This new edition presents three odes to saints in alliterative and stanzaic form, composed in the north and east Midlands around 1400. The hymns address St. Katherine of Alexandria (from Bodley Rolls 22), St. John the Evangelist (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS91), and St. John the Baptist (British Library, MS Additional 39574). The edition contains a full account of extensive recent scholarship on the Middle English alliterative verse tradition, as well as the hymns' hagiographical and historical context.

This collection is the work of scholars on Middle English, Insular French and Medieval Latin writings of the late twelfth century in England and its possessions, when an English-speaking populace was ruled by a French-speaking aristocracy and administered by a Latin-speaking and writing clergy. The political discourses of Henry's reign are acknowledged, developed and ironised within the first real flowering of so many vernacular genres, romance and history in particular. The energetic and intrepid writers of this period are examined in relation to the development of social institutions and...

The conquest of Wales by the medieval English throne produced a fiercely contested territory, both militarily and culturally. Wales was left fissured by frontiers of language, jurisdiction and loyalty - a reluctant meeting place of literary traditions and political cultures. But the profound consequences of this first colonial adventure on the development of medieval English culture have been disregarded. In setting English figurations of Wales against the contrasted representations of the Welsh language tradition, this volume seeks to reverse this neglect, insisting on the crucial importance...