Middle English Texts Series

FAIN: RZ-51030-09

University of Rochester (Rochester, NY 14627-0001)
Russell A. Peck (Project Director: November 2008 to April 2014)

Preparation for publication of 12-16 volumes of medieval texts from the 13th through the 16th centuries. All texts will be made available online through the University of Rochester. (36 months)

The goal of this grant is to produce, over the next three years, approximately sixteen volumes of medieval texts intended for classroom and electronic use. Most will be texts of Middle English literature, although a few will be French or Welsh texts that have strong bearing on the study of English culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Associated Products

The Castle of Perseverance (Book)
Title: The Castle of Perseverance
Editor: Volume Editor David N. Klausner
Editor: General Editor Russell A. Peck
Editor: Associate Editor Alan Lupack
Editor: Assistant Editor John H. Chandler
Abstract: The Castle of Perseverance, like the other surviving morality plays, deals allegorically with the life of man, his struggle against temptation and sin, and his hope of final redemption. The play begins before Mankind's birth and concludes with his salvation after death (presented as a close call), and features the traditional three enemies of Mankind (the World, the Flesh, and the Devil) and his two advisors (the Good Angel and the Bad Angel). Mankind takes up residence in the Castle of Perseverance at the urging of the Good Angel, but the castle is besieged and Mankind is seduced away to follow Greed. When Death comes for Mankind, he is saved only because his deathbed appeal to God for mercy summons the Four Daughters of God (Truth, Justice, Peace, and Mercy), who successfully intervene in the divine judgment and are allowed to bring Mankind's Soul out of hell and into heaven. The play is unique among medieval English plays in preserving a stage plan that shows the physical layout of the stage in some detail. God, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil have their scaffolds at the compass points, while Greed has a scaffold located halfway between that of God and the Devil. The castle itself is located in the center of the playing area, with a bed to accommodate Mankind's birth and death.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/castle-of-perseverance/oclc/609304978&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://secure.touchnet.net/C21782_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=862&SINGLESTORE=true
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9781580441490

The French Balades (Book)
Title: The French Balades
Author: John Gower
Editor: Volume Editor R. F. Yeager
Editor: General Editor Russell A. Peck
Editor: Associate Editor Alan Lupack
Editor: Assistant Editor John H. Chandler
Abstract: "Gower's Traitié and Cinkante Balades are the only extant formes fixes ("fixed forms," that is, fourteenth-century French lyrics, essentially the balade, rondeau, and virelai, developed as literary styles from thirteenth-century dances) that we can be assured were written by a native Englishman, those of "Ch" (and Chaucer's "many a song and many a leccherous lay" - presumably in French) notwithstanding. More significant still is the conceptual unity of Gower's endeavors. Unlike the fifteen balades and chants in French of the otherwise-anonymous "Ch" - and unlike Chaucer's known Middle English "lyrics" as well - the eighteen balades that make up the Traitié and the fifty-four of the Cinkante Balades are not separate, occasional pieces, nor is their appearance together at all arbitrary. In each collection Gower wrote and arranged the poems to be read together and, as a composite grouping, to evince a determinable shape." - from the Introduction
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/french-balades/oclc/693684149&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listsing
Secondary URL: https://secure.touchnet.net/C21782_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=987&SINGLESTORE=true
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 97815804415
Translator: R. F. Yeager

The Complete Works (Book)
Title: The Complete Works
Author: Robert Henryson
Editor: Volume Editor David J. Parkinson
Editor: General Editor Russell A. Peck
Editor: Associate Editor Alan Lupack
Editor: Assistant Editor John H. Chandler
Abstract: In this new edition of the poems of Robert Henryson, David Parkinson offers editions of Henryson's Fables, The Testament of Cresseid, Orpheus and Eurydice , and twelve shorter poems (grouped according to the strength of their attribution to Henryson), as well as the glosses and explanatory and textual notes characteristic of Middle English Texts Series volumes. In an extensive introduction, Parkinson discusses what is known of Henryson's life, the publication history of the poems, and Henryson's language. As Parkinson notes, "Henryson's poems involve an ongoing concern with the function of poetry itself as a blend of truth and fiction in a world in which falsehood is the wellspring of corruption; in operation, the figure of the poet may be analogous to the foxes he repeatedly places at the center of his narratives. Hence arises an abiding concern about the abuses of the natural capacity for playful imitation, for selfish ends."
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/complete-works/oclc/213765870&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://secure.touchnet.net/C21782_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=912&SINGLESTORE=true
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 97815804413

The York Corpus Christi Plays (Book)
Title: The York Corpus Christi Plays
Editor: Volume Editor Clifford Davidson
Editor: General Editor Russell A. Peck
Editor: Associate Editor Alan Lupack
Editor: Assistant Editor John H. Chandler
Abstract: "The feast of Corpus Christi, celebrated annually on Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was devoted to the Eucharist, and the normal practice was to have solemn processions through the city with the Host, the consecrated wafer believed to have been transformed into the true body and blood of Jesus. Pageants and plays were introduced in order to access yet another way of visualizing and participating in those events. The York Corpus Christi Plays, contained in London, British Library, MS. Add. 35290 and comprising more than thirteen thousand lines of verse, represent a unique survival of medieval theater. They form the only complete play cycle verifiably associated with the feast of Corpus Christi that is extant and was performed at a specific location in England.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/york-corpus-christi-plays/oclc/757387508&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://secure.touchnet.net/C21782_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1115&SINGLESTORE=true
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 97815804416

The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament (Book)
Title: The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament
Editor: Volume Editor Michael Livingston
Editor: General Editor Russell A. Peck
Editor: Associate Editor Alan Lupack
Editor: Assistant Editor John H. Chandler
Abstract: Like the Bible upon which it is based, the metrical paraphrase is unlikely to be a text read cover-to-cover. The Paraphrase is, in several ways, a remarkable artifact of the Chaucerian period, one that reveals a great deal about vernacular biblical literature in Middle English, about readership and lay understandings of the Bible, about the relationship between Christians and Jews in late medieval England, about the environment in which the Lollards and other reformers worked, about perceived roles of women in history and in society, and even about the composition of medieval drama. The Paraphrase -poet's proclamation that he intends to write stories "for sympyll men" (line 19) to understand the Scriptures and be engaged by them - "That men may lyghtly leyre / to tell and undertake yt" (lines 23-24) - thus combines the profit of sacred literature with the pleasure of the secular. This is Horace's utile et dulce ("both useful and pleasing") principle at its clearest, a singular example of the didacticism that characterizes so much of medieval literature, an aesthetic of pedagogic efficacy that is inseparably linked to the essential component of true pleasure in the text.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/middle-english-metrical-paraphrase-of-the-old-testament/oclc/713834595&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat listing
Secondary URL: https://secure.touchnet.net/C21782_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1091&SINGLESTORE=true
Secondary URL Description: Publisher's listing
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9781580441506

Croxton Play of the Sacrament (Book)
Title: Croxton Play of the Sacrament
Editor: John T. Sebastian
Abstract: Scholarly edition of the sole surviving 16th-century manuscript, also alternate title, "The Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jew by the Myracle of the Blessed Sacrament.
Year: 2012
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-1-58044-18
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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