Medieval Literature Reading List

The following reading list for the English and Film Studies PhD program is provided by the department and is updated yearly to reflect changes in the discipline.

For more information about reading lists, see the Comprehensive Area Exam page.

Old English

(a) Poetry (Original Language)*

• Beowulf. Recommended Editions Klaeber’s Fourth edition, eds. Fulk, Bjork, and Niles
  [recommended translations: D. Howell Chickering’s dual language edition and
  Seamus Heaney’s dual language edition].
• “The Wanderer”
• “The Battle of Maldon”
• “The Dream of the Rood”
• “Genesis A”
• “The Seafarer”
• Four of the following: “Widsith,” “Deor,” “Wulf and Eadwacer,” “The Wife's Lament,”
  “The Husband's Message,” “The Ruin,” “The Battle of Brunanburh,” “Christ I, II,
  and II,” Judith, Juliana, Exodus”
• 10 Riddles from The Exeter Book
  [Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Exeter Book), ed. Gollancz, Krapp and Dobbie, or Muir;
  anthologies or Methuen individual editions exist for most of these poems.]

(b) Prose (In Translation)*

• King Alfred’s Preface to Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis
• Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: sections concerning the Anglo-Saxon invasions of
• England, the story of Alfred, the two waves of Viking invasions, and 1066
• Wulfstan, Sermo lupi ad anglos (selections)
• Aelfric: at least three homilies from the Catholic Homilies and at least three saints' lives
  from the Lives of Saints or a combination. [Editions of Skeat for Lives, Godden
  for Catholic Homilies.]
• *Mitchell and Robinson’s Guide to Old English is a good place to start.
  CAE Reading List, Medieval…2 of 4

Early Middle English Literature

• Ancrene Wisse
• Hali Meiðhad
• The Owl and the Nightingale

Fourteenth Century

• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Fragments I, III, IV, V, VI, VIII, X), Troilus and
• Criseyde, and two of The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of
• Fowls, and The Legend of Good Women (Prologue only) (The Riverside Chaucer, ed.
  Benson et al.)
• William Langland, Piers Plowman B (ed. Schmidt)
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ed. Tolkien, Gordon and Davis or Andrew and
  Waldron)
• Pearl, ed. Andrew and Waldron , Gordon or Vantuono.
• Gower, Confessio Amantis (Prologue, The Tale of Florent, The Tale of Medea, and the
  Tale of Narcissus)
• Romances: one of Guy of Warwick, Lybeaus Desconus, or Bevis of Hampton
• Sir Orfeo, The Marriage of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, Sir Launfal, and four of Ywain and Gawain, the Alliterative Morte Arthur, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, Havelock the Dane, King Horn, or The Squire of Low Degree
• Middle English Lyrics (ed. Luria and Hoffman)

Fifteenth Century

• One of Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love (ed.Watson and Jenkins, Crampton, or Baker)
• Richard Rolle - Selections from his English Writings.
• Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur (the Cooper, Vinaver, or Shepherd editions)
• The Paston Letters. (selections)
• One of The Towneley Cycle, The Chester Cycle or The York Cycle of mystery plays.
• One of Everyman, Mankind, or The Castle of Perseverance.
• Mandeville’s Travels (in translation)
• Preface to Wycliffe Bible
• Caxton’s Introduction to the Morte D’Arthur
• John Lydgate, The Troy Book (Book II), The Temple of Glass, two Selected Shorter
  Poems
• John Skelton, The Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, Ware the Hawk, “Ageynst Garnische,”
  “The Tunnynge of Elynore Rummynge”
• Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid
• William Dunbar, The Golden Targe
• James I, The Kingis Quair

Medieval Non-English Works

• The Song of Roland
• Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love
• Augustine, selections from The Confessions, On Christine Doctrine, or The City of God
• Boccaccio’s Decameron
• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
• Christine de Pizan, The City of Ladies
• Dante’s Inferno
• Geoffrey of Vinsaulf, Poetria Nova
• Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose
• Marie de France, Lays
• Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda
• Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (ed.
  Blamires)
• Vinland Sagas (Penguin edition)

Secondary Sources

• A New Critical History of Old English Literature (ed. Greenfield, Calder, and Lapidge)
• A Concise Companion to Middle English Literature (ed. Corrie)
• A Companion to Chaucer (ed. Brown)
• A Beowulf Handbook (ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles)
• A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson)
• A Companion to Middle English Prose (ed. Edwards)
• Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity
• Bahktin, Rabelais and His World; Discourse in the Novel
• Burrow, Ricardian Poetry
• Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast
• Calin, The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England
• Carruthers, The Book of Memory
• Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record
• Cooper, English Romance in Time
• Copeland and Jaeger
• Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages
• Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics
• Drout, How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth
  Century
• Frantzen, Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition
• Fulk and Cain, A History of Old English Literature
• Furrow, The Expectations of Romance
• Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion
• Gillespie, Print culture and the medieval author: Chaucer, Lydgate, and their books,
  1473-1557
• Green, Poets and Princepleasers
• Jaeger, Ennobling Love In Search of a Lost Sensibility
• Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing
  in Late-Medieval England
• Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire
• Millward, A Biography of the English Language
• Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle
  Ages
• Mitchell, Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower
• Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St Augustine
  to the Renaissance
• Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition
• Oxford Handbook of Medieval English Literature (ed. Treharne and Walker)
• Parkes, Scribes, Scripts, and Readers
• Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History
• Queering the Middle Ages (ed. Kruger and Burger)
• Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England
• The Idea of the Vernacular (introductions to the various sections)
• The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing (ed. Dinshaw and Wallace)
• The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English literature, 1100-1500 (ed. Scanlon)
• Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages