Score

Thank you for creating this list!!

(Might amend the title to "Medieval and Classical texts," though ... Aristotle and Plato, anyone?!)

How are you defining the end of "medieval"?

For example - John Donne and Edmund Spenser - but no Shakespeare?

If the list is to be understood to apply to classical, medieval and, say, Renaissance literature, then by all means bring on the Bard as well, I'd say. Going by the description given -- especially now, as amended -- my understanding is that this list is primarily intended to bring together books with way off-whack publication dates, so as to eventually enable those books' inclusion in the respective "best book of the century" lists.

That said, there's no specific point in time when, by scholarly agreement and all across Europe, the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance began. It's more a question of topicality, style, writerly outlook, etc. Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is in the medieval Arthurian tradition, both topically (Arthurian legend and its progeny) and in the writer's approach (structurally, it's a so-called "quest" tale like those of the "high" Middle Ages -- the French "Quete du Saint Graal," Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram Eschenbach's "Parzival" epics, and a fair share of the remaining French and English/Anglo-Saxon Arthurian epics, lore, and poetry). I'd admittedly been wondering whether or not to include Donne. (Thom?) -- Shakespeare is distinctly "early modern"/Renaissance, though, not medieval (with the possible exception of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," which he and Fletcher cribbed off Chaucer's "Knight's Tale").

Donne, to me, reads very "modern."

Themis-Athena wrote: "If the list is to be understood to apply to classical, medieval and, say, Renaissance literature, then by all means bring on the Bard as well, I'd say. Going by the description given -- especially..."

For England we have a pretty firm cut-off date of 1485, with Chaucer being an exception, a "one-man Renaissance".

Susanna wrote: "Donne, to me, reads very "modern.""

Agreed. Donne is usually classed with the 17th-century metaphysical poets even though much of his secular poetry was written in the 16th, before he became Dean of St; Paul's.

I'm holding in my hands a copy of Morton W. Bloomfield's survey, The Seven Deadly Sins. Goodreads knows nothing of the book, but they do list essays IN HONOR of Morton W. Bloomfield. Go figure.

Does it have an ISBN?

According to Amazon, the ISBN is 087013115X.

Themis-Athena wrote: "According to Amazon, the ISBN is 087013115X."

Here it is.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48...


The Goodreads search function has flaws. But if you search by ISBN it often comes up with the right book.

Yup.

Susanna wrote: "Donne, to me, reads very "modern.""

Dear Susanna, I don't know what to do about all the Renaissance lit here , especially Donne, given that someone went to the trouble of listing it all. And then there is to my mind a surplus of Aristotle and Plato. Missing so far are any of the Fun works of scholarship written for the undergraduate classroom. ...I'm going to go sleep now, that's what I'm going to do, lest I take this list and myself altogether too seriously.

Themis-Athena wrote: "If the list is to be understood to apply to classical, medieval and, say, Renaissance literature, then by all means bring on the Bard as well, I'd say. Going by the description given -- especially..."

Well, Chaucer had the good grace to die in exactly 1400....In England, Miracle play cycles were forbidden with the rise of Protestantism....I like 1485 as a terminus ad quem. That lets in Malory and the Gawain poet and stops on the cusp of the print revolution.