Noah's Flood is one of the Bible's most popular stories, and flood myths survive in many cultures today. This book presents the first comprehensive examination of the incorporation of the Flood myth into the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Focusing on literary representations, it contributes to our understanding of how Christian Anglo-Saxons perceived their place in the cosmos. For them, history unfolded between the primeval Deluge and a future - perhaps imminent - flood of fire, which would destroy the world. This study reveals both an imaginative diversity and shared interpretations of the Flood...

This major new literary study offers a fresh view of the significance of the famous group of fourteenth-century poems, 'Pearl', 'Cleanness', 'Patience' and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. It is a comprehensive study which puts the poems themselves firmly at its centre, though it is always alert to relevant aspects of their literary and cultural context. John Anderson builds his discussions of the poems' ideas on an examination of the anonymous poet's superb Shakespeare-like language. He finds that the great fourteenth-century struggle, between religious and secular forces for control of...

"Greenery" reaches back and offers new readings of English texts, both known and unfamiliar, informed by eco-criticism. After considering general issues pertaining to green criticism, Greenery moves on to a series of individual chapters arranged by theme (earth, trees, wilds, sea, gardens and fields) which provide individual close readings of selections from such familiar texts as "Malory's Morte D'Arthur," "Chaucer's""Knight's and Franklin's Tales," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Langland's Piers Plowman. "

These essays by senior scholars in medieval studies celebrate the career of J.J. Anderson, editor, critic, and co-founder of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture series, who taught in medieval studies at the University of Manchester for forty years.
The essays are rooted in medieval literature but frequently range beyond the confines of the Middle Ages. They reflect the breadth of Anderson's own scholarly interests, especially in drama and Arthurian literature. There is a particular focus on 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and 'Pearl', poems which preoccupied him throughout...