Thematic Approaches

These are some topics and themes you may wish to explore, as an indication of some of the kinds of comparative work it is possible to do on this paper. There is nothing prescriptive about them; these are merely suggestions for ways into the period. They work from the set texts as starting points, and suggest small groups of related and comparative texts, in both Old English and Early Middle English, and in contemporary Latin, Old Norse, and insular French (‘Anglo-Norman’) writings in translation. You could use these (entirely optional and suggested) themes in any number of ways; remember that in both parts of the examination paper you are free to work solely with either Old or Early Middle English if you prefer. Equally, a small amount of comparative and thematic work may prove to be a stimulating way of moving beyond the four set texts of your chosen commentary language.

Themes

Each of the themes listed below has a selection of primary texts to choose from, and some suggested secondary reading.

Christ and humanity
Heroes, warriors, kings and knights
Conquest and history
Lyric and lament
Instruction and admonition
Mysticism and affective piety
Monsters, magic and otherworlds
Love and loss
Biblical and apocryphal narrative
Sagas and Romances of English history
Exotic and popular romances; Breton lays
Saints and martyrs
King Arthur
Riddles, debate, satire and play
Beasts

Most of the texts can be found (usually only excerpts of longer texts, but they will guide you to full editions) in one of these anthologies:

Elaine Treharne, Old and Middle English: arranged broadly chronologically, and by book/manuscript. The contents page is available as a pdf: Elaine Treharne, Old and Middle English, contents page (pdf)
Douglas Gray, From the Norman Conquest to the Black Death. This book is arranged into useful themes, with numerous short excerpts (note that no texts are provided in full, with the exception of short lyrics) of a huge variety of Middle English, with Latin and Anglo-Norman texts in translation. The contents page is available as a pdf: Douglas Gray, From the Norman Conquest to the Black Death, contents page (pdf).

Other Middle English texts can be found online at Medieval Institute Publications of Kalamazoo, including almost all the Middle English romances: see the Complete Catalogue of Middle English Text Series Volumes for their published volumes (useful for browsing by theme or collection), and the Middle English Text Series Online for an alphabetical list of all texts.

Editions of texts not available in one of these are given along with the suggested secondary reading.

Key

Set texts
Old English text
Middle English text
Latin, Old Norse, or Anglo-Norman texts in translation

1. Christ and humanity

The Dream of the Rood; Advent lyrics from Christ I; Anselm, Cur Deus Homo; Ancrene Wisse part 7; Thomas Hales, Love-Ron; Nicole Bozon, How the Son of God was Armed on the Cross; Richard Rolle, Ego dormio; The Dispute between Mary and the Cross.

Anselm, Cur Deus Homo: Why God Became Man, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, trans. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford, 1998)
Richard Rolle, Prose and Verse, ed. S. Ogilvie-Thomson (Oxford, 1988)
Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London, 1993)
Rosemary Woolf, ‘The Theme of Christ the Lover-Knight in Medieval English Literature’, Review of English Studies 49 (1962), 1–16

2. Heroes, warriors, kings and knights

Beowulf; The Battle of Maldon; parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Romance of Horn; Lai d’Haveloc; The History of William Marshal; Laȝamon, Brut; King Horn; Havelok; King Alisaunder; Sir Orfeo

The Romance of Horn, Lai d’Haveloc, in The Birth of Romance: An Anthology, trans. Judith Weiss (London, 1992) Revised edition (Tempe AZ, 2009)
The History of William Marshal, ed./trans. A. Holden, S. Gregory and D. Crouch (London, 2002-6)
Laura Ashe, ‘The Hero and his Realm in Medieval English Romance’, in Boundaries in Medieval Romance, ed. Neil Cartlidge (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 129-47
Norman T. Burns and Christopher J. Reagan, eds, Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1976)
Neil Cartlidge, ed., Heroes and Antiheroes in Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 2012)

3. Conquest and history

The Battle of Maldon; ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’ and other episodes in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; The Bayeux Tapestry; Bede, Ecclesiastical History; Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis; Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English People; Robert Mannyng, Chronicle

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People , trans. Leo Sherley-Price and R. E. Latham (London, 2004)
David M. Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Colour (London, 2004)
Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English People, 1000-1154 , trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 2009)
Robert Mannyng of Brunne, Chronicle, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghamton NY, 1996)
John Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Cambridge, 2000), chapters 2, 7, 8, 13
Monika Otter, ‘1066: The Moment of Transition in Two Narratives of the Norman Conquest’, Speculum 74 (1999), 565–86
Nancy F. Partner, Serious Entertainments: the writing of history in twelfth-century England (Chicago, 1977)
Alice Sheppard, Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004)
Renée R. Trilling, The Aesthetics of Nostalgia:Historical Representation in Old English Verse (Toronto, 2009)

4. Lyric and lament

The Wanderer; Deor; The Seafarer; The Wife’s Lament; Harley Lyrics, English and Anglo-Norman; The Dispute between Mary and the Cross

M. Green, ed., The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research (Rutherford, NJ and London, 1983)
J.A.W. Bennett, ‘Lyrics’, in Middle English Literature, ed. and completed by Douglas Gray (Oxford, 1986), pp. 364-406
Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric , 3rd edn (London, 1996)
Thomas G. Duncan, ed., A Companion to the Middle English Lyric (Cambridge, 2005)
Susanna Fein, ed., Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253 (Kalamazoo, 2000)
Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric (London, 1972)
Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968)

5. Instruction and admonition

The Wanderer; the Alfredian Preface to Gregory’s Pastoral Care; the Alfredian translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy; Ælfric, Preface to the First Series of Catholic Homilies, Preface to the Lives of Saints; Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos; Ancrene Wisse; Hali Meiðhad; Richard Rolle, The Form of Living; The Ayenbite of Inwit ; Wynnere and Wastoure

Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede, Beowulf, and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy’, in Wormald, The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian , ed. by Stephen Baxter (Oxford, 2006), pp. 30–105
Hugh Magennis, ‘Treatments of Treachery and Betrayal in Anglo-Saxon Texts’, English Studies 76 (1995), 1-19
M. McC. Gatch, Preaching and Theology in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric and Wulfstan (Toronto, 1977)
Thomas Hall, ‘Biblical and Patristic Learning’, in P. Pulsiano and E. Treharne, eds., A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (Oxford, 2001), pp. 327-44
Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991)
Alison Renshaw, ‘The authoritative conscience: the function and significance of the conscience in three religious manuals for the layman’, in Authority and Community in the Middle Ages, ed. by Donald Mowbray, Rhiannon Purdie and Ian P. Wei (Stroud, 1999), pp. 139-52

6. Mysticism and affective piety

Ancrene Wisse; The Life of Christina of Markyate; Þe Wohunge of our Lauerd; Richard Rolle, The Form of Living , Ego Dormio , lyrics; Henry of Lancaster, Livre de Seyntz Medicines

Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds, Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (Oxford, 1990)
The Life of Christina of Markyate, trans. C. H. Talbot, intr. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (Oxford, 2009)
Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism (Cambridge, 2011)
Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993)

7. Monsters, magic and otherworlds

Beowulf; Letter of Alexander; Wonders of the East; The Voyage of St Brendan; Marie de France, Lais; Marie de France, St Patrick’s Purgatory; The Revelation of the Monk of Eynsham; Auchinleck St Patrick’s Purgatory; Sir Orfeo; Land of Cockayne ; Mandeville’s Travels

Letter of Alexander and Wonders of the East, in Andy Orchard, Pride and prodigies: studies in the monsters of the Beowulf-manuscript (Brewer, 1995)
The Voyage of St Brendan, in The Age of Bede, trans. D. Farmer, 2nd edn (Penguin, 2004)
Marie de France, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, ed./trans. Michael J. Curley (Binghamton, 1993)
St Patrick's Purgatory, ed. R. Easting, EETS OS 298 (Oxford, 1991)
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C. W. R. D. Moseley (London, 2005)
Kathryn Powell, ‘Meditating on men and monsters: a reconsideration of the thematic unity of the Beowulf manuscript’, Review of English Studies 57 (2006), 1-15
J. J. Cohen, ‘Old English Literature and the Work of Giants’, Comitatus 24 (1993), 1–32
John Finlayson, ‘The Marvellous in Middle English Romance’, Chaucer Review 33 (1999), 363-408
Ad Putter, ‘The influence of visions of the otherworld on some medieval romances’, in Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter (London, 2007), pp. 237-51
David Williams, Deformed Discourse: the Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature (Exeter, 1997)
Carol Goldsmith Zaleski, ‘Saint Patrick’s purgatory: pilgrimage motifs in a medieval otherworld vision’, Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985), 467–85
Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger, eds, Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations (Kalamazoo, 2002)

8. Love and loss

The Wanderer; The Wife’s Lament; Apollonius of Tyre; Thomas of Britain, Tristan; Marie de France, Lais; Béroul, Tristan; Folie Tristan ; Sir Tristrem; Sir Orfeo; Harley Lyrics; The Dispute between Mary and the Cross

Thomas, Tristran, trans. A. T. Hatto in Gottfried von Strassburg: Tristan , with the Tristran of Thomas (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. 301-54
Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan , trans. Alan Fedrick (London, 2005)
Folie Tristan, in The Birth of Romance: An Anthology, trans. Judith Weiss (London, 1992) Revised edition (Tempe AZ, 2009)
Marie de France, Lais , trans. Glyn S. Burgess, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 2003)
Laura Ashe, ‘The Meaning of Suffering: Symbolism and Antisymbolism in the Death of Tristan’, in Writers of the reign of Henry II: Twelve Essays, ed. Ruth Kennedy and Simon Meecham-Jones (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 221–38
R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991)
Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Shaping romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth-Century French Fictions (Philadelphia, 1993)
C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love:In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia, 1999)

9. Biblical and apocryphal narrative

The Dream of the Rood; Judith; Exodus; Le Mystère d’Adam; Auchinleck Apocryphal Adam and Eve

Le Mystère d’Adam, in Medieval Drama, ed. David Bevington (Boston, 1975)
The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve, ed. B. Murdoch and J. A. Tasioulas (Exeter, 2002)
Erich Auerbach, ‘Adam and Eve’, in Mimesis , trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, 1953)
James W. Earl, ‘Christian tradition in the Old English Exodus’, in The Poems of MS Junius 11: Basic Readings, ed. R.M. Liuzza (New York, 2002), pp. 137-72
Karma Lochrie, ‘Gender, sexual violence, and the politics of war in the Old English Judith’, in Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections, ed. Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing (Bloomington IN, 1994), pp. 1-20
Brian Murdoch, Adam’s Grace: Fall and Redemption in Medieval Literature and Beyond (Woodbridge, 2000)
Anne Savage, ‘The Old English Exodus and the colonization of the promised land’, New Medieval Literatures 4 (2001), 39-60
Christine B. Thijs, ‘Feminine Heroism in the Old English Judith’, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 37 (2006), 41-62

10. Sagas and Romances of English history

Egil’s Saga; King Harald’s Saga; Gunnlaugs Saga; Romance of Horn ; Lai d’Haveloc ; Gui de Warewic; Boeve de Hamtoune ; King Horn; Stanzaic Guy of Warwick ; Bevis of Hampton ; Havelok; Athelston

Egil’s Saga , trans. Bernard Scudder (London, 2004)
King Harald’s Saga: Harald Hardradi of Norway from Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla , trans. Hermann Palsson (London, 1979)
The saga of Gunnlaugur Snake’s Tongue, trans. E. Paul Durrenberger and Dorothy Durrenberger (Rutherford NJ, 1992)
Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances, trans. Judith Weiss (Tempe AZ, 2008)
The Romance of Horn, Lai d’Haveloc, in The Birth of Romance: An Anthology, trans. Judith Weiss (London, 1992) Revised edition (Tempe AZ, 2009)
Carol J. Clover and John Lindow, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide (Ithaca, 1985)
Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003)
John Tucker, ed. Sagas of the Icelanders: A Book of Essays (New York, 1989)
W.R.J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (Harlow, 1987)
J.A.W. Bennett, ‘Romances’, in Middle English Literature, ed. and completed by Douglas Gray (Oxford, 1986), pp. 121-201
Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley, 1986)
Rosalind Field, ‘Romance as History, History as Romance’, in Romance in Medieval England, ed. by Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge, 1991), pp.163–73
Rosalind Field, ‘Romance in England, 1066-1400’, in Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 152-76
Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290-1340 (Oxford, 1996)

11. Exotic and popular romances; Breton lays

Letter of Alexander; Wonders of the East; Apollonius of Tyre; Amis et Amilun; Marie de France, Lais; Sir Degaré ; Sir Launfal ; Sir Orfeo ; Lay le Freine; Sir Gowther ; Amis and Amiloun ; Floris and Blancheflour ; King Alisaunder ; Eglamour of Artois ; Octavian ; Sir Isumbras

Letter of Alexander and Wonders of the East, in Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Cambridge, 1995)
Marie de France, Lais , trans. Glyn S. Burgess, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 2003)
Amis et Amilun, in The Birth of Romance: An Anthology, trans. Judith Weiss (London, 1992) Revised edition (Tempe AZ, 2009)
W.R.J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (Harlow, 1987)
Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time (Oxford, 2004)
Nicola McDonald, ed., Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance (Manchester, 2004)
Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, eds, The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance: A Historical Introduction (London, 2000)
Raluca S. Radulescu and Cory J. Rushton, eds, A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge, 2009)

12. Saints and martyrs

Ælfric, Life of St. Edmund; Old English Lives of St Margaret; William of Malmesbury, Life of St Wulfstan; Clemence of Barking, Life of St Catherine ; Life of St Laurent; The Life of Christina of Markyate; Seinte Margarete; South English Legendary Life of St Wulfstan

The Old English Lives of St. Margaret, ed./trans. Mary Clayton and Hugh Magennis (Cambridge, 1994)
William of Malmesbury, Life of St Wulfstan, in William of Malmesbury: Saints’ Lives, ed./trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thompson (Oxford, 2002)
Clemence of Barking, St Catherine; and St Laurent, in Virgin Lives and Holy Deaths: Two Exemplary Biographies for Anglo-Norman Women, trans. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (London, 1996)
Seinte Margaret, in Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse , ed. Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Oxford, 1990), pp. 44-85
Jill Frederick, ‘The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and national identity’, in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 57-73
Hugh Magennis, ‘Approaches to Saints’ Lives’, in in The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching, ed. Paul Cavill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 163–83
Paul E. Szarmach, Holy men and holy women: Old English prose saints’ lives and their contexts (Albany NY, 1996)
Karen A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: legends of sainthood in late medieval England (Ithaca and London, 1997)
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150-1300: Virginity and its Authorizations (Oxford, 2001)

13. King Arthur

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain; Wace, Brut; Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, Erec & Enide, Cligès, Lancelot; Laȝamon, Brut; Ywain and Gawain; Alliterative Morte Arthur

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain , trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966)
Wace, Brut, ed./trans. Judith Weiss, 2nd edn (Exeter, 2002)
Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances , trans. W.W. Kibler and Carleton W. Carroll (London, 2004)
W. R. J. Barron, ed., The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature , rev. edn (Cardiff, 2001)
Glyn S. Burgess and Karen Pratt, eds, The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature (Cardiff, 2006)
Patricia Clare Ingham, Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia, 2001)
R. William Leckie, The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the periodization of insular history in the twelfth century (Toronto, 1981)
Michelle R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain 1100–1300 (Minneapolis, 2000)

14. Riddles, debate, satire and play

Riddles from the Exeter Book; Solomon and Saturn; Walter Map, ‘Sadius and Galo’ in Courtiers’ Trifles; Nigel de Longchamp, A Mirror for Fools; The Owl and the Nightingale; The Fox and the Wolf; Dame Sirith; The Dispute between Mary and the Cross

Solomon and Saturn, in Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English, ed./trans. T.A. Shippey (Totowa NJ, 1976)
Nigel of Longchamp, Speculum Stultorum: A Mirror for Fools , trans. J. H. Mozley (Oxford, 1961)
J.A.W. Bennett, ‘Pastoral and Comedy’, in Middle English Literature, ed. and completed by Douglas Gray (Oxford, 1986), pp. 1-22
Elaine Tuttle Hansen, The Solomon Complex: Reading Wisdom in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 1988)
Laura Kendrick, ‘Medieval Satire’, in European Writers: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, I: Prudentius to Medieval Drama; II: Petrarch to Renaissance Short Fiction, ed. W. T. H. Jackson (New York, 1983), pp. 337-375
Carolyne Larrington, A Store of Common Sense: Gnomic Theme and Style in Old Icelandic and Old English Wisdom Poetry (Oxford, 1993)
Thomas L. Reed, Middle English Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics of Irresolution (Columbia, 1990)
Jonathan Wilcox, ed., Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge, 2000)

15. Beasts

The Whale; Marie de France, Fables; Nigel de Longchamp, A Mirror for Fools; The Fox and the Wolf; The Owl and the Nightingale

Nigel of Longchamp, Speculum Stultorum: A Mirror for Fools , trans. J. H. Mozley (Oxford, 1961)
Marie de France, Fables, ed. and trans. Harriet Spiegel (Toronto, 1987)
Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, 1995)
Ann Payne, Medieval Beasts (London, 1990)
Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150 (Philadelphia, 1993)