What Kind of a Thing Is a Middle English Lyric? / edited by Cristina Maria Cervone and Nicholas Watson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cervone, Cristina Maria, editor.

Watson, Nicholas, editor.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English poetry.

Lyric poetry--History and criticism.

Lyric poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (561 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2022]

Biography/History:

Cristina Maria Cervone is Associate Professor of English at the University of Memphis. Nicholas Watson is the Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English at Harvard University.

Summary:

"What Kind of a Thing is a Middle English Lyric? considers issues pertaining to a corpus of several hundred short poems written in Middle English between the twelfth and early fifteenth centuries. The chapters draw on perspectives from varied disciplines, including literary criticism, musicology, art history, and cognitive science. Since the early 1900s, the poems have been categorized as "lyrics," the term now used for most kinds of short poetry, yet neither the difficulties nor the promise of this treatment have received enough attention. In one way, the book argues, considering these poems to be lyrics obscures much of what is interesting about them. Since the nineteenth century, lyrics have been thought of as subjective and best read without reference to cultural context, yet nonetheless they are taken to form a distinct literary tradition. Since Middle English short poems are often communal and usually spoken, sung, and/or danced, this lyric template is not a good fit. In another way, however, the very differences between these poems and the later ones on which current debates about the lyric still focus suggests they have much to offer those debates, and vice versa. As its title suggests, this book thus goes back to the basics, asking fundamental questions about what these poems are, how they function formally and culturally, how they are (and are not) related to other bodies of short poetry, and how they might illuminate and be illuminated by contemporary lyric scholarship. Eleven chapters by medievalists and two responses by modernists, all in careful conversation with one another, reflect on these questions and suggest very different answers. The editors' introduction synthesizes these answers by suggesting that these poems can most usefully be read as a kind of "play," in several senses of that word. The book ends with eight "new Middle English lyrics" by seven contemporary poets"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Introduction : Why stonde we? why go we not? / Cristina Maria Cervone and Nicholas Watson

Lyric editing / Ardis Butterfield

Wondering through Middle English lyric / Cristina Maria Cervone

Lyric romance / Christopher Cannon

Language and meter / Ian Cornelius

Lyric value / Ingrid Nelson

Cognitive poetics of Middle English lyric poetry / Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

Lyric vessels / Aden Kumler

The sound of Rollean lyric / Andrew Albin

The lyric Christ / Barbara Zimbalist

The religious lyric in Medieval England (1150-1400) : Three disciplines and a question / Margot Fassler

Theory of the fourteenth-century English lyric / Andrew Galloway

Response : Old lyric things / Virginia Jackson

Response : Hevy hameres / Stephanie Burt

New Medieval lyrics : A chapbook.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812298512

0812298519

OCLC:

1330195534