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British: Pre-1500

Sites | Author List


Sites about British: Pre-1500 literature:

The Ancient Irish Sagas
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/history-as-literature/the-ancient-irish-sagas/
“For many decades German, French, Irish, and English students have worked over the ancient Celtic texts, and recently many of the more striking and more beautiful stories have been reproduced or paraphrased in popular form.”
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
From: History as Literature, and Other Essays 1913
Keywords:
 
Arthur’s Britain
http://www.vmi.edu/english/hist-bib.html
A bibliography of critical works on Arthurian romances, and historical, cultural and archaeological works regarding Britain at the the time.
Contains: Bibliography
Author: Lynn H. Nelson
From: Virginia Military Institute, Department of English and Fine Arts
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Ballads
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#17
This lengthy analysis of ballads of the late Middle Ages includes sections on “Definition of the Subject”, “The Ballad Question”, “Robin Hood”, “The Epic Tendency”, “Funeral ballads”, and “Sources and Aesthetic Values of Ballads as a Whole.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Francis B. Gummere
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages
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The Beginnings of English Prose: Trevisa. The Mandeville Translators
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#3
This lengthy analysis of English prose of the late Middle Ages includes sections on “Early English Prose”, “Early Translations”, “John Trevisa”, “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville”, “MandevilleÕs Style”, and “MandevilleÕs Detail.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Alice D. Greenwood
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages
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Classical and Medieval Literature Sites
http://libraries.mit.edu/humanities/Literature/classical.html
A list of annotated links to major sites.
Author: Marlene Manoff
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The Earliest Scottish Literature: Barbour, Bling Harry, Huchoun, Wyntoun, Holland
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#5
This lengthy analysis of Scottish literature of the late Middle Ages includes sections on “Early Fragments”, “John Barbour; The Bruce”, “Morte Arthure”, “Lives of the Saints “, and “Andrew of WyntounÕs Orygynale Cronykil.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Peter Giles
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages
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Early English Tragedy
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#4
This lengthy analysis of early English tragedy includes sections on “Study, imitation and reproduction of Senecan tragedy”, “Early English Tragicomedies”, “Gismond of Salerne and its sources: motives of its authors”, “The relations between Locrine and Selimus”, and “the legacy of the Classics in Tragedy.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: John W. Cunliffe
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume V: English THE DRAMA TO 1642 Part One
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Early National Poetry
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#3
This lengthy analysis of early English national poetry includes sections on “Early National Poems the work of Minstrels”, “Beowulf: Scandinavian Traditions; Personality of the Hero; Origin and Antiquity of the Poem; the Religious Element”, “The Wanderer ” and “Religious Poetry of Heathen Times.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: H. Munro Chadwyck
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume I: English, From the Beginnings to the Cycle of Romance
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The Early Religious Drama: Miracle-Plays and Moralities
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#3
This lengthy analysis of early English religious drama includes sections on “Concordia Regularis”, “The vernacular in Medieval Drama”, “Corpus Christi Plays”, “Everyman”, “Vicissitudes in the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns”, and “The last of the Moralities.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: W. Creizenach
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume V: English THE DRAMA TO 1642 Part One
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English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, I
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#12
This lengthy analysis of 15th century English prose includes sections on “The Master of Game”, “John Capgrave”, “Reginald Pecock”, “Sir John Fortescue”, “Juliana of Norwich”, ”William GregoryÕs Note-book” and “Copyists and Booksellers.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Alice D. Greenwood
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages
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English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, II
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#14
This lengthy analysis of 15th century English prose includes sections on “Caxton as Editor”, “MaloryÕs Morte dÕArthur”, “The Chronicles of Froissart”, and “The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Alice D. Greenwood
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume II: English, The End of the Middle Ages
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Essays and Articles on Middle English Literature
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medessay.htm
This site lists essays and criticism for specific authors and works and links to them.
Contains: Historical Context, Character Analysis
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Exploring Ancient World Cultures: Index of Internet Resources: Essay Index: Medieval Europe
This site contains hundreds of links to essays about the Medieval period in European and English history and literature
Contains: Historical Context
Keywords:
 
Forget the Grail: Quests for Insignificant Objects with No Earthly Value
http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/inpar001_arthur.pdf
Expores the use of the quest for the Holy grail as a medieval McGuffin.
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Ross G. Arthur
From: In parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies Volume I: May 1999, page 83
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The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html
This site contains everything you could ever want to know about Medieval studies and more!
Contains: Historical Context
Keywords:
 
Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#9
This lengthy analysis of several early Latin chroniclers includes sections on “England and Normandy “, “Characteristics of the Chroniclers”, “Geoffrey of Monmouth “, “William of Newburgh”, “Matthew Paris”, and “Minor Chroniclers.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: W. Lewis Jones
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume I: English, From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance
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Latin Writings in England to the Time of Alfred
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#5
This lengthy analysis of several early Latin writings in England includes sections on “Gildas and The History of the Britons”, “Nennius and Historia Brittonum “, “BedeÕs Ecclesiastical History “, and “Lives of Saints; Visions; Minor writings.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: Montague Rhodes James
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume I: English, From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance
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Literature and the Middle Time
“The Middle Ages is a time of hypothesis wherein one of the most hypothetical concepts is time. The present essay addresses time as a conceptual and historical problem, in literary, religious, and practical terms. The interested student will find here valuable information on the origins of French literature, how the Middle Ages got its name, theological and everyday measurements of time, and the relationships of myth and fiction to genealogy in the founding of aristocratic families and feudal dynasties.”
Author: Gerald Seaman
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Medieval Feminist Index
http://www.haverford.edu/library/reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html
“The Medieval Feminist Index covers journal articles, book reviews, and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages. … In order to help researchers find current articles and essays quickly and easily, librarians and scholars began compiling the Medieval Feminist Index (MFI) in July 1996. … MFI covers over 300 journals as well as many essay collections devoted in large part to topics dealing with women, sexuality, or gender. However, no year’s worth of publications is completely indexed yet. … There are over 3000 records in the database currently, and more than one hundred records are added every other month. … The time period covered is 450 C.E. to 1500 C.E. with Russia extending to 1613, the beginning of the Romanov dynasty, because the sixteenth century is still medieval in social and politicial terms. The geographic area is Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as well as areas in which Europeans travelled. Subject coverage for gender and sexuality means that articles on masculinity and male homosexuality are included. Publications in English, French, German, and Spanish are currently being indexed. Material in other languages, notably Italian, will be added in the near future. “
Contains: Bibliography
Author: Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
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Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern Medieval Studies in a Post Modern Perspective
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/conf/cs95/papers/stein.html
“My remarks today are prompted in great part by a reaction that has taken me by surprise recently in some undergraduate medieval classes. Certain before they begin that such characteristically modern issues as racism or questions of gender and power will be irrelevant to their study of medieval literature (and therefore that Chaucer, say, will certainly be “boring”), some students have begun to react not with interest but withdismay that they have to think about things like rape even in a medieval class. It’s not so much that they feared that the class would be irrelevant to their concerns; they actively wanted it to be. This is not exactly what we have in mind, I take it, when we invoke “the alterity of the Middle Ages.” Or is it?”
Contains: Historical Context
Author: Robert Stein
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Metrical Romances, 1200Ð1500: I
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/authors/#13
This lengthy analysis of several early metrical romances includes sections on “French Influences”, “Benoit de Ste. More and Chrétien de Troyes”, “History of the English Romances “, “Breton Lays”, “Sir Gawayne and Sir Tristrem”, and “Relation of Romances to Ballads.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis, Bibliography
Author: W. P. Ker
From: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Volume I: English, From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance
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Notes on Middle English Romance
http://faculty.uca.edu/~jona/second/romannot.htm
Notes, commentary and criticism on Middle English romances by a professor of English.
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Jonathan Glenn
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Queer Play: The Cultural Work of Crossdressing in Medieval Drama
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/conf/cs95/papers/clark.html
“But what is striking about all of this work is its resistance to reaching back to medieval theater, in which crossdressing was also the standard practice, with male actors almost without exception playing all roles, both male and female. In contemporary Renaissance scholarship, the theater of the Middle Ages is at best the dimly perceived, rarely articulated, but necessary ground upon which the Renaissance theater and, by extension, the criticism on it, work their brilliant refigurings. Medievalists, too, have unwittingly collaborated in this oversight, downplaying the complexity of theatrical crossdressing as a cultural practice in medieval Europe. “
Contains: Historical Context
Author: Robert L. A. Clark and Claire M. Sponsler
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Scottish Literature in 1400
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/NoFrames/DMcClure2.html
A conference paper which examines “ScotlandÕs literary achievement in three languages during the years around 1400.”
Author: J. Derrick McClure
From: ASLS/DACE Conference 18 November 2000
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“Thirti dayes hath November”: Time and Life in Middle English Verse
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/e-center/greentree.html
“The medieval period is one of the richest in our literary history. Within it we find, particularly in the lyrics, some of the most delightful, elegant, beautiful and bizarre poetry ever written in our language. There are expressions of joy and sorrow, ecstasy and triumph, both spiritual and carnal, distillations of love offered to God, the Virgin or an indifferentmistress, theological expositions, wild moments of bawdy fun, vicious assaults in the battles of the sexes, evocations of the impossibly beautiful, and any of them may be parodied to expressions of devotion or ridicule. No emotion can have been neglected by the medieval poets.”
Contains: Historical Context, Content Analysis
Author: Rosemary Greentree
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The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_2_111/ai_69202448
“This paper is a preliminary study into the nature of popular belief in the witch’s familiar in early modern England and Scotland. It illustrates some of the similarities to be found between beliefs in the witch’s familiar and contemporary fairy beliefs and argues that the extent of these similarities suggests that in the period there must have been considerable confusion between the two kinds of spirit, particularly on a popular level. The paper then goes on to argue that fairy beliefs provided a matrix of thought which underpinned the whole construct of the witch’s familiar in the popular mind, a construct which interacted with elite demonological theory in a coherent and dynamic way.”
Contains: Historical Context
Author: Emma Wilby
From: Folklore October 2000
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Authors in British: Pre-1500 literature:

Anonymous (British: Pre-1500) (600 – 1500)Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400)
William Langland ( – )Sir Thomas Malory (1410? – 1471?)
Marie de France (12th c. – 12th c.)


Last Updated Mar 25, 2014