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MEDIEVAL HISTORY
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MEDIEVAL POETRY
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by Anonymous (no photo)Synopsis:
Presented in their original medieval Latin and with commentary and notes in English, this is a translation of thirty poems from Carmina Burana.
The Carmina Burana is a collection of poems, songs and sung religious drama from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Often described as the work of wandering scholars, it actually contains many pieces by famous clerics of the period. The verses are lively, uninhibited celebrations of the joys of wine, women and gambling, but there are also serious poems on the pains of love and the moral corruption of the Church.
Many of us of a certain age remember reading this in school, although it may not have been this newer translation.Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
by Caitlín R. Kiernan(no photo)Synopsis
The national bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Award. Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the classic Northern epic of a hero’s triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed in the exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels in this story to the historical curve of consciousness in the twentieth century, but the poem also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.
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The Poem of the Cid: Dual Language Edition
by Anonymous (no photo)Synopsis:
A poem that details the adventures of the warlord and nobleman Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar - 'Mio Cid'. It tells of the Cid's unjust banishment from the court of King Alfonso, his victorious campaigns in Valencia, and the crowning of his daughters as queens of Aragon and Navarre - the high point of his career as a warmonger.
Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions
by Unknown (no photo)Synopsis:
"Digenis Akritis" is Byzantium's only epic poem, telling of the exploits of a heroic warrior of "double descent" on the frontiers between Byzantine and Arab territory in Asia Minor in the ninth and tenth centuries. It survives partially in six versions, of which the two oldest are edited here. This edition and translation aims to highlight the nature of the lost poem, and to provide a guide through the maze of recent discussions about the epic and its background.
Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry (Publications for the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London, Vol 2)
by Roderick Beaton (no photo)Synopsis:
No synopsis available on Goodreads.
Cancioneiro
by D. Dinis (no photo)Synopsis:
A poesia galaico-portuguesa chegou até nós através de três Cancioneiros manuscritos: o da Biblioteca da Ajuda, dos últimos decénios do século XIII, o da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, antigo Colocci-Brancuti, [...], e o da Biblioteca do Vaticano, originário também da biblioteca de Angelo Colocci. D. Dinis é um dos autores representado nos Cancioneiros com maior número de composições: são da sua autoria 137 textos, nos vários géneros. Nasceu em Lisboa em 1261, tendo falecido em Santarém, em 1325. É filho de D. Afonso III de Portugal e de D. Beatriz de Castela, sendo neto por via materna de Afonso X, de quem terá herdado o génio poético.
Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria
by Alfonso X (no photo)Synopsis:
No synopsis available on Goodreads.
The Divine Comedy
by
Dante AlighieriSynopsis:
The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity.
Mandelbaum’s astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets.
This Everyman’s edition–containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso–includes an introduction by Nobel Prize—winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations.
Songs of a Friend: Love Lyrics of Medieval Portugal: Selections from Cantigas de Amigo(no image) Songs of a Friend: Love Lyrics of Medieval Portugal: Selections from Cantigas de Amigo by Barbara Hughes Fowler (no photo)
Synopsis:
Portugal enjoyed one of the richest and most sophisticated cultures of the Middle Ages, in part because of its vibrant secular literature. One popular literary genre of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the cantigas de amigo, love songs in which male poets wrote from a female perspective. More than five hundred of these mysterious poems depicting a young girl's love for an absent lover survive today. Until now, however, they have remained inaccessible except to a small circle of scholars.
Canzoniere: Selected Poems
by
Francesco PetrarcaSynopsis:
This is a translation of 60 poems from Petrarch's Canzoniere, readable as English verse but also faithful to Petrarchan technique and structure, with a mixture of full rhyme and half-rhymes. The selection includes poetry from the first and second parts of the Canzoniere (known as 'in vita' and 'in mote') and includes samples of all the various forms - the dominant sonnet and canzone, and also the sestina and the madrigal, as well as the love poetry. The book also contains selections from the public and political poems, including the great patriotic canzone 'Italia mia' and the scathing anti-papal sonnets that appealed to Reformation England. The notes identify the major literary allusions and citations, elucidate imagery, point out links to petrarch's major prose and show the thematic repetitions and variations that combine to create the complex overall structure of the Canzoniere, revealing the Petrarchan influence on the English Renaissance. There is Italian text on the facing page, a full critical introduction, chronology of Petrarch's life, further reading, and full annotation.
The Song of Roland
by Anonymous (no photo)Synopsis:
Nowhere in literature is the medieval code of chivalry more perfectly expressed than in this masterly & exciting poem, translated here by Dorothy L. Sayers, an expert in medieval literature perhaps best know for her sixteen crime novels.
Introduction
Poem
Feudal picture
Vassalage
Tokens
Chivalry
Rules of battle
Nurture & companionage
Horses & swords
Verse & the translation
Acknowledgements
Note on costume
Song of Roland
Note on Laisse 50
Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Icelandic Stories
by Unknown (no photo)Synopsis:
They date from the thirteenth century and fall into two distinct groups. Hrafnkel's Saga, Thorstein the Staff-Struck, and Ale Hood are set in the pastoral society of native Iceland, the homely touch and stark realism giving the incidents a strong feeling of immediacy.
The remaining four - Hreidar the Fool, Halldor Sorrason, Audun´s Story, and Ivar´s Story - were written without first-hand knowledge of Scandinavia, and describe the adventures of Icelandic poets and peasants at the royal courts of Norway and Iceland. Pagan elements tightly woven into the pattern of Christian ethics give these stories their distinctive character and cohesion.
José, do you happen to know if that last work you posted would be a good introduction to Icelandic sagas? It's an area I'd like to know more about, but right now I have almost no background in it.
Vita Nuova
by
Dante AlighieriSynopsis:
Vita Nuova (1292-94) is regarded as Dante's most profound creation. The thirty-one poems in this, the first of his major writings, are linked by a lyrical prose narrative celebrating and debating the subject of love. Composed upon Dante's meeting with Beatrice and the "Lord of Love," it is a love story set to the task of confirming the "new life" this meeting inspired. With a critical introduction and explanatory notes, this is a new translation of a supreme work which has been read variously as biography, religious allegory, and a meditation on poetry itself.
Katie wrote: "José, do you happen to know if that last work you posted would be a good introduction to Icelandic sagas? It's an area I'd like to know more about, but right now I have almost no background in it."Me neither. I was looking for Icelandic sagas to make this thread more complete and found this Penguin edition of some of them.
The Goliard Poets: Medieval Latin Songs and Satires
edited by George F. Whicher (no photo)Synopsis:
These mocking, irreverent verses, written in Latin by the vagabond scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, furnish a wittily vineous commentary on the social and moral climate of medieval Europe. Whether (the scholars are not certain) Golias was the biblical giant GOliath or a personification of the sin of gluttony (Gula) matters little: these rollicking ballads which students still sing in the beer-cellars are a joy for all time. Recently they have achieved new fame and popularity through the composer Carl Orff's use of them in his cantata 'Carmina Burana.'
Katie wrote: "The Goliard Poets: Medieval Latin Songs and Satires edited by George F. Whicher (no photo)Synopsis:
These..."
What a nice book! The Goliards are great.
Yes! I know so little about them. I have this book sitting on my shelf at home, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
The Romance of the Rose
by
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung (no photo)Synopsis:
This is a new translation of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life from predestination and optics, to the Franciscan controversy and the right way to deal with premature hair-loss.
The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages
by
Helen WaddellSynopsis:
Widely acclaimed study of the makers and singers of medieval Latin poetry considers the works of such poet-scholars as Fortunatus, Abelard, and the colony of Irish scholars around Liège and Cologne. Other topics include humanism during the first half of the 12th century, the archpoet, the scholars' lyric, and the Carmina Burana.
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Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe
by Marisa Galvez (no photo)Synopsis:
Today we usually think of a book of poems as composed by a poet, rather than assembled or adapted by a network of poets and readers. But the earliest European vernacular poetries challenge these assumptions. Medieval songbooks remind us how lyric poetry was once communally produced and received—a collaboration of artists, performers, live audiences, and readers stretching across languages and societies.
The only comparative study of its kind, Songbook treats what poetry was before the emergence of the modern category “poetry”: that is, how vernacular songbooks of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries shaped our modern understanding of poetry by establishing expectations of what is a poem, what is a poet, and what is lyric poetry itself. Marisa Galvez analyzes the seminal songbooks representing the vernacular traditions of Occitan, Middle High German, and Castilian, and tracks the process by which the songbook emerged from the original performance contexts of oral publication, into a medium for preservation, and, finally, into an established literary object. Galvez reveals that songbooks—in ways that resonate with our modern practice of curated archives and playlists—contain lyric, music, images, and other nonlyric texts selected and ordered to reflect the local values and preferences of their readers. At a time when medievalists are reassessing the historical foundations of their field and especially the national literary canons established in the nineteenth century, a new examination of the songbook’s role in several vernacular traditions is more relevant than ever.
A Companion to Medieval Poetry
by Corinne Saunders (no photo)Synopsis:
A Companion to Medieval Poetry presents a series of original essays from leading literary scholars that explore English poetry from the Anglo-Saxon period up to the 15th century. Organised into three parts to echo the chronological and stylistic divisions between the Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Post-Chaucerian periods, each section is introduced with contextual essays, providing a valuable introduction to the society and culture of the timeCombines a general discussion of genres of medieval poetry, with specific consideration of texts and authors, including Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer, Gower and Langland. Features original essays by eminent scholars, including Andy Orchard, Carl Schmidt, Douglas Gray, and Barry Windeatt, who present a range of theoretical, historical, and cultural approaches to reading medieval poetry, as well as offering close analysis of individual texts and traditions.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by Unknown (no photo)Synopsis:
Written by an anonymous 14th-century poet, this epic poem is recognized as an equal of Chaucer's masterworks and of the great Old English poems, including Beowulf. This edition includes a Preface by Raffel and a new Introduction. Revised reissue.
Love Songs from Al-Andalus: History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja
by Otto Zwartjes (no photo)Synopsis:
Love Songs from al-Andalus presents an updated survey of the debates concerning Andalusian strophic poetry and their "Kharja"s. Attention is focused on the texts themselves and their literary implications as testimonies of the multicultural and multilingual society of al-Andalus. Since languages and alphabets of the three major religions have been used, these texts are studies historically, prosodically, thematically and stylistically and are related to the three literary traditions. One of the novelties of this study is the fact that it has been based upon the most updated edition and interpretations of the texts introducing emendations in over a third of its contents and making obsolete most of the hundreds of previous articles and books on the topic. Another novelty is the fact that stylistic features have been studied according to the Arabic model, casting new light on them. The survey of thematic relationships and the analysis of code-switching phenomena add weight to the conclusions of this research.
The Lais of Marie de France
by
Marie de FranceSynopsis:
This is a prose translation of the lais or poems attributed to Marie de France. Little is known of her but she was probably the Abbess of the abbey at Shaftesbury in the late 12th century, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and hence the half-sister of Henry II of England. It was to a king, and probably Henry II, that she dedicated these poems of adventure and love which were retellings of stories which she had heard from Breton minstrels. She is regarded as the most talented French poet of the medieval period.
Here's a fun poem of which I have read some interesting excerpts. Feel free to discuss Moriuht's historicity! (smile)Moriuht: A Norman Latin Poem from the Early Eleventh Century
(no image) Moriuht: A Norman Latin Poem from the Early Eleventh Century by Garnier de Rouen (no photo)
Synopsis:
No synopsis available on Goodreads.
An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste
by Catherine M. Jones (no photo)Synopsis:
Loosely based on French history but often embellished in fantastical ways and written to be performed by minstrels and jongleurs, chansons de geste are one of the most important traditions of the French Middle Ages.
With an overview of the principal epic cycles, their literary and historical analogues, close readings, contemporary versions and allusions, notes on dates and versification, and a glossary of key terms, Catherine Jones makes these poems accessible to students and any reader interested in learning more about this lively genre. She presents an essential survey of traditional scholarship, such as debates about sources and elements of style, and raises intriguing contemporary questions related to alterity, gender, and genre. With its many critical layers, this book is ideal for undergraduates and teachers alike.
Njal's Saga
by Anonymous (no photo)Synopsis:
Written in the thirteenth century, Njal's Saga is a story that explores perennial human problems-from failed marriages to divided loyalties, from the law's inability to curb human passions to the terrible consequences when decent men and women are swept up in a tide of violence beyond their control. It is populated by memorable and complex characters like Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a powerful warrior with an aversion to killing, and the not-so-villainous Mord Valgardsson. Full of dreams, strange prophecies, violent power struggles, and fragile peace agreements, Njal's Saga tells the compelling story of a fifty-year blood feud that, despite its distance from us in time and place, is driven by passions familiar to us all.
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Das Nibelungenlied: Song of the Nibelungs
by Unknown (no photo)Synopsis:
No poem in German literature is so well known and studied in Germany and Europe as the 800-year-old Das Nibelungenlied. In the English-speaking world, however, the poem has remained little known, languishing without an adequate translation. This wonderful new translation by eminent translator Burton Raffel brings the epic poem to life in English for the first time, rendering it in verse that does full justice to the original High Middle German. His translation underscores the formal aspects of the poem and preserves its haunting beauty. Often called the German lliad, Das Nibelungenlied is a heroic epic both national in character and sweeping in scope. The poem moves inexorably from romance through tragedy to holocaust. It portrays the existential struggles and downfall of an entire people, the Burgundians, in a military conflict with the Huns and their king. In his foreword to the book, Michael Dirda observes that the story “could be easily updated to describe the downfall of a Mafia crime family, something like The Godfather, with swords.” The tremendous appeal of Das Nibelungenlied throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is reflected in such works as Richard Wagner’s opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, Fritz Lang’s two-part film Die Nibelungen, and, more recently, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Writing and Reading Byzantine Secular Poetry, 1025-1081
by Floris Bernard (no photo)Synopsis:
In the mid-eleventh century, secular Byzantine poetry attained a hitherto unseen degree of wit, vividness, and personal involvement, chiefly exemplified in the poetry of Christophoros Mitylenaios, Ioannes Mauropous, and Michael Psellos. This is the first volume to consider this poetic activity as a whole, critically reconsidering modern assumptions about Byzantine poetry, and focusing on Byzantine conceptions of the role of poetry in society. By providing a detailed account of the various media through which poetry was presented to its readers, and by tracing the initial circulation of poems, this volume takes an interest in the Byzantine reader and his/her reading habits and strategies, allowing aspects of performance and visual representation, rarely addressed, to come to the fore. It also examines the social interests that motivated the composition of poetry, establishing a connection with the extraordinary social mobility of the time. Self-representative strategies are analyzed against the background of an unstable elite struggling to find moral justification, which allows the study to raise the question of patronage, examine the discourse used by poets to secure material rewards, and explain the social dynamics of dedicatory epigrams. Finally, gift exchange is explored as a medium that underlines the value of poetry and confirms the exclusive nature of intellectual friendship.
Readings in Medieval Poetry
by A.C. Spearing (no photo)Synopsis:
Readings in Medieval Poetry is a linked collection of essays on such poems as the Song of Roland, King Horn, Havelok, Sir Orfeo, Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, House of Fame and Troilus and Criseyde, the alliterative Morte Arthure, The Siege of Jerusalem, Purity, Pearl, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers Plowman. The connecting purpose is to open up a variety of kinds of medieval poetry to modern readers; and, while the methods used vary with the kinds of poetry being discussed, they frequently involve, along with historical treatments in terms of medieval practices and systems of ideas, the adoption and adaptation of theoretical frameworks borrowed from outside the medieval field.
Through the Glass Window Shines the Sun: An Anthology of Medieval Poetry and Prose
by Pamela Norris (no photo)Synopsis
A collection of extracts, poems, carols, songs and paintings that follow the seasons of the medieval year and the tasks and rituals traditionally associated with each season. The work describes many aspects of medieval life work and play, feasts and festivals, love, courtship and marriage.
A Companion To Medieval Scottish Poetry
by Priscilla Bawcutt (no photo)Synopsis:
A survey and overview of the extraordinary flowering of Scottish poetry in the middle ages, this work includes introductions to the literary culture of late medieval Scotland and its historical context and separate studies of the writings of James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and others.
Medieval Irish Lyrics
by Barbara Hughes Fowler (no photo)Synopsis:
This anthology offers modern readers translations of the lyric poetry transcribed or written by mediaeval Irish monks. Irish poets were the first Europeans to write in the vernacular, though few people now read this poetry in its original. Known for her translations of the poetry of classical Greece and Egypt and of mediaeval Portugal, Barbara Hughes Fowler once again makes the poetry of another era accessible to a new generation.
Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, #1268)
by James J. Wilhelm (no photo)Synopsis:
This anthology features nearly 300 works in 14 linguistic areas: Latin hymns and lyrics from 800 to 1300..."Carmina Burana..".Proven al lyrics...Italian lyrics...North French lyrics...German lyrics...lyrics of Iberia, including Arabic, Hebrew, Mozarabic, Galician-Portuguese, Castilian, and Catalan...lyrics of Great Britain, including Irish, Welsh, Old English, Middle English, and Scottish-English ballads.
More than 100 authors are represented, including Chaucer, Dante, Petrarch, the major troubadours and trouv res, Walther von der Vogelweide, St. Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard, The Countess of Dia, The Queen of Mallorca, Hildegard of Bingen, Ibn Hazm, Mozarabic "kharja "writers, Denis I of Portugal, Alfonso X of Castile, Sordello, Fran ois Villon, Charles d'Orl ans, and many who are anonymous. There are indexes of authors, opening lines, and genres, and 12 photographs represent scenes that are related to the poems.
Complete Poems by
François Villonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTrT5...
Ballade (des dames de temps jadis)
Dictes moy ou, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Rommaine,
Archipiades ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo parlant quant bruyt on maine
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus q'humaine.
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Ou est la tres sage Helloïs,
Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?
Pour son amour ot ceste essoyne.
Semblablement, ou est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust geté en ung sac en Saine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
La royne Blanche comme lis
Qui chantoit a voix de seraine,
Berte au grand pié, Beatris, Alis,
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Englois brulerent a Rouan;
Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Ou elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu'a ce reffrain ne vous remaine:
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
François Villon c.1461
(translation)
Ballade (of the Ladies of Ancient Times)
Tell me where, or in what land,
is Flora the fair Roman girl,
Archipiada, or Thaïs,
who was her match in beauty's hall,
Echo who answered when one called
over rivers or still pools,
whose loveliness was more than human?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Where is Héloïse, so wise, for whom
Pierre Abelard was first unmanned
then cloistered up at Saint Denis?
For her love he bore these trials.
And where now can one find that queen
by whose command was Buridan
thrown in a sack into the Seine?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Queen Blanche, light as a lily,
who sang with a mermaid's voice,
Bertha Bigfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
Arembourg, heiress to Maine,
and Joan the good maid of Lorraine
whom the English griddled at Rouen;
where are they, where, O Sovereign Virgin?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Prince, don't ask me in a week
or in a year what place they are;
I can only give you this refrain:
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
François Villon c.1461
Translation: (c) Robin Shirley, 1993
His poems
by Dafydd ap Gwilym (no photo) and
Gwyn ThomasSynopsis:
Gwyn Thomas provides an accessible English translation of Dafydd ap Gwilym's, (the most prolific and famous of medieval Welsh poets), complete poems. The poems are annotated to bring out their historical and literary context.
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Verse and Poetry
by
Geoffrey ChaucerSynopsis:
The procession that crosses Chaucer's pages is as full of life and as richly textured as a medieval tapestry. The Knight, the Miller, the Friar, the Squire, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and others who make up the cast of characters -- including Chaucer himself -- are real people, with human emotions and weaknesses. When it is remembered that Chaucer wrote in English at a time when Latin was the standard literary language across western Europe, the magnitude of his achievement is even more remarkable. But Chaucer's genius needs no historical introduction; it bursts forth from every page of The Canterbury Tales.
If we trust the General Prologue, Chaucer intended that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works, The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Canterbury Tales (other topics)His Poems (other topics)
Complete Poems (TORONTO MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS) (other topics)
Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology (other topics)
Medieval Irish Lyrics (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Geoffrey Chaucer (other topics)Dafydd ap Gwilym (other topics)
Gwyn Thomas (other topics)
François Villon (other topics)
James J. Wilhelm (other topics)
More...
"Because most of what we have was written down by clerics, much of extant medieval poetry is religious. The chief exception is the work of the troubadours and the minnesänger, whose primary innovation was the ideal of courtly love. Among the most famous of secular poetry is Carmina Burana, a manuscript collection of 254 poems. Twenty-four poems of Carmina Burana were later set to music by German composer Carl Orff in 1936.
Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval...
Topics Include:
The Wheel of Fortune from Carmina Burana
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