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Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection maintains a secure place among the major religious treatises composed in fourteenth-century England. This guide to the contemplative life, written in two books of more than 40,000 words each, is notable for its careful explorations of its religious themes and also as a monument of Middle English prose. Its popularity is attested by the fact that some forty-two manuscripts containing one or both of the books survive, with a relatively large number of manuscipts with Book I alone, which suggests it may have been the more popular of the two. Hilton (born c. 1343) was a member of the religious order known as the Augustinian Canons. There is reason to believe that be was trained in canon law and studied at the University of Cambridge. He was the author of a number of works in English and Latin, all much shorter than The Scale. He died at the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire in 1396. On the basis of the content of certain of his works it can be safely inferred that he was actively involved in some of the religious controversies current in England in the 1380s and 1390s, and his principal concern, evident in The Scale , is to defend orthodox belief, especially in the conduct of the contemplative life.

Texts of interest because they represent a kind of writing - at the intersection of ecclesiastical and secular power, drawing on the whole range of medieval Latin learning - that is not found elsewhere in the European Middle Ages. Usefull in teaching as they illustrate a great number of characteristic medieval ways of writing.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of a manuscript that is of supreme value to literary scholars of medieval English literature.

One of the greatest medieval drama cycles in England was mounted annually at Coventry at Corpus Christi until suppressed in 1579 and is of particular importance because it was almost certainly seen by William Shakespeare when he was a boy in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon.

Its over four hundred images make this manuscript (Cotton Claudius B. iv) one of the most extensively illustrated books to survive from the early Middle Ages and preserve evidence of the creativity of the Anglo-Saxon artist and his knowledge of other important early medieval picture cycles.

John Capgrave's The Life of Saint Katherine, written c. 1463 in Lynn in Norfolk, is, according to the editor, . . . the longest and most intricate Katherine legend written during the Middle Ages, either in Latin or in any vernacular. In telling the story of the life of the virgin martyr, Katherine, Capgrave uses many of the tropes that mark the enormously popular genre of hagiography as it was written throughout the Middle Ages. Given his learning, however, and his evident acquaintance with the works of Chaucer, Lydgate, and Osburn Bokenham, and his knowledge of medieval drama, and the possibility that he knew of The Book of Margery Kempe, this saint's life should be particularly interesting to students of late Middle English culture, especially literature. In the course of his encyclopedic narrative, in which he evidently sought to appeal to a broad audience in sophisticated, if provincial, Norfolk, Capgrave inserts digressions on Greek and Roman history; on just and unjust rule and justifiable vs. unjustifiable rebellion; on child care; on medieval English feasts, jousts, and pageants; and on the role(s) of women.

A careful reading of the essays brings with it the awareness that to ignore improvisation is to distort the art in a major way. In light of the present volume, the very concept of "faithful historical re-creation" takes on a much broader and more complex character.

Presents a collection of saints' lives intended to suggest the diversity of possibilities beneath the supposedly fixed and predictable surfaces of the legends, using multiple retellings of the same legend to illustrate that medieval readers and listeners did not just passively receive saints' legends but continually and actively appropriated them.

The disparate texts in this anthology, produced in England between the late thirteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, challenge, and in some cases parody and satirize, the institution of marriage. The texts bridge generic categories.

A selection of documents, translated primarily from medieval Latin but occasionally from Old French, that show how religious women and their patrons managed resources to make monastic communities-particularly a variety of Cistercian communities-work.

Wyclif sought the restoration of an idealized past even if that meant taking revolutionary steps in the present to recover what had been lost. His 1377-78 On the Truth of Holy Scripture represents such an effort in reform: the recognition of the inherent perfection and veracity of the Sacred Page which serves as the model for daily conduct, discourse, and worship, thereby forming the foundation upon which Christendom itself is to be ordered.

Anonymous English dream vision allegory produced, probably, in the third quarter of the 15th century. Blends didacticism with the mythological and the courtly, and seeks to bring Reson and Sensualyte into accord by means of an assembly of the classical gods that is called to adjudicate the relative merits of Discorde's desire to overthrow Vertu.

Contributions to this volume recognize that early drama depended on specific developments in material culture in order to achieve its effects, which included both visual and auditory means of appealing to audiences. . Of special interest is Mary Remnant's survey of musical instruments; she is the recognized expert on medieval English instruments.

Apocalyptic speculation, in one form or another, is as persistent at the turn of this millennium as it was at the last. The commentaries of Haimo of Auxerre and Thietland of Einsiedeln offer glimpses of two links in [the] unbroken chain of the apocalyptic tradition.

The eight essays in The Recovery of Old English consider major aspects of the progress of Anglo-Saxon studies from their Tudor beginnings until their coming of age in the second half of the seventeenth century.

The poems selected for this volume provide a sampling of the rich tradition of Marian devotion as expressed in Middle English. They range widely in form, tone and aesthetic quality. Taken together, they express the full range of a people's effort to voice its anxieties and joys through Mary.

Shoaf here presents a hitherto neglected Middle English text for both undergraduate and graduate classrooms: Thomas Usk's The Testament of Love. Left unpublished since the nineteenth century, Usk's modern edition includes glosses, notes, and a contextualizing introduction to assist students of all levels in approaching Usk's Middle English poem. The fourteenth century work describes Love descending to Usk's prison cell, and the two engaging in a long, theological conversation reminiscent of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. Notable for its idiosyncratic imagery, wide variety of themes, and Christian sentimentality, The Testament of Love is a fascinating text to be studied in any Middle English classroom.

In a series of essays readers will find information about modern scholarship on the subject of chivalry and various suggestions for ways to teach some familiar and unfamiliar chivalric materials. Short bibliographies are provided for teachers' further use.

Despite the paramount importance of confraternities (especially to males) in medieval European society, scholars have tended to neglect not only the social role they played but also the influence they had on the art, drama, music, and thinking of the society in which they not only existed but thrived.

This richly illustrated book surveys representations of the stage and acting from manuscript illuminations, stained glass, sculpture, woodcarving, wall paintings, and the woodcuts that appear in playbooks produced by the first English printers.

An excellent introduction to the tradition of romances dealing with the matter of France-that is, Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers. This is a valuable introduction to Charlemagne romances and is accessible to beginners in Middle English because of contextualizing introductions and glosses for each text, as well as a helpful glossary.

An asset to any study of gender in medieval England; three poems that complement each other in their treatments of relations between the sexes. Incl. contextualizing introductions and helpful glosses; also an extensive glossary for the entire volume. Useful to not only beginning students of Middle English and thos more advanced.

Professor Palmer has systematically surveyed the art of the former West Riding of Yorkshire and has provided an iconographic index of this large region where medieval drama also flourished.

In his foreward to the volume, Clifford Davidson praises Guilfoyle's application of the concept of scenic form in her study of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, and her exposition of historical consciousness. Any student of Shakespeare will benefit from the nuanced study of his imagery and how it colors his characters and the action in his plays.

Collection of essays derived from a symposium conducted as part of the Twenty-Eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, May 6-9,1993

Transcriptions were all designed for performances by the Society for Old Music, and were used in concerts for the local community, the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Concerts ranged from medieval chant and monophonic song to polyphonic choral works, and each concert focused on a particular topic.

"The Worlde and the Chylde," issued by the press of Wynkyn de Worde in 1521, is one of the very earliest plays published in England. It also has very considerable interest for its adaptation of the ages of man iconography, which is extensively treated in the introduction, notes and illustrations.

This book illustrates this vastness of medieval interpretive tradition on the seven seals. It includes fifteen texts from the sixth through the fifteenth century.

A university exists to make known what can only be revealed by consistent, dedicated effort. Ultimately, a university exists in order to understand the things that are hidden from ordinary, casual view. This is a message that is subtly reinforced by all of the articles in this volume.

"The Wallace" catalogs the sheer brutality of war. We are regaled with such detailed accounts of the sacking of towns and the burning down of buildings full of screaming inhabitants that the smells and sounds, as well as the terrible sights, of war are graphically conveyed.