How to Read Middle English Poetry

How to Read Middle English Poetry guides readers through poetry between 1150 and 1500, for study and pleasure. Chapters give down-to-earth advice on enjoying and analyzing each aspect of verse, from the choice of single words, through syntax, metre, rhyme, and stanza-design, up to the play of larger forms across whole poems.

How to Read Middle English Poetry covers major figures--such as Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, and Robert Henryson--but also delves into exciting anonymous lyrics, romances, and drama. It shows, too, how some modern poets have drawn on earlier poems, and how Middle English and early Scots provide crucial standpoints from which to think through present-day writing. Contextual sections discuss how poetry was heard aloud, introduce manuscripts and editing, and lay out Middle English poetry’s ties to other tongues, including French, Welsh, and Latin. Critical terms are highlighted and explained both in the main text and in a full indexed glossary, while the uses of key tools such as the Middle English Dictionary are described and modeled. References to accessible editions and electronic resources mean that the book needs no accompanying anthology.

At once thorough, wide-ranging, and practical, How to Read Middle English Poetry is indispensable for students exploring Middle English or early Scots, and for anyone curious about the heart of poetry’s history.

Daniel Sawyer, Departmental Lecturer in English Literature and Manuscript Studies, University of Oxford

Daniel Sawyer is Departmental Lecturer in English Literature and Manuscript Studies at the University of Oxford. He read English at Queen Mary, University of London, and studied for his MSt and DPhil in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. He has held fellowships at the Huntington Library in California, and at Corpus Christi College, Merton College, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford. He has spent more than a decade teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Old and Middle English literature; his research interests range across early manuscripts, editing, and the history of poetry seen in long perspective.