A student guide to some of the influential critical writing on Middle English literature. This book treats a wide range of Middle English texts, including "The Owl and the Nightingale", "The Canterbury Tales" and "Morte d'Arthur".

"Middle English" is a student guide to the most influential critical writing on Middle English literature. This is a student guide to the most influential critical writing on Middle English literature. This book: brings together extracts from some of the major authorities in the field; introduces readers to different critical approaches to key Middle English texts; treats a wide range of Middle English texts, including "The Owl and the Nightingale", "The Canterbury Tales" and "Morte d'Arthur"; and, is organized around key critical concerns, such as authorship, genre, and textual form. Each critical concern can be used as the basis for one week's work in a semester-long course. This book enables readers to forge new connections between different approaches.

Contents Arranged by Middle English Text/Author.Preface.Acknowledgements.1. Authorship:.John Lydgate: The Critical Approach: Derek Pearsall (1970).Literary Theory and Literary Practice: Alastair Minnis.Authority: Tim William Machan (1994).2. Textual Form:.The Hoole Book: Derek Brewer (1963).Division and Failure in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Hugh White (1988).3. Genre:.Middle English Narrative Genres: Paul Strohm (1980).The Religious Tradition: Piero Boitani (1982).4. Language, Style, Rhetoric:.Early Middle English Narrative Style: A.C. Spearing (1987).The Language of Service and Household Rhetoric in the Letters of the Paston Women: Diane Watt (1993).Three Languages: Thorlac Turville-Petre (1996).5. Allegory:.Patristic Criticism: The Opposition: E. Talbot Donaldson (1960).The Poets: Siegfried Wenzel (1967).Intellectual and Religious Interpretations: Kathryn Hume (1975).Allegorical Buildings in Medieval Literature: Jill Mann (1994).6. Literature and History:.Constructing Social Realities: Helen Barr (2001).Economics: John Bowers (2001).7. Gender:.Sexual Economics: Chaucer's Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe: Sheila Delany (1983).Medieval Medical Views of Women and Female Spirituality in the Ancrene Wisse and Julian of Norwich's Showings: Elizabeth Robertson (1993).No Pain, No Gain: Violence as Symbolic Capital in Malory's Morte Darthur : Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Schichtman (1998).8. Identity:.Characterisation in the Mystery Cycles: A Critical Prologue: David Mills (1983).'In Arthurus Day': Community, Virtue, and Individual Identity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: David Aers (1988).Troilus and Criseyde and Subjectivity: Lee Patterson (1991).Afterword.Bibliography.Index