English Department - Medieval Literature

Reading List 2015-2016 – Medieval Literature ______

Primary Sources

Poetry

Anonymous, The Dream of the Rood

Anonymous, Judith

Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Clerk’s Tale and The Second Nun’s Tale1

Langland, Piers Plowman B-text: Prologue, Passus 1, 5-7, and 16-182

Marian Lyrics, “Swete and benygne moder and may” and “O hie emperice and quene celestiall”3

Prose

Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos4

Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, sections 19-445

Malory, Le Morte Darthur, The Noble Tale of the Sangrail6

Drama

Anonymous, N-Town Plays, Plays 8-11 of The Mary Play7

1 The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry Benson 2 Norton, facing-page edition, eds. Elizabeth Robertson and Stephen Shepherd. All quotation of Piers Plowman should be in Middle English on the exam. 3 Middle English Marian Lyrics numbers 85 and 86 (TEAMS), accessible online: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/saupe-middle-english-marian-lyrics 4 For all three Old English texts (Dream of the Rood, Judith, and Sermo Lupi ad Anglos), please read translations in the Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period, 2nd edition. 5 Norton, ed. Lynn Staley 6 Oxford World Classics edition, ed. Helen Cooper

Secondary Sources

Campbell, Mary Baine. “Spiritual Quest and Social Space: Texts of Hard Travel for God on Earth and in the Heart.” The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. Eds. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 707-24.

Greenfield, Stanley B. and Daniel S. Calder. “Christ as Poetic Hero.” A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: New York University Press, 1986, 83-205.

Sanok, Catherine. “Imitating the Past: Exemplarity as/and History.” Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 1-23.

7 TEAMS edition, accessible online: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/sugano- the-n-town-plays