Old English and Middle English Poetry

369 Pages·2020·21.768 MB·English

by  Derek Pearsall

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
Volume 39
OLD ENGLISH AND MIDDLE
ENGLISH POETRY

OLD ENGLISH AND MIDDLE
ENGLISH POETRY
DEREK PEARSALL
Firstpublishedin1977byRoutledge&KeganPaulLtd
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The Routledge History of English Poetry
Volume 1
Old English and
Middle English Poetry
Derek Pearsall
Centre for Medieval Studies
University of York
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London, Henley and Boston
First published in 1977
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street,
London WC1E 7DD,
Broadway House,
Newtown Road,
Henley-on- Thames,
0*<w 1 EN and
9 Park Street,
Mass. C/&4
Photosetting by Thomson Press (India) Limited
New Delhi
and printed in Great Britain by
Unwin Bros. Ltd
© Derek Pearsall 1977
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
ISBN 0 7100 8396 3
Contents
General editor's preface ix
Introduction xi
Abbreviations xiii
1 Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition 1
Germanic traditions 3
The 'heroic* poems 5
Beowulf: heroic and Christian traditions 7
Beowulf: methods, style andform 11
Beowulf: Latin and monastic background 18
Beowulf : date and provenance 22
2 Anglo-Saxon religious poems 25
Scriptural poems 30
Saints' lives 40
Devotional poems 44
Homiletic poetry 48
Meditative poems: the 'elegies' 51
3 Late Old English poetry and the transition 57
4Classical' poetry in late Old English 60
Poetry and prose 66
4Popular' poetry 70
Transitional verse and prose 74
Transitional verse 77
Transitional \prose' 81
4 Poetry in the early Middle English period 85
English and Anglo-Norman 85
v
CONTENTS
Clerical tradition: poetry of the 'schools' 89
The friars' miscellanies 94
Poetry of popular instruction 102
La^amon 108
Thirteenth-century romance and chronicle 113
5 Some fourteenth-century books and writers 119
MS Harley 2253 120
Collections of religious verse 132
The Vernon MS 140
The Auchinleck MS and the romances 143
6 Alliterative poetry 150
The alliterative revival 152
Early poems of the revival 157
The techniques of alliterative verse 160
The Morte Arthure 162
Other historical poems 166
The Gawain-poems 169
'Classical* poetry: conclusion 176
Piers Plowman 177
The Piers Plowman group 181
Other alliterative poems 183
Stanzaic alliterative poems 185
7 Court poetry 189
Chaucer at court 191
The Chaucer circle 194
Chaucer: language, techniques and literary background 197
Chaucer as a narrative poet 204
John Gower 208
Fifteenth-century courtly tradition 212
8 The close of the Middle Ages 223
The fifteenth century 223
John Lydgate 226
The formal poetic tradition 236
Religious poetry 243
Drama 252
Romances and popular poetry 258
The Transition 266
Scots poetry 274
9 Conclusion 282
VI
CONTENTS
Appendix 1 Technical terms, mainly metrical 284
Appendix 2 Chronological Table 291
Notes 303
Index 335
vii