Designed as both a contribution to original research and as a stimulating and accessible text, this volume is a helpful, reliable, responsive and adaptable resource for students of Chaucer at all levels.

The text presented here remains as faithful to the original MiddleEnglish as possible, without sounding archaic. Kempe's work isaccompanied by an introduction, a map of medieval England, a Kempelexicon, and explanatory annotations. "Contexts" collects primaryreadings that illuminate The Book of Margery Kempe. Included areexcerpts from The Constitutions of Thomas Arundel, Meditations on theLife of Christ, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, The Book of SaintBride, and The Life of Marie d'Oignies by Jacques de Vitry. "Criticism"includes nine varied interpretations of the autobiography, written byClarissa W. Atkinson, Lynn Staley, Karma Lochrie, David Aers, KathleenAshley, Gail McMurray Gibson, Sarah Beckwith, Caroline Walker Bynum,and Nicholas Watson. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

Set against the backdrop of the fourteenth-century Black Death, an anthology of one hundred interlinked tales presents a variety of works recounted by the citizens of Florence--nobles, knights, abbots, nuns, doctors, philosophers, students, peasants, pilgrims, thieves, and others--who have fled the city to escape the plague.

A new translation of Dante's classic poem uses slant rhyme and near rhyme to preserve the original terza rima form without distorting the English meaning, providing a lively and faithful rendition of the poem. Reprint. Winner of the 1995 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates character and exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of the Geats, a people of southern Sweden. Narrative combines mythical elements, Christian and pagan sensibilities, actual historical figures and events to create a striking work of great power and beauty. Genealogies.

Ingeniously subverting the Greek literary form, Aretino here presents a dialogue - not of profound philosophical thought - but of the art of prostitution.

An important new translation of the second section of Dante's great masterwork, created by the poetauthor of The River Sound and The Folding Cliffs, follows the narrator's odyssey, guided by the poet Virgil and inspired by his love for Beatrice, up the Mount of Purgatory toward Paradise. 15,000 first printing.

A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other

Building on the strengths of two previous editions, this revised and enlarged Third Edition continues to offer more of Spenser's poetry than any other comparable volume. All selections are based on early and established texts, fully glossed and precisely annotated, with an Editor's Note following each section. To facilitate discussion of the place of the body and of pastoral elements in Spenser's epic, the Third Edition includes more of The Faerie Queene: from Book II, canto ix (the House of Alma), and from Book VI, the remainder of canto x and all of cantos xi-xii. The Shepheardes Calender is represented by six eclogues, including the much-discussed "Februarie." Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, increasingly a focus of critical attention, is an important addition, and Amoretti is offered in its entirety. Seventeen critical essays, judiciously chosen from the many published since 1982, have been added to supplement eleven earlier commentaries. New to the Third Edition are the perspectives of Spenserís contemporary William Camden, Virginia Woolf, William Nelson, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Donald Cheney, Judith Anderson, Richard Helgerson, Louis Adrian Montrose, and David Lee Miller. The critical essays on the House of Busyrane, Spenser's pastoral, Muiopotmos, and Amoretti are grouped to "speak" to each other in ways sure to stimulate classroom discussion. This class-tested feature is back by popular demand along with essays by D. C. Allen, Robert A. Brinkley, Ronald P. Bond, Anne Lake Prescott, Andrew D. Weiner, Susanne Lindgren Wofford, Harry Berger, Jr., and Paul Alpers. A Chronology of Spenser's life and an extensive Bibliography are also included.