The Longman Anthology of British Literature
Subtitle: Volume 1A, The Middle Ages
Edition: 2nd Edition
Publisher: Pearson Education, Inc.
Published: August 16, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 704
ISBN-13: 9780321106674
Copyright date: 2006, 2003
Subjects: Collections & anthologies of various literary forms; Literary studies: general; Literary Criticism; Textbooks; English; Ancient, Classical & Medieval; General; Literary Criticism & Collections / General
Description: At the present time, there are five languages in Britain, just as the divine law is written in five books, all devoted to seeking out and setting forth one and the same kind of wisdom, namely the knowledge of sublime truth and of true sublimity. These are the English, British, Irish, Pictish, as well as the Latin languages; through the study of the scriptures, Latin is in general use among them all.
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People 

The Venerable Bede’s famous and enormously influential Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in the early 700s, reflects a double triumph. First, its very title acknowledges the dominance by Bede’s day of the Anglo-Saxons, who, centuries earlier, had established themselves on an island already inhabited by Celtic Britons and by Picts. Second, the Latin of Bede’s text and his own life as a monk point to the presence of ancient Mediterranean influences in the British Isles, earlier through Rome’s military colonization of ancient Britain and later through the conversion of Bede’s people to Roman Christianity.

In this first chapter of his first book, Bede shows a complex awareness of the several populations still active in Britain and often resisting or encroaching on Anglo-Saxon rule, and much of his History narrates the successive waves of invaders and missionaries who had brought their languages, governments, cultures, and beliefs to his island. This initial emphasis on peoples and languages should not be taken as early medieval multiculturalism, however: Bede’s brief comparison to the single truth embodied in the five books of divine law also shows us his eagerness to draw his fragmented world into a coherent and transcendent system of Latin-based Christianity.

It is useful today, however, to think about medieval Britain, before and long after Bede, as a multilingual and multicultural setting, densely layered with influences and communities that divide, in quite different ways, along lines of geography, language, and ethnicity, as well as religion, gender, and class. These elements produced extraordinary cultures and artistic works, whose richness and diversity challenge the modern imagination. The medieval British Isles were a meeting place, but also a point of resistance, for wave after wave of cultural and political influences. Awareness of these multiple origins, moreover, persisted. In the mid-thirteenth century, Matthew Paris’s map of England (Color Plate 4) reflects an alertness to the complex geography of history and settlement on his island. Six hundred years after Bede we encounter a historian like Sir Thomas Gray complaining that recent disorders were “characteristic of a medley of different races. Wherefore some people are of the opinion that the diversity of spirit among the English is the cause of their revolutions” (Scalacronica, c. 1363).
Notes: This item is out of print and has been replaced with Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 1A, The: The Middle Ages, 4th Edition https://web.archive.org/web/20191122175334/https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/product/Damrosch-Longman-Anthology-of-British-Literature-Volume-1-A-The-Middle-Ages-The-3rd-Edition/9780321333919.html?tab=contents
Table of contents: title: List of Illustrations; title: Preface; title: Acknowledgements; title: Political and Religious Orders; title: Money, Weights, and Measures; title: Bibiography; title: Credits; title: denotes selection is new to this edition.; title: THE MIDDLE AGES.; title: Before the Norman Conquest.; title: Beowulf.; title: Response.; title: John Gardner, From Grendel.; title: Early Irish Narrative.; title: The Labour Pains of the Ulaid & The Twins of Macha.; title: The Birth of Cú Chulaind.; title: The Naming of Cú Chulaind.; title: Early Irish Verse.; title: To Crinog.; title: Pangur the Cat.; title: Writing in the Wood.; title: The Viking Terror.; title: The Old Woman of Beare.; title: Findabair Remembers Fróech.; title: A Grave Marked with Ogam.; title: From The Voyage of Máel Dúin.; title: Judith.; title: The Dream of the Rood.; title: Perspectives: Ethnic and Religious Encounters.; title: Bede. From An Ecclesiastical History of the English People.; title: Bishop Asser. From The Life of King Alfred.; title: King Alfred. Preface to St. Gregory's Pastoral Care.; title: Ohthere's Journeys.; title: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Stamford Bridge and Hastings.; title: Taliesin.; title: Urien Yrechwydd.; title: The Battle of Argoed Llwyfain.; title: The War-Band's Return.; title: Lament for Owain Son of Urien.; title: The Tale of Taliesin.; title: The Wanderer.; title: Wulf and Eadwacer and the Wife's Lament.; title: Riddles.; title: Three Anglo-Latin Riddles by Aldhelm.; title: Five Old English Riddles.; title: After the Norman Conquest.; title: Perspectives: Arthurian Myth in the History of Britain.; title: Geoffrey of Monmouth. From History of the Kings of Britain.; title: Gerald of Wales. From The Instruction of Princes.; title: Edward I. Letter to the Papal Court of Rome.; title: Response.; title: A Report to Edward I.; title: Arthurian Romance.; title: Marie de France.; title: LAIS.; title: Prologue.; title: Lanval.; title: Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle).; title: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Trans. by J.R.R. Tolkien.; title: Sir Thomas Malory.; title: Morte Darthur.; title: From Caxton's Prologue.; title: The Poisoned Apple.; title: The Days of Destiny.; title: Responses.; title: Marion Zimmer Bradley, From The Mists of Avalon.; title: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.; title: Geoffrey Chaucer.; title: The Parliament of Fowls.; title: The CANTERBURY TALES.; title: The General Prologue, Middle English translation; title: The General Prologue, Modern translation on facing pages, trans. by David Wright; title: The Miller's Tale.; title: The Introduction.; title: The Tale.; title: The Wife of Bath's Prologue.; title: The Wife of Bath's Tale.; title: Response.; title: William Dunbar, From  The Treatise of the Two Married Women and the Widow.; title: The Franklin's Tale.; title: The Prologue.; title: The Tale.; title: The Pardoner's Prologue.; title: The Pardoner's Tale.; title: The Nun's Priest's Tale.; title: The Parson's Tale.; title: The Introduction.; title: (The Remedy for the Sin of Lechery.); title: Chaucer's Retraction.; title: To His Scribe Adam.; title: Complaint to His Purse.; title: William Langland.; title: Piers Plowman.; title: Prologue.; title: Passus 2.; title: from Passus 5.; title: Passus 6.; title: Passus 18.; title: “Piers Plowman” and Its Time: The Rising of 1381.; title: From The Anonimalle Chronicle [Wat Tyler's Demands to Richard II and his death].; title: Three Poems on the Rising of 1381.; title: John Ball's First Letter.; title: John Ball's Second Letter.; title: The Course of Revolt.; title: John Gower. From The Voice of One Crying.; title: Mystical Writings; title: Julian of Norwich.; title: A Book of Showings.; title: (Three Graces. Illness. The First Revelation.); title: (Laughing at the Devil.); title: (Christ Draws Julian in Through His Wound.]); title: (The Necessity of Sin, and of Hating Sin.); title: (God as Father, Mother, Husband.); title: (The Soul as Christ's Citadel.); title: (The Meaning of the Visions Is Love.); title: Julian of Norwich and Her Time.; title: Richard Rolle. From The Fire of Love; title: From The Cloud of Unknowing.; title: Response.; title: Rebecca Jackson, The Dream of Washing Quilts.; title: Medieval Biblical Dramas.; title: The Second Play of the Shepherds.; title: The York Play of the Crucifixion.; title: Vernacular Religion and Repression.; title: The Wycliffite Bible.; title: John 10:11-18.; title: From A Wycliffite Sermon on John 10:11-18.; title: John Mirk.; title: From Festial.; title: Preaching and Teaching in the Vernacular.; title: Nicholas Love.; title: From The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus.; title: From The Confession of Hawisia Moone of Loddon.; title: Margery Kempe.; title: The Book of Margery Kempe.; title: The Preface.; title: (Early Life and Temptations, Revelation, Desire for Foreign Pilgrimage.); title: (Meeting with Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury.); title: (Visit with Julian of Norwich.); title: (Pilgrimage to Jerusalem.); title: (Arrest by Duke of Bedford's Men; Meeting with Archbishop of York.); title: Middle English Lyrics.; title: The Cuckoo Song (“Sumer is icumen in”).; title: Spring (“Lenten is come with love to toune”).; title: Alisoun (“Bitwene Mersh and Averil”).; title: I Have a Noble Cock.; title: My Lefe Is Faren in a Lond.; title: Fowles in the Frith.; title: Abuse of Women (“In every place ye may well see”).; title: The Irish Dancer (“Gode sire, pray ich thee”).; title: A Forsaken Maiden's Lament (“I lovede a child of this cuntree”).; title: The Wily Clerk (“This enther day I mete a clerke”).; title: Jolly Jankin (“As I went on Yol Day in our procession”).; title: Adam Lay Ibounden.; title: I Sing of a Maiden.; title: In Praise of Mary (“Edi be thu, Hevene Quene”).; title: Mary Is With Child (“Under a tree”).; title: Sweet Jesus, King of Bliss.; title: Now Goeth Sun under Wood.; title: Jesus, My Sweet Lover (“Jesu Christ, my lemmon swete”).; title: Contempt of the World (“Where beth they biforen us weren?”).; title: Dafydd Ap Gwilym.; title: Aubade.; title: One Saving Place.; title: The Girls of Llanbadarn.; title: Tale of a Wayside Inn.; title: The Hateful Husband.; title: The Winter.; title: The Ruin.; title: Middle Scots Poets.; title: William Dunbar.; title: Lament for the Makars.; title: Done is a Battell.; title: In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht.; title: Robert Henryson.; title: Robyne and Makyne.; title: Late Medieval Allegory.; title: Charles of Orleans.; title: Fortunes Stabilnes; title: Ballade 26.; title: Ballade 61.; title: Roundel 94.; title: Mankind, a modern acting edition, ed. by Peter Meredith.; title: Christine de Pizan.; title: From Book of the City of Ladies, translation by Earl Jeffrey Richards.