TEAMS Middle English Texts

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  William Caxton's Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine

  Harriet Elizabeth Hudson

  William Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine are English versions of romances well-known in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, but outside the modern canon of early English literature. Like many of his publications, they are translations of prose works circulating at the court of Burgundy, but unlike his other romances, they do not belong to the matters of the Nine Worthies. They are independent narratives of love and adventure presenting two differing but complementary accounts of chivalry and courtly love. Following fifteenth-century fashions, they treat conventional materials with a degree of realism and imbue characters with subjectivity. Blanchardyn, published at the behest of Margaret, mother of Henry VII, is militaristic and attentive to governance, and notable for its affective narration and sophisticated style. Paris features a linear plot, lively characters, and employs generic motifs to explore issues of social mobility, family dynamics, and female autonomy.

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  The Owl and the Nightingale and the English Poems of Jesus College MS 29 (II)

  Susanna Fein

  An edition of the early Middle English verse sequence contained in the thirteenth-century Oxford Jesus College MS 29 (II) with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales’s Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript. Made in the West Midlands, the Jesus 29 manuscript is the lengthiest all-English verse collection known to exist in the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics.

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  The Destruction of Jerusalem, or Titus and Vespasian

  Kara L. McShane and Mark J. B. Wright

  The Destruction of Jerusalem, also called Titus and Vespasian, is a fifteenth-century fictionalized version of the historical Roman siege of Jerusalem. Marked by antisemitism, Christian nationalism, and violence, this Middle English poem was nonetheless intriguing to medieval and early modern readers. As the poem weaves together sources both medieval and classical, it transforms first-century Romans into Christian agents of divine vengeance. Here presented in the most comprehensive edition to date, the poem will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Middle English romance, the Crusades, medieval antisemitism, and literary reimaginings of historical events. Further, this new edition expands our understanding of fall of Jerusalem narratives in later medieval England, bringing attention to a long-ignored English retelling of these first-century events that captivated Christian audiences.