Medieval Literature – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

The Best Fourteenth-Century Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The fourteenth century was, in many ways, the century in which English poetry truly arrived, with the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and the development of Middle English as a supple, vibrant language for vernacular poetry. In Italy, too, the language of the local, common people was used in verse by the pioneering poet Dante, who chose to write in Italian rather than the high Latin of many religious works. Below, we’ve selected some of the very best fourteenth-century poems, both big and small, epic and lyric.

The Clerk’s Forgotten Tale: Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews John M. Bowers’ fascinating book about Tolkien’s Chaucerian links

If we think of J. R. R. Tolkien’s associations with medieval poetry, it tends to be the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, or perhaps the Middle English narrative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, that spring to mind. Both, after all, are what we might now call ‘fantasy literature’. Despite his attachment to the Worcestershire dialect (growing up in the West Midlands as he did), Tolkien never undertook scholarly work on William Langland’s Piers Plowman, most likely because of his dislike of straight allegory. But what about Geoffrey Chaucer?

The Richness of Medieval English Literature

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews Stephen Coote’s English Literature of the Middle Ages

Stephen Coote’s English Literature of the Middle Ages (Pelican) was published thirty years ago, in 1988. It’s taken me until this week to read it, but it’s one of the most illuminating and important introductions to medieval English literature you could hope to find. Clear, accessible, and endlessly informative, Coote’s book covers everything from Beowulf to the Morte Darthur, taking in alliterative and rhyming verse, courtly dream-visions and Arthurian narratives, Anglo-Saxon kennings and Middle English prose.

A Short Analysis of the Medieval Poem ‘Westron Wynde’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The anonymous song or poem simply known as ‘Westron Wynde’ (sometimes modernised as ‘Western Wind’) dates from the early sixteenth century, and the tune to which it was sung influenced a raft of English composers such as the Tudor John Taverner (not to be confused with the more recent composer, John Tavener). However, the words to the song may be from even earlier than the sixteenth century, perhaps the fourteenth or fifteenth century. How should we interpret ‘Westron Wynde’? It turns out its meaning is not exactly straightforward.

This four-line poem, in its original spelling, runs:

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?

A Short Analysis of The Owl and the Nightingale

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A man overhears two birds, an owl and a nightingale, engaging in a heated debate about a range of topics, arguing over their respective songs, each other’s appearance, the follies and weaknesses of humankind, even the lack of toilet training skills evinced by the owl.