Book of Middle English

This book is an introduction to the wide range of literature written in England between 1100 and 1400. The first part describes the language of the time to enable the reader to achieve a full understanding of the literature printed in the second part.

The authors set out the essential characteristics of the language as written in different parts of the country, giving guidance on pronunciation, metre and vocabulary, and provide a lucid account of the forms of the language and their evolution over three centuries. Part one also includes a description of the way a manuscript text is edited and of how decisions relating to punctuation and scribal errors can materially affect meaning and interpretation.

The texts are, where possible, printed here complete: the 1137 entry for the Peterborough Chronicle, Sir Orfeo, Patience, St Erkenwald, John Trevisa's Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk and the York Play of the Crucifixion. The book also includes substantial and self-contained extracts from The Owl and the Nightingale, from Lazamon's Brut, The Cloud of Unknowing, William Langland's Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and John Gower's Confessio Amantis.

The texts have been freshly edited from manuscript sources. Each one is prefaced by an introductory headnote and accompanied by explanatory notes set at the foot of the page. The book concludes with a substantial glossary. It has been designed overall to make reading the literature of medieval England an enjoyable experience.