Posts belonging to Category Medieval Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale: New Edition Now Available The Pardoner’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer is probably one of the most accessible works of Middle English for modern readers – it features a neat moral parable, bawdy language and a barbed satire of the avarice prevalent in some elements of the medieval Church. The Pardoner’s Tale [...]

I have now posted all five books of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde free online. Troilus and Criseyde was the direct source for Shakespeare’s own Troilus and Cressida. It tells the story of two lovers separated by war – the Trojan War in fact! It’s not one of my favourite poems by Chaucer – the Canterbury [...]

Along with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I mentioned yesterday, I have now also added the Breton lais of Marie de France to the website. Here’s a quick run-down of the full contents that are online – you can also get it all of Marie de France’s lais as an eBook for easier [...]

In the Medieval History and Literature section of this site I’ve recently posted the full modern English translation by Jessie L. Weston of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – a rather fine poem, and a good translation. Here’s an excerpt from the first section of the translation: After the siege and the assault of [...]

At University I studied Medieval History, Language and Literature, which I loved, and I guess it has influenced some of my interests later in life! I went on to do a Masters in Medieval Literature, choosing The Court in English Alliterative Poetry, 1350-1450 as my thesis topic. Why did I choose this subject and what [...]

I have written a short story based on one of the most popular of Marie de France’s Breton lais, its known as Bisclavret, or sometimes, as in Eugene Mason’s translation, The Lay of the Were-wolf. I thought it might be helpful to provide a translation of the whole original lai. So here for your reading [...]

From Canto I of Dante’s Inferno: Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path. These are the opening lines to Dante’s great poem, and probably the most famous poem of the Middle Ages. What better way to start [...]

entlnes(se (n.) Also gentelnasse, ientilnesse. From Old French. gentillesse Gentilnesse, or Gentilnes seem to be the most common spellings. This is the firs of a regular series of posts about the meaning behind Middle English words. What is gentleness? Is it being kind to people? Does it mean talking quietly to them and not upsetting them. The word [...]

Edward III pursued a deliberate policy of drawing the nobility closer to the royal court and so make them more reliant on royal patronage. This was a reaction to the chaos of his Edward II’s reign, which had seen the country devastated by rebellion and civil war. The nobility, and to an extent the gentry [...]

At the end of the fourteenth century in England there were two distinct schools of poetry. One based on rhymed metre and located around London and the royal courts, with Chaucer as its main poet, and the other using alliterative verse based in the northern counties, taking its style from Anglo-Saxon. Alliterative poetry’s  structure of [...]