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  "The Lover's Confession": A Translation of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis"

  Brian Gastle, Catherine Carter, and Andrew Galloway

  John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession) is one of the most important English works of the fourteenth century, influencing authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Within its frame of the lovesick lover’s confession are well over a hundred stories, mainly derived from classical mythology, the Bible, and history which exemplify the Middle Ages serve as moral lessons (exempla) for personal and political behavior. Echoing the octosyllabic line of the original, this is the first complete modern English translation of the entire (33,000-line) poem, including its Latin verses and glosses.

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  Blandin de Cornoalha, A Comic Occitan Romance: A New Critical Edition and Translation

  Wendy Pfeffer and Margaret Burrell

  This volume presents the first widely available edition in English of the medieval romance Blandin de Cornoalha, accompanied by a translation and introduction to the work. Composed in the second half of the fourteenth century by an anonymous author, the story offers an early recording of the Sleeping Beauty folktale, incorporated into the adventures of two knights. Many elements in this romance from the south of France are comic, suggesting that Blandin is not simply a tale of knights in battle, but also a parody of medieval romance in general.

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  Guy of Saint-Denis, Tractatus de tonis

  Constant J. Mews, Carol J. Williams, John N. Crossley, and Catherine Jeffreys

  The Tractatus de tonis of Guy of Saint-Denis (written ca. 1300-10) differs from other treatises on plainchant in the depth of its analysis of the various tones into which chant was traditionally classified. The treatise of Guy of Saint-Denis is preserved as the concluding item in an anthology of texts about plainchant that Guy compiled (now London, British Library, MS Harley 281), beginning with some writings of Guido of Arezzo and a Cistercian tonary, but also including the Ars musice of Johannes de Grocheio and the Tractatus de tonis of Petrus de Cruce. Guy's treatise presents itself as a synthetic overview of both the theory and practice of plainchant in a way that combines the very practical reflection of Guido of Arezzo with ideas of more Aristoteleian inspired theorists such as Johannes de Grocheio and Peter of Auvergne.

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  Aribo, De musica and Sententiae

  T. J. H. McCarthy

  Music was central to the medieval church's public worship: it was the essential medium of the Mass and the Divine Office. In this new critical edition, T. J. H. McCarthy presents the Latin text and the first English translation of Aribo's musical treatise, De musica and Sententiae. Written between 1070 and 1078, it is concerned with the workings of the liturgical music that Aribo and his contemporaries called Gregorian chant, and builds off of and responds to several contemporary treatises by Abbot Bern of Reichenau and his pupil Herman, Abbot William of Hirsau, Frutolf of Michelsberg, and Theoger of Metz. In the first new edition of the treatise in over sixty years, McCarthy addresses not only new approaches to the study of music history but newly discovered manuscripts of the treatise, paying careful attention to the diagrams that are integral to the coherence of the treatise.

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  Ars musice

  Johannes de Grocheio, Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, and Carol J. Williams

  Ars musice, composed in Paris during the late thirteenth century, reflects Johannes de Grocheio's awareness of the complexity of the task of describing music. As the editors note in their introduction, "Grocheio is aware of the enormous range of types of music performed in different ways in different places. How can he impose order on this enormous subject matter? He decided to resolve this question by structuring his discussion around the practice of music that he observed in the city of Paris, organized into three main 'branches': music of the people (musica vulgalis), composite or regular, 'which they call measured music' (musica mensurata), and ecclesiastical music (musica ecclesiastica), which he claims derives from the other two (AM 6.2). The originality of Grocheio's treatise has attracted considerable scholarly interest. It has long been recognized as a unique source of information about musical life in medieval Paris. Through his treatise, Grocheio enables a modern reader to become aware of the complex auditory environment of that city in the late thirteenth century as well as of its intellectual vitality at a particularly vibrant moment in its history."

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  The Liturgy of the Medieval Church

  Thomas Heffernan and E. Ann Matter

  This volume seeks to address the needs of teachers and advanced students who are preparing classes on the Middle Ages or who find themselves confounded in their studies by reference to the various liturgies that were fundamental to the lives of medieval peoples. In a series of essays, scholars of the liturgy examine "The Shape of the Liturgical Year," "Particular Liturgies," "The Physical Setting of the Liturgy," "The Liturgy and Books," and "Liturgy and the Arts." A concluding essay, which originated in notes left behind by the late C. Clifford Flanigan, seeks to open the field, to examine "liturgy" within the larger and more inclusive category of "ritual." "The essays are intended to be introductory but to provide the basic facts and the essential bibliography for further study. They approach particular problems assuming a knowledge of medieval Europe but little expertise in liturgical studies per se.

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  Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253

  Susanna Fein

  Studies in the Harley Manuscript is the first comprehensive examination of a manuscript that is of supreme value to literary scholars of medieval English literature. In an Introduction and fifteen essays a team of scholars considers many aspects of the 140 folios of this trilingual miscellany that preserves 121 items (or 122 depending on how one counts) from which we get a strange and privileged glimpse into the rich literary heritage that existed in England prior to the flourishing of vernacular poetry in the Richardian era. As the Contents indicates, the history and composition of the manuscript are considered, as are the Anglo-Norman, English, and Latin compositions that it preserves. This is a companion volume to the three volume complete edition of Harley 2253.

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  The Study of Chivalry: Resources and Approaches

  Howell Chickering and Thomas H. Seiler

  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.