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This anonymous Middle English poem of the late fourteenth century, a central work in the Arthurian group, is an important example of the tradition known as the "alliterative revival" and is one of a group of poems having Sir Gawain as hero. Its metrical form is the most intricate in Middle English Romance, including rhyme, alliteration, and stanza-linking. The stanza consists of nine long alliterative lines rhyming ababababc and a "wheel" of four shorter lines rhyming dddc. In this first critical edition based on all four extant manuscripts, Robert J. Gates has contributed careful commentary with extensive critical apparatus. He attempts to reconstruct original readings that have been lost in one or more of the manuscripts. His glossary, however, uses words from the variant readings as well as those accepted in the edited text. Using the editorial methods developed by George Kane in his edition of Piers Plowman, Gates gives abundant new evidence of the usefulness of these methods. He believes that the edition shows that written poems could be formulaic and that scribes often substituted readings consisting of formulaic whole or half lines.

Arthurian romances. --- LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Medieval. --- Romances

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What Kind of a Thing Is a Middle English Lyric? considers issues pertaining to a corpus of several hundred short poems written in Middle English between the twelfth and early fifteenth centuries. The chapters draw on perspectives from varied disciplines, including literary criticism, musicology, art history, and cognitive science. Since the early 1900s, the poems have been categorized as “lyrics,” the term now used for most kinds of short poetry, yet neither the difficulties nor the promise of this treatment have received enough attention. In one way, the book argues, considering these poems to be lyrics obscures much of what is interesting about them. Since the nineteenth century, lyrics have been thought of as subjective and best read without reference to cultural context, yet nonetheless they are taken to form a distinct literary tradition. Since Middle English short poems are often communal and usually spoken, sung, and/or danced, this lyric template is not a good fit. In another way, however, the very differences between these poems and the later ones on which current debates about the lyric still focus suggest they have much to offer those debates, and vice versa.As its title suggests, this book thus goes back to the basics, asking fundamental questions about what these poems are, how they function formally and culturally, how they are (and are not) related to other bodies of short poetry, and how they might illuminate and be illuminated by contemporary lyric scholarship. Eleven chapters by medievalists and two responses by modernists, all in careful conversation with one another, reflect on these questions and suggest very different answers. The editors’ introduction synthesizes these answers by suggesting that these poems can most usefully be read as a kind of “play,” in several senses of that word. The book ends with eight “new Middle English lyrics” by seven contemporary poets.

English poetry --- Lyric poetry --- LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Medieval. --- History and criticism. --- Middle English. --- anthology. --- collection. --- interdisciplinary. --- liturgy. --- lyric. --- medieval. --- meter. --- music. --- new lyric studies. --- performance. --- poetry. --- reference. --- religion. --- romance. --- short verse. --- stanza. --- teaching.

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The figure of Alexander the Great haunted the medieval imagination - as much as Arthur, as much as Charlemagne. His story was translated more often in medieval Europe than any work except the Gospels. Yet only small sections of the Alexander Romance have been translated into modern French, and Nigel Bryant's is the first translation into English. The Deeds and Conquests of Alexander the Great is Jehan Wauquelin's superb compendium, written for the Burgundian court in the mid-fifteenth century, which draws together all the key elements of the Alexandrian tradition.With great clarity and intelligence Wauquelin produced a redaction of all the major Alexander romances of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - including the verse Roman d'Alexandre, The Vows of the Peacock and La Venjance Alixandre - to tell the whole story of Alexander's miraculous birth and childhood, his conquests of Persia and India, his battles with fabulous beasts and outlandish peoples, his journeys in the sky and under the sea, his poisoning at Babylon and the vengeance taken by his son. This is an accomplished and exciting work by a notable writer at the Burgundian court who perfectly understood the appeal of the great conqueror to ambitious dukes intent upon extending their dominions. Nigel Bryant has translated five major Arthurian romances from medieval French, including Perceforest in which Alexander features prominently. He has also translated the fourteenth-century chronicles of Jean le Bel.

Alexander, --- Alejandro, --- Alekjhāṇḍara, --- Aleksandar, --- Aleksander, --- Aleksandr, --- Alekʻsandre, --- Aleksandros bar Filipos, --- Aleksandŭr, Makedonski, --- Alessandro, --- Alexander --- Alexandre, --- Alexandros --- Alexandros, --- Alexandros, Megalos, --- Alexandru, --- Alexantros, --- Aleksandŭr, --- Александър, --- Iskandar, --- Maḳdonya, Aleksandros bar Filipos, --- Makedonski, Aleksandŭr, --- Македонски, Александър, --- Megalexandros, --- Megas Alexandros, --- Nagy Sándor, --- Sikandar, --- Iskender, --- Μέγας Ἀλέξανδρος, --- Ἀλέξανδρος, --- Ἀλέξανδρος --- אלכסנדר בן פיליפוס, --- אלכסנדר, --- اسكندر كبير --- اسکندر اعظم --- سکندراعظم --- LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Medieval. --- Adventure. --- Alexander the Great. --- Conquests. --- Deeds. --- Heroic Tales. --- History. --- Literature. --- Medieval Literature. --- Medieval Romance. --- Mythology.