of Kells among the important manuscripts discussed.  Their essays are written in honour of Margaret M. Manion, Professor Emeritus, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne.  Margaret Manion has an international reputation for her work in the field of art history.  Her many publications include a facsimile edition of The Wharncliffe Hours (Thames & Hudson) and Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections (with Vera F. Vines, Thames & Hudson).  

• Over 100 colour and black-and-white illustrations

• The World's leading art historians writing on their particular area of specialization—including Jonathan Alexander, Christopher de Hamel, Nigel Morgan, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Rodney Thomson

• Will appeal to anyone interested in medieval art history

• "The University of Exeter Press is to be congratulated on having published such a well-produced book.  Not the least of its delights are the excellent eight colour and ninety-eight black-and-white plates, which put the poorly-printed and over-priced offerings of older university presses to shame." The Ricardian, on The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship

Market:  Scholars of manuscript studies, art history, medieval studies.  Specialist and academic libraries.  Book collectors.  The general reader interested in medieval art history.

Editor: Bernard Muir is Reader in Medieval Language and Literature in the English Department, University of Melbourne.  His publications include The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship (UEP); Medieval Texts and Images: Studies of Manuscripts from the Middle Ages, (with Margaret M. Manion, Harwood); The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry (UEP).

Contributors: Jonathan Alexander, Janet Backhouse, Joan Barclay-Lloyd, Dagmar Eichberger, Christopher de Hamel, Thomas Kren, Louise Marshall, Nigel Morgan, Bernard Muir, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Peter Steele SJ, John Stinson, Rodney Thomson, Gerard Vaughan. 

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Tribute to Margaret M. Manion by Peter Steele SJ, Professor of English, University of Melbourne

1) Janet Backhouse, [Former] Assistant Keeper at the Department of Manuscripts and Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, The British Library
Margaret Beaufort’s Italian Manuscript of the Name of Christ Devotions

2) Dagmar Eichberger, Lecturer in Art History at the Universities of Saarsbrücken and Heidelberg
The Dance of Death in Art: Visual Representations of Men, Women and Children in Renaissance Society

3) Bernard Muir, Reader in Medieval Language and Literature, University of Melbourne
Towards Interpreting the Iconography of the Gospel of St Luke in the Book of Kells

4) Joan Barclay-Lloyd, Lecturer in Art History, LaTrobe University, Melbourne
The River of Life in the Apse Mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore in Rome

5) Thomas Kren, Curator of Manuscripts, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
A Scribe and a Prayerbook: a New Approach to the Wharncliffe Hours

6) Lucy Freeman Sandler, Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History, New York University
The Illustration of the Psalms in Fourteenth-Century English Manuscripts: The Case of the Bohun Family Psalters

7) John Stinson, Music Faculty, La Trobe University
The Rimini Antiphonal: palimpsest music and Renaissance liturgical practice

8) Louise Marshall, Department of Art History and Theory, University of Sydney
Reading the Body of a Plague Saint: Narrative Altarpieces and Devotional Images of St. Sabastian in Renaissance Art

9) Rodney Thomson, Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Tasmania
Minor Manuscript-Decoration from the West of England in the Twelfth Century

10) Nigel Morgan, Professor of Medieval Art History, University of Oslo
Patrons and Devotional Images in English Illumniated Manuscripts of the International Gothic

11) Christopher de Hamel, Librarian, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
New Observations on the Dutch Bible (c.1419) in Auckland Public Library

12) Jonathan Alexander, Professor of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Sacred and secular in the Wharncliffe Hours

13) Gerard Vaughan, Director, National Gallery of Victoria
An Eighteenth-Century Classicist’s Medievalism: The Case of Charles Townley

The Voyage of Saint Brendan

‘This book is a rich depository of information and insight.’   from a review of the hardback edition

The story of the voyage of the sixth-century Irish saint, Brendan the Navigator, is one of the greatest legends of the Middle Ages.  To the nations of medieval Europe the ocean voyage became a metaphor for the perilous journey of the Christian soul in search of the Promised Land, and no spiritual odyssey attracted wider interest.

In recent years Brendan’s voyage has become increasingly popular as a topic of interest, not only in medieval studies, but also within the history of travel literature in general.  One of the legend’s charms is that it can be read in a number of ways: as a thinly disguised account of Irish travels and discoveries in the Atlantic, as a seafaring story in the fashion of the Irish immrama (literally ‘rowings out’), or as an allegorical tale of Man’s journey through life.  It also has links with the monastic culture of its day, and contains echoes of the Odyssey and the Aeneid, Sinbad the Sailor and the quest for the Holy Grail.

Barron and Burgess’s volume collects the most important versions of the voyage from a wide variety of cultures, and presents them in modern English translations together with a general introduction to Brendan, explanatory commentaries and an extensive bibliography.  This new paperback edition also includes a comprehensive index of story-elements specially devised with the Brendan student in mind to allow easy comparison of the different versions.

• Will appeal to broad range of readers: to those interested in travel literature, Celtic studies, allegory and quest as well as to medievalists

• Brings together the first English translations of most of the important vernacular versions of the legend

•   Brendan is frequently cited as a discoverer of the New World—the search for the mythical St Brendan’s Isle was an important motif behind the voyages of Christopher Columbus

Market: Anyone interested in Ireland and Irish folklore.  Students and scholars of Brendan and early medieval literature.  General readers and students with an interest in Celtic studies, hagiography, travel literature, comparative literature, the discovery of America.

CONTENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS

1         The Life and Legend of Saint Brendan , Glyn S. Burgess

2         The Latin Version, John H. O’Meara and Jonathan M. Wooding

3         The Anglo-Norman Version , Glyn S. Burgess

4         The Dutch Version , Willem P. Gerritsen and Peter K. King

5         The German Version , Willem P. Gerritsen and Clara Strijbosch

6         The Venetian Version , Mark Davie

7         The Occitan Version , Margaret Burrell

8         The Catalan Version , Margaret Burrell

9         The Norse Version , Andrew Hamer

10     English Versions

 —The South English Legendary Version

—Caxton’s Golden Legend Version

W.R.J. Barron

      Bibliography and List of Brendan Manuscripts

Editors:

Glyn Burgess is Professor of French at the University of Liverpool.  He has published many articles on the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan and his books include, as co-author, The Legend of St Brendan: A Critical Bibliography (2000).  W.R.J. Barron is Senior Research Fellow in the School of English, University of Exeter.  His books include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1998) and Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages Vol. II (1999).

Contributors:

Margaret Burrell is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Canterbury,

Christchurch, New Zealand.

Mark Davie is Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Exeter.

Willem P. Gerritsen is a retired Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of   

Utrecht.

Andrew Hamer is lecturer in English Language at the University of Liverpool.

Peter K. King is a retired Professor of Dutch at the University of Hull.

John J. O'Meara is a former Professor of Classics at Trinity College, Dublin.

Clara Strijbosch is a researcher affiliated to the University of Utrecht.

Jonathan M. Wooding is lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at

Wace's Roman de Brut

"Judith Weiss makes the complete Roman de Brut available in English translation for the first time . . . This book could be successfully assigned in classes for which French proficiency is not assumed, and Weiss’s introduction and bibliography will be helpful to readers encountering the poem for the first time."
Speculum, Oct 2001

"A readable edition of the very long text, select footnotes and an introduction likely to appeal strongly to the reader, whether an advanced Arthurian or someone interested generally in the process of inventio and how disparate stories can be moulded into and so enforce a national legend."
Parergon, Vol 18:2, 2001

"The academic community has long been in need of a good translation of the entirety of Wace's Roman de Brut ... Thanks to Judith Weiss the text is now fully accessible to comparatists, undergraduates, and the interested layman. But better still, Weiss has in effect given us a revised edition of the medieval French text itself, which is published facing the English translation ... Weiss's new text and translation will prove invaluable  as a teaching text (Exeter University Press's pricing policy means that this volume is just about affordable for students), and as control reference to Arnold; but more important still perhaps, it makes a great piece of literature available to the wider public in an enjoyable, readable form."
Notes and Queries, Vol. 47, No. 3, September 2000

"Judith Weiss has performed a monumental feat:  completing a new edition and a brand new translation of Wace’s sprightly Old French “Brutus Romance”--the first complete and sustained extant vernacular history (however imaginary) of Britain. . .  together with the extensive and authoritative introduction, the discussion of the manuscripts, the newly-edited text and consistently-reliable translation, the user-friendly running heads, and the abundant annotations, this volume deserves the attention of medievalists interested in the literary, intellectual, and social history of mid-12th century."
Arthuriana, 2000

Wace’s Brut is an 1155 French verse rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s earlier Latin ‘history’ of Britain, from the time of Brutus, the eponymous founder, to the seventh century.  Wace uses Geoffrey’s stories, such as those of King Lear and King Arthur, with a lively inventiveness and originality, drawing on oral sources and his own knowledge of parts of Britain, imaginatively re-interpreting the material.  This is the first complete English translation and is presented in parallel with the French text, enabling those who wish to have access to the original to do so easily.  This new reprint has been revised by Judith Weiss, taking account of comments in reviews, with more than 350 individual changes to the translated text..

•      ‘Judith Weiss has performed a monumental feat. . .  the extensive and authoritative introduction, the discussion of the manuscripts, the newly-edited text and consistently-reliable translation, the user-friendly running heads, and the abundant annotations, this volume deserves the attention of medievalists interested in the literary, intellectual, and social history of mid-12th century.’  Arthuriana

•      ‘The academic community has long been in need of a good translation of the entirety of Wace’s Roman de Brut . . .   Thanks to Judith Weiss the text is now fully accessible to comparatists, undergraduates, and the interested layman . . .  Weiss’s new text and translation will prove invaluable as a teaching text (Exeter University Press’s pricing policy means that this volume is just about affordable for students), and as control reference to Arnold; but more important still perhaps, it makes a great piece of literature available to the wider public in an enjoyable, readable form.’ Notes and Queries

•      ‘Judith Weiss makes the complete Roman de Brut available in English translation for the first time . . . This book could be successfully assigned in classes for which French proficiency is not assumed, and Weiss’s introduction and bibliography will be helpful to readers encountering the poem for the first time.’  Speculum

Market: Scholars and graduate students of Arthurian studies, medieval studies, historiography, history, French studies.  Undergraduate students of medieval studies. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in King Arthur and British legendary history.

Editor:  Judith Weiss is Fellow and College Lecturer at Robinson College, Cambridge. Her publications include The Birth of Romance (Everyman, 1992) and The Life of King Arthur (Everyman, 1997).

Top