Medieval English Literature Part 9

But it is only in _Troilus_ that Chaucer uses his full powers together in harmony. All the world, it might be said, is reflected in the various poems of Chaucer; _Troilus_ is the one poem which brings it all into a single picture. In the history of English poetry it is the close of the Middle Ages.

NOTE ON BOOKS

For the language: Anglo-Saxon can be learned in Sweet's _Primer_ and _Reader_ (Clarendon Press). Sweet's _First Middle English Primer_ gives extracts from the _Ancren Riwle_ and the _Ormulum_, with separate grammars for the two dialects. But it is generally most convenient to learn the language of Chaucer before attempting the earlier books. Morris and Skeat's _Specimens of Early English_ (two volumes, Clarendon Press) range from the end of the English Chronicle (1153) to Chaucer; valuable for literary history as well as philology. The nature of the language is explained in Henry Bradley's _Making of English_ (Clarendon Press), and in Wyld's _Study of the Mother Tongue_ (Murray).

The following books should be noted: Stopford Brooke, _Early English Literature_ (Macmillan); Schofield, _English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer_ (Macmillan); Jusserand, _Literary History of the English People_ (Fisher Unwin); Chambers' _Cyclopaedia of English Literature_, I; Ten Brink, _Early English Literature_ (Bell); Saintsbury, _History of English Prosody_, I (Macmillan); Courthope, _History of English Poetry_, I and II (Macmillan).

Full bibliographies are provided in the _Cambridge History of English Literature_.

The bearings of early French upon English poetry are ill.u.s.trated in Saintsbury's _Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory_ (Blackwood).

Much of the common medieval tendencies may be learned from the earlier part of Robertson's _German Literature_ (Blackwood), and Gaspary's _Italian Literature_, translated by Oelsner (Bell). Some topics have been already discussed by the present author in other works: _Epic and Romance_ (Macmillan); _The Dark Ages_ (Blackwood); _Essays on Medieval Literature_ (Macmillan).

The history of medieval drama in England, for which there was no room in this book, is clearly given in Pollard's _Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes_ (Clarendon Press).

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

By R. W. Chambers

_Many years have pa.s.sed since the publication of Ker's volume in the_ Home University Library, _yet there is hardly a paragraph in it which demands any serious addition or alteration. It is a cla.s.sic of English criticism, and any attempt to alter it, or 'bring it up to date', either now or in future years, would be futile_.

_Ker deliberately refused to add an elaborate bibliography. But his_ Note on Books _reminds us how, though his own work remains unimpaired, the whole field of study has been altered, largely as a result of that work_.

Sweet's books mark an epoch in Anglo-Saxon study, and have not lost their practical value: to his _Primer_ and _Reader_ (Clarendon Press) must be added the _Anglo-Saxon Reader_ of A. J. Wyatt (Cambridge University Press, 1919, etc.). The earlier portion of Morris's _Specimens of Early English_, Part I (1150-1300), has been replaced by Joseph Hall's _Selections from Early Middle English_, 1130-1250, 2 vols. (Clarendon Press, 1920); Part II, _Specimens_ (1298-1393), edited by Morris and Skeat, has been replaced by _Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose_, edited by Kenneth Sisam (Clarendon Press, 1921). To Wyld's _Study of the Mother Tongue_ must now be added his _History of Modern Colloquial English_ and Otto Jespersen's _Growth and Structure of the English Language_ (Blackwell, 1938).

_The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records_, edited by G. P. Krapp and others (Columbia Univ. Press and Routledge, 6 vols, 1931, etc.), provide a corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

It is impossible to review editions of, or monographs on, individual poems or authors, but some work done on _Beowulf_ and Chaucer may be noted: editions of _Beowulf_, by Sedgefield (Manchester Univ. Press, 1910, etc.), by Wyatt and Chambers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1914, etc.) and by Klaeber (Heath & Co., 1922, etc.); R. W. Chambers, _Beowulf, an Introduction_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1921, etc.), and W. W. Lawrence, _Beowulf and Epic Tradition_ (Harvard Univ. Press, 1928, etc.); G. L.

Kittredge, _Chaucer and his Poetry_ (Harvard Univ. Press, 1915); J. L.

Lowes, _Geoffrey Chaucer_ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1934); F. N. Robinson, _The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer_ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1933).

Fresh aspects of medieval literature are dealt with in G. R. Owst's _Preaching in Medieval England_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1926) and _Literature and the Pulpit in Medieval England_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1933); R. W. Chambers, _The Continuity of English Prose_ (Oxford Univ.

Press, 1932); C. S. Lewis, _Allegory of Love_ (Clarendon Press, 1936); Mr. Owst's books serve to remind us that Ker's work can still be supplemented by minute study of fields which he, with his vast range over the literatures of all Western Europe, had of necessity to leave unexplored, when he closed his little book with Chaucer. The two most startling new discoveries in Medieval English Literature fall outside the limits which Ker set himself; they are _The Book of Margery Kempe_, edited in 1940 for the Early English Text Society by Prof. S. B. Meech and Miss Hope Emily Allen, and the Winchester ma.n.u.script of Malory's _Morte Darthur_, upon which Prof. Eugene Vinaver is now engaged.

The student will find particulars of the books he wants by consulting the new bibliography of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_ or _A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400_, by Prof. J. E.

Wells (Yale and Oxford Univ. Presses, 1916, with supplements).

FOOTNOTES

[1]

The Caedmon MS. in Oxford.

The Exeter Book.

The Vercelli Book.

The book containing the poems _Beowulf_ and _Judith_ in the Cotton Library at the British Museum.