Middle English Lyrics

by Maxwell Luria

It is the only anthology which includes all thirty-one English lyrics from MS Harley 2253, all the verses by Friar Herebert printed in Brown XIV, and all the important poems given in Robbins' Secular Lyrics. In all there are 245 lyrics, arranged thematically. To make these delightful poems accessible to the modern reader, the editors have removed many of the orthographic impediments inherent in Middle English verse and have modernized punctuation, capitalization, and obsolete letters while scrupulously seeking to retain the substantive integrity of the poems. "Critical and Historical Backgrounds" are provided in essays by Peter Dronke, Stephen Manning, Raymond Oliver, and Rosemary Woolf. In a special section, six poems are singled out for critical comment by A. K. Moore, Edmund Reiss, D. W. Robertson, Jr., E. T. Donaldson, John Speirs, Thomas Jemielity, D. G. Halliburton, Leo Spitzer, and others. Two of these lyrics, "Maiden in the mor lay" and "I sing of a maiden," are discussed by four different scholars. In all, twenty-five poems are discussed in the essays. The volume also includes a list of Abbreviations, a Table of Textual Sources and Dates, a Select Bibliography, and an Index of First Lines.

Genres: Poetry, Reference, Medieval, Poetry Plays, Language, Anthologies, British Literature

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Ron Me]

Full of fun. Worth the effort. Middle English isn't *too* hard, Scottish is somewhat hard, but Middle Scottish makes my head hurt.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

"D...dronken--
Dronken, dronken, idronken--
...dronken is Tabart atte wine."

Now that's poetry. My days of trying to read texts in old and middle English are long over, but this was fun at the time.

[curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent choice for any fan of the period. The folks at Norton did a great job of making the text of each piece accessible (if heavily annotated) for anyone not familiar with reading directly from the Middle English. The scholarly articles are also well worth a close reading.

[Nina AJG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent anthology, but deducting one star due to the maddening classification system (by theme, not chronology).