This volume serves as an excellent introduction to the tradition of romances dealing with the matter of France-that is, Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers. Of the three groups of English Charlemagne romances, the Ferumbras group, the Otuel group, and detached romances, the editor has selected one of each: The Sultan of Babylon, The Siege of Milan, and The Tale of Ralph the Collier. This is a valuable introduction to Charlemagne romances and is accessible to beginners in Middle English because of contextualizing introductions and glosses for each text, as well as a helpful glossary.

This volume serves as an excellent introduction to the tradition of romances dealing with the matter of France-that is, Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers. Of the three groups of English Charlemagne romances, the Ferumbras group, the Otuel group, and detached romances, the editor has selected one of each: The Sultan of Babylon, The Siege of Milan, and The Tale of Ralph the Collier. This is a valuable introduction to Charlemagne romances and is accessible to beginners in Middle English because of contextualizing introductions and glosses for each text, as well as a helpful glossary.

This volume is the first to make the Middle English Breton lays available to teachers and students of the Middle Ages. Breton lays were produced by or after the fashion of Marie de France in the twelfth century and claim to be "literary versions of lays sung by ancient Bretons to the accompaniment of the harp." The poems edited in this volume are considered distinctly "English" Breton lays because of their focus on the family values of late medieval England. With the volume's helpful glosses, notes, introductions, and appendices, the door is opened for students to study Middle English poetry and the medieval family alike.

Fitted with ample introductions, notes, and glosses, this volume will make an excellent text for a class of any level on Middle English romance. This excellent edition includes King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, and Athelston. These romances all deal with the Matter of Britain-that is, they celebrate action and adventure tales taking place in England. Featuring all the hallmarks of a good romance, these works include disinherited nobles, thrilling battles, love stories, dragons, and all sorts of marvels and adventures. Spanning the mid thirteenth to the late fourteenth century, these works provide an excellent cross section of the wonderful world of Middle English romances featuring the escapades of their fantastical countrymen.

An edition of the early Middle English verse sequence contained in the thirteenth-century Oxford Jesus College MS 29 (II) with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales's Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript. Made in the West Midlands, the Jesus 29 manuscript is the lengthiest all-English verse collection known to exist in the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics.

In this book, Marijane Osborn translates into modern English nine lively medieval verse romances, in a form that both reflects the original and makes the romances inviting to a modern audience. All nine tales contain elements of magic: shapeshifters, powerful fairies, trees that are portals to another world, and enchanted clothing and armor. Many of the tales also feature powerful women characters, while others include representations of “Saracens.” The tales address issues of enduring interest and concern, and also address sexuality, agency, and identity formation in unexpected ways.

The two texts of the Dialogue presented here, a Latin version printed ca. 1488 and a Middle English translation printed in 1492, preserve lively, entertaining, and revealing exchanges between the Old Testament wisdom figure Solomon and Marcolf, a medieval peasant who is ragged and foul-mouthed but quick-witted and verbally astute. The Dialogue was a best-seller of its day; Latin versions survive in some twenty-seven manuscripts and forty-nine early printed editions and the work was translated into a wide variety of late medieval vernaculars, including German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, English, and Welsh.

The Fabula Duorum Mercatorum, a romance that in its Boethian sensibility and treatment of love and friendship bears comparison to Chaucer's great works Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale, is one of Lydgate's most accomplished works. In Guy of Warwick, Lydgate breaks with romance tradition, presenting the heroic English knight-pilgrim and his last great battle against the dread giant Colbrond from an historical point of view.

At the end of the fifteenth century, Gavin Douglas devised his ambitious dream vision The Palyce of Honour in part to signal a new scope to Scottish literary culture. While deeply versed in Chaucer's writings, Douglas identified Ovid's Metamorphoses as a particularly timely model in the light of contemporary humanist scholarship. For all its comedy, The Palyce of Honour stands as a reminder to James IV of Scotland that poetry casts a powerful light upon the arts of rule.

In the first modern edition of the poem since 1863, James H. Morey presents The Prik of Conscience to a new audience of students of the Middle Ages. The famous fourteenth century poem leads its audience on a path of penance. Attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle, it became one of the most popular poems in medieval England and appears in about 130 manuscripts, more than any other Middle English poem. This edition is the first to offer extensive annotations and a gloss, making it accessible to students at all levels of proficiency in Middle English.