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Thoroughly annotated with notes printed at the foot of each page, this edition of "The General Prologue" and "The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale" is a helpful introduction for the beginning student of Chaucer and contains much valuable information for more advanced scholars. The editor's introduction clarifies the many historical points which must be grasped in order to read Chaucer appreciatively and shows how "The General Prologue" is an important guide to the reading of the "Tales" as a whole. The editor describes Chaucer's method of creating a realistic effect through a pilgrimage that manages to bring together disparate characters who would be unlikely to meet in another context and shows how Chaucer uses clothing, language and social class as part of his characterisation of the pilgrims.Among the pilgrims who set out from Southwark and who are described in "The General Prologue", the Canon and his Yeoman are the only characters not included. Their sudden and dramatic arrival creates expectations of the unusual and these are not disappointed in the tale of alchemy which follows.In type, the "Tale" resembles those of the Merchant, Friar and Pardoner: stories about the duping of men who are the victims of their own lack off insight. The editor elucidates this argument and offers many new insights into the tale's polemical purpose, theme, structure and style. The commentary to the "Tale" gives the reader the necessary background in explaining the many allusions to practices of medieval alchemy. ... Read more

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A collection of unpublished essays by Griffith, including two intriguing papers which relate the writings of Classical authors to the understanding of spectacular ancient objects: the golden triple vessel from Vulchitrun, Bulgaria, and the bronze mixing bowl from a royal tomb in Vix-sur-Seine in central France. ... Read more

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Das Buch bietet eine neue kritische Ausgabe der platonischen Dialoge aHippias maioro und aHippias minoro. Der Text basiert erstmalig auf einer Untersuchung der gesamten handschriftlichen uberlieferung, wobei alle uns erhaltenen Textzeugen systematisch ausgewertet wurden. Die ersten Ausgaben der Renaissance (darunter Ficinos lateinische ubersetzung) sowie die - allerdings sparliche - Sekundaruberlieferung sind auch berucksichtigt worden. Im textkritischen Apparat wurden neu entdeckte Varianten zum ersten Mal verzeichnet und es konnten gar nicht so seltene Kollationsfehler fruherer Ausgaben beseitigt werden. Die Ausgabe kann also fur sich beanspruchen, den Anforderungen der heutigen Ekdotik zu entsprechen. ... Read more

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Translation of the first extant vernacular 'history' of Britain by the Norman-French cleric Wace, which in turn, was a translation of the Latin prose of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (c.1138). Part fact, and part fiction, it traces the history of Britain from Brutus to the Anglo-Saxons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Too bad it is nearly impossible to find anymore.
This is a must-have text for arthurian literature students. It is beatiful, in fact, I like this more than the History of the Kings of Britain. Even though it was intended as a translation of that text, Roman de Brut incorporates some important fantastic elements to the Arthurian legend, like the round table. Too bad this book is no longer available and is almost impossible to find.

Wace's "Roman de Brut"-new ed. & trans.
Raymond CORMIER Department of English and Modern Languages LONGWOOD UNIVERSITY 201 High Street Farmville, VA 23909 email:rcormier@longwood.lwc.edu

*Wace's 'Roman de Brut':A History of the British*.Ed., trans. Judith Weiss.Exeter Medieval English Texts andStudies.Exeter:University of Exeter Press, 1999.Pp. xxix + 385. Bibliography.Index of Personal Names.ISBN0 85989 591 2.

Imagine anextraordinary medieval text filled with nostalgia and seductions, domesticbetrayals and sovereign assassinations, battles and duels, magic andpotions, shame, disgrace. This is a raconteur's dream of nightmarish greedand wise generosity, of human vanity and holy humility.At once ironic andsardonic, the yarn's wide narrative net captures rich and brawnydescriptions of events, depicts individuals, their personal motivations andmoral weaknesses, and portrays diverse peoples and whole tribes.Itboasts, too, of vivid and roaring rhetorical figures, invents puns andetymologies, and, en passant redeems proverbs, folklore motifs, andplace-name lore.Even while recounting the sad but famous career of the"New Trojans" as they limp, one generation after another, frombleak, distantwasteland to the fertile abode called Albion, and thencedecline into fratricide, famine, and plague--skillful storyteller MaistreWace, cleric of Caen, almost always finds a way to generate resonance withcontemporary events (ca. 1150-1155), those usually gloomy and violent andchaotic storms that swirl about dukes, empresses, and prelates.

JudithWeiss (JW) of Robinson College, Cambridge, has performed a monumental feat: completing a new edition and a brand new translation of Wace's sprightlyOld French "Brutus Romance"--the first complete and sustainedextant vernacular history (however imaginary) of Britain.Presented inlarge parallel format, her modern English prose translates the Frenchchronicle in verse--which itself freely adapts the Latin prose amalgamationof the Norman-Welshman Geoffrey of Monmouth, *Historia regum Britanniae*(ca. 1136-1138), a daringly politicized and innovative fabrication (whichsome consider a hoax as tremendous as MacPherson's *Ossian*).Wacehimself, like some jaded Hollywood critic, observes in re: Arthurian fable: *Ne tut mençunge, ne tut veir,/ Tut folie ne tut saveir*--"not alllies, not all truth, neither total folly nor total wisdom" (vv.9793-9794;cf. p. xxi).

These texts, along with Lawman's (or Layamon)subsequent early 13th-century adaptation of *Le Roman de Brut* intoalliterative Middle English, propose a hermeneutic holiday.Britishhistorians see the plausible panorama as indeed part real fact, partimaginary fiction, sweeping us from the arrival of Aeneas' offspring,Brutus, the island's eponymous national founder, up to Cadwallader and theAnglo-Saxon invasion and colonization (7th century).All this seemingly toanswer the query--why and how did the Britons yield their dominion over theland?

Gathered from antique, contemporary, and oral sources, favorite andindelible stories found their way into these narratives:King Lear'swoeful tale of his three daughters.Then there is that half-legendaryCymbeline, a contemporary of Christ (!).Belin and Brenne's fiercebrotherly rivalry and successful collaboration segues later to thetreacherous slaughter of Britons by Saxons during the "Night of theLong Knives."Of course, the story reaches its climax with thosegilded episodes dealing with the miraculous birth, sumptuous charisma, andstellar achievements of King Arthur.All this material and more trickleddown to Malory, Spenser, and Shakespeare, among other writers.

JWaccomplishes pretty much everything she set out to do.She provides a"re-issuing" edition of the text (p. xxv), drawing heavily onArnold's pre-War Société des Anciens Texts Français publication, 1938-1940as a model. Since then, a number of other manuscripts and fragments haveturned up, from which discoveries JW has profited.Also playing a crucialrole today is the multivalent state of Geoffrey's parent Latin text (andthus vitiating Arnold's basic assumptions in re: manuscript fidelity toit), once seen as monolithic (Faral, Griscom), and now viewed as enjoyingseveral variant versions (see Neil Wright's work on the "Vulgate"or standard "History of the Kings of Britain").JW draws as wellon a recent modern French edition, *La Geste du roi Arthur* (BibliothèqueMédiévale, Paris:Union Générale d'Éditions, 1993).

Dedicated in 1155 toEleanor of Aquitaine (according to Lawman), this "incipientromance" has 14,866 octosyllabic verses presented in 371 pages (OldFrench with English facing).Apart from some missing items in thebibliography, the volume has an extensive and authoritative introductionand discussion of the manuscripts.The newly-edited text andconsistently-reliable translation, the handy running heads, and theabundant annotations, all make the book useful and enlightening for readersinterested in the literary, intellectual, and social history of mid-12thcentury. ... Read more

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Hyperides was ranked in antiquity as second in greatness only to Demosthenes amongst the Ten Attic Orators. His execution in 322 BC for opposition to Macedonian rule left Dinarchus as the last of the Ten to survive. This book critically evaluates the speeches of both orators against Demosthenes and discusses Hyperides' funeral oration as an important historical source for understanding Athens in the last years of the reign of Alexander the Great. The history of the period of discussed in detail, as is the rhetorical style of the two orators. Amongst other distinctions this text provides the first commentary in English on Hyperides' two speeches. A Greek text of Dinarchus' and Hyperides' fragmented speeches is provided along with an English translation. The commentary is essentially historical, but some literary and philological points are also discussed. ... Read more

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A Helen who has always been faithful to her husband Menelaus; who never went to Troy, but was carried off to Egypt, where she remains throughout the Trojan War; who is falsely blamed for destruction in which she had no part, or rather a part in name only-this is the paradoxical heroine of Euripides' Helen. The story is not his invention: Helen's association with Egypt goes back at least to the Odyssey, and the idea that a divinely fashioned counterfeit went to Troy in her place can be traced back to a poem or poems of Stesichorus, a century and a half before Euripides' play was performed in 412 BC We can only speculate about Stesichorus' treatment of the myth of the two Helens, but to Euripides the idea of an image designed to deceive by the gods themselves suggested a world in which nothing is precisely what it seems to be, in which appearance and reality are all too easily confused. Helen plays with this premise in ways that make it by turns amusing and disturbing, playful and full of serious quandaries. The real Helen did not commit the deeds for which she is famous, and yet she cannot escape a reputation based on what the world believes her to be, rather than on what she is. Menelaus seems far less than the hero of Troy he vaunts himself to be, not least because the Trojan War now appears, as almost everyone in the play remarks, to have been fought over nothing at all. And yet, with the disappearance of the phantom Helen, Menelaus does reclaim his wife at last and the real Helen plots a brilliant deception that will bring them both home again in triumph. Helen is an extraordinary performance that has disturbed critics because it refuses to conform to their expectations of its genre, appearing to many to be a philosophical divertissement or a romantic comedy rather than a tragedy. And yet an Athenian tragedy it surely was, despite its foreshadowings of comedy to come. At its heart is Helen herself, her beautiful body betrayed by her ugly name (to use the soma/ono ... Read more

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In this doctrinal appraisal Dr Garde contends that English religious poetry in the early medieval `age of faith' was intended to convey conventional Christian teaching to unlearned audiences. In this reading, Old English religious verse is dominated by the Christus Victor tradition, the exegetical perceptions often assumed in modern criticism are not justified. The tradition of Christ's triumphant Descent into hell, regardedas apocryphal by many critics, is discussed in the context of theResurrection and Christian expectations of eternal life in the Adventlyrics, the Descent poems, Christ II and Phoenix. The Dreamof the Rood, Elene and Christ IIIare seen as describingChrist's Incarnation, death, Descent, Resurrection and Ascension,the Pentecostal phenomenon and the Church in the world. Expectationsof judgment, the future resurrection of flesh, and the prospect ofeternal bliss for righteous Christians complete the credal sequence.The author suggests that unstated, wholly familiar perceptions ofsalvation in Christ underlie all Old English religious verse, andthat interpreters ignore these traditions at their peril. ... Read more

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This is a general study of the earliest poetry in Wales, much of which is attributed to the legendary bards Taliesin, Aneirin, and Llywarch Hen, and some of which even deals with those legendary figures Myrddin (Merlin) and Arthur. It also argues that it had a far greater influence on Anglo-Saxon poetry than most scholars have recognized. Finally, it chronicles a clear and major shift in the way the English are viewed by the Welsh. The English turned from being one enemy among many to the agents of all ruin and loss. By the time of the Llywarch Hen and Heledd cycles, the metaphors of the next thousand years of Welsh poetry are established. ... Read more

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Can a speaker's words ever be faithfully reported? History, philosophy, ethnography, political theory, linguistics, and literary criticism all involve debates about discourse and presentation. By drawing from Plato's theory of discourse, the lively analysis of speech presentation in this book provides a coherent and original contribution to these debates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good book for students
This book is great for students of Greek.The commentary is helpful on several levels in that it both explains issues of grammar and gives background on and insight into the play itself.Seaford, howver is not the best translator.He gives literal translations, which is good in some respects for students who may otherwise be confused.It is clear, from his translations, that his interest is more in the overall meaning of the play than creating a pretty translation. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Beautiful, Scholarly Edition
This edition of the C-text is handsomely presented and appears to have good notes. It appears to be the only commonly available edition of the C in Middle English (and interspersed Latin), and while I have some reservations about the rather large format, this is not a book that most of us will be taking to the beach for some light reading, anyway.
Editorial questions aside, I highly recommend the Plowman to anyone interested in good poetry and the medieval mindset. Langland was an alliterative genius, and this poetic form, so natural for the English language, allows for amazing depth of expression, not to mention being a refreshing change from rhyming metrical composition and from the stiff blandness of most modern so-called verse. The poem also opens a window on a whole way of thought that is rarely seen today, one grounded in religion and hierarchy. One prize example of this is the mind-expanding re-telling of the old cat-and-bell fable in the prologue, which the author transforms into an argument for obedience to even a flawed authority as better than popular rule.
Before you start in on this rewarding adventure in reading, I would offer a couple warnings:
1) This is not an easy read. Even with the notes, Middle English takes some getting used to, and Langland is a bit more difficult than Chaucer. He also includes a massive battery of historical, religious and philosophical references. Don't expect to understand all of them on the first try.
2) Accurate knowledge of Catholicism is extremely helpful. Langland was definitely Catholic(despite some intellectual blunders on his part), and this heavily influences his characters' thoughts and actions. Catholics who forgot their catechism lessons and non-Catholics will be very confused without prior study.
And now, why don't you get away from your computer screen and buckle down to some difficult but all the more enjoyable literature? Life is short, and you've got a lot of reading to do.

Accessible edition of an intriguing poem

This new edition has an extended introduction, expanded notes, new line-end annotations for "difficult" words, and retains a useful glossary. Pearsall's edition has just the right aids to enable the non-expert to gain access to this deeply strange work, without spoiling the fun by draining it of its challenge and magic with scholarly analysis. Economou's translation of the C text is recommended as a companion for newcomers. ... Read more

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First published in 1989, The Medieval Greek Romance provides basic information for the non-specialist about Greek fiction during the period 1071-1453, as well as proposing new solutions to problems that have vexed generations of scholars. Roderick Beaton applies sophisticated methods of literary analysis to the material, and throughout he considers relations and interconnections with similar literature in western Europe. As most of the texts discussed are not available in English translation, the argument is illustrated by lucid plot summaries and extensive quotation (always accompanied by literal English renderings). For its second edition, The Medieval Greek Romance has been revised throughout and expanded with the addition of an "Afterword" which assesses and responds to recent work on the subject. ... Read more

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The Children of Heracles is a powerful and challenging tragedy of exile and supplication. Driven from their homeland by Eurystheus, King of Argos, the children of Heracles flee as fugitives throughout Greece until they are granted protection in Athens. However, their acceptance as political refugees threatens to cause civil revolt among the Athenians and hostile invasion from the Argives. The self-sacrifice of Heracles' daughter ensures a victory for Athens and the Heraclidae, but Heracles' mother Alcmene refuses to spare the life of Eurystheus, altlhough he is a prisoner of war protected by Athenian law. The play shows the amorality of the powerful and the vulnerability of refugees in the most disturbing terms, making for a drama of continuing moral and political relevance to the modern world. ... Read more

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Xenophon's philosophical works have long lived under the shadow of those of his brilliant contemporary fellow student of Socrates, Plato. They both wrote an Apology and a Symposium, and though few would deny that Plato was the more profound and original philosopher, Xenophon's contribution has been unjustly ignored. His writings, which are of wider scope than Plato's, encompassing history and technical treatises as well as philosophy, are particularly distinguished by their simplicity of style and approachability. The two works included here both concern the last days of Socrates and are a vivid portrait of the life and thought of the great man. ... Read more

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Text with translation, commentary and notes. (Aris and Phillips 1995) ... Read more

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This book contains ten papers read at the Third Cardiff Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in 1991. Contributors include: J Wogan-Browne (The female translator in Anglo-Norman hagiography); H Phillips (Chaucer and de Graunson); M-J Arn (Charles of Orleans: translator?); V Lawrence (Richard Whitford and translation); S Westrem (Managing style and accommodating dialect in Johannes Witte de Hese's `Itinerarius'); A Savage (Untranslateable dimensions of the anchoritic works); R Tixier (Le theologian et le poete: deux traductions en francais moderne de `The Cloud of Unknowing'). ... Read more

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'The appearance of a revised edition of Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron's The Poems of The Pearl Manuscript is very welcome.This new text, an updating of the 1987 edition (itself a revision of the original 1978 publication), allows the editors to update the notes in the light of recent scholarship and generally to streamline the layout of the text . . .The bibliography has also been updated, while a number of older works have been discreetly removed from the lists.Such changes keep the edition abreast of recent developments in the field and mean that it is likely to remain the best single-volume edition of the Gawain Poet's works for some time to come.'
- The Year's Work in English Studies, March 1999 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

My favourite edition
The Pearl manuscript contains four poems (Pearl, Patience, Cleanliness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), all generally assumed to be by the same author and all touching on the same themes - specifically, the beliefsof 'orthodox medieval Christianity and... chivalric social morality' as the(excellent) introduction puts it.

Probably written by a Northerncontemporary of Chaucer, the Pearl manuscript's poems are neverthelessworlds apart from his work: they combine Old English alliterative versewith the kind of rhyming structures that were in fashion on the Continentand down south to create something unique and beautiful.

This edition isa very well-presented one, with a comprehensive introduction to the poems,a glossary at the back containing just about all the words in the poems(with line references), and other glosses intelligently placed at the footof each page of text for the more obscure phrases. It's a system whichgives maximum readability and minimum flicking back and forth to check themeaning of words and phrases - ideal for the student. ... Read more

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This collection includes the following fragments: Hermione; Niobe; Polyxene, Syndeipnoi; Tereus; Troilos; Tyro A; Tyro B and Phaidra. ... Read more