This book examines Boccaccio's pivotal role in legitimizing the vernacular literature of Dante, Petrarch and Cavalcanti through argument, narrative and transcription.

A groundbreaking study of pre-Conquest English poets that rethinks the social role of Anglo-Saxon verse.

English Alliterative Verse tells the story of the medieval poetic tradition that includes Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stretching from the eighth century, when English poetry first appeared in manuscripts, to the sixteenth century, when alliterative poetry ceased to be composed. Eric Weiskott draws on the study of meter to challenge the traditional division of medieval English literary history into Old English and Middle English periods. The two halves of the alliterative tradition, divided by the Norman Conquest of 1066, have been studied separately since the...

How was the complex history of Britain's languages understood by twelfth-century authors? This book argues that the social, political and linguistic upheavals that occurred in the wake of the Norman Conquest intensified later interest in the historicity of languages. An atmosphere of enquiry fostered vernacular literature's prestige and led to a newfound sense of how ancient languages could be used to convey historical claims. The vernacular hence became an important site for the construction and memorialisation of dynastic, institutional and ethnic identities. This study demonstrates the...

An authoritative account of what manuscripts and their corrections reveal about medieval attitudes to books, language and literature.

This book examines the ways in which traditions of philosophy and logic are reflected in major works of medieval literature.

The first study to demonstrate how English literature continued to engage with crusading from medieval romances right through to Shakespeare.

A revisionary account of the powerful myths that grew up around the production and reception of the great medieval poem. Also available as Open Access.

This book traces the evolution of traditional English verse structures from their Old and Middle origins to the Modern English period.

A wide-ranging account of the relationship between romance and history from the medieval to the early modern period.