Edited by Joseph Gallagher (1993). Printed by William Caxton 1489. Caxton translated The Doctrinal of Sapience from a French original first assembled in 1389. There is no known manuscript tradition in English and the only known translation is Caxton’s single edition, of which thirteen copies survive, four of which are perfect. Like all manuals the Doctrinal deals with the basic… Read More »Vol. 26 The Doctrinal of Sapience
Purchase this volume The Devil’s Parliament Edition FROM BL Addit. MS 37492 and Lambeth Palace MS 853, and The Harrowing of Hell and Destruction of Jerusalem Edition from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6 C William Marx (ed.) (1993) Central to both these poems is Christ’s harrowing of Hell. Together they illustrate the different approaches to this subject that were… Read More »Vol. 25 The Devil’s Parliament and The Harrowing of Hell and Destruction of Jerusalem
Purchase this volume Edition From MSS Advocates 19.2.1, Bodley 48, And Peterhouse College 104 Dan Embree, Elizabeth Urquhart (eds.) (1991) The Simonie is a Middle English “evil times” complaint, which attacks in verse the contemporary abuses peculiar to various estates, both clerical and secular. It survives in three distinct fourteenth- and fifteenth-century versions, independently derived from a lost fourteenth-century original.… Read More »Vol. 24 The Simonie: A Parallel-Text Edition
Purchase this volume Edited by Peter Whiteford (1990). From Wynkyn De Worde’s Edition. Peter Whiteford (ed.) (1990) The Myracles of Oure Lady is a collection of miracle stories printed by Wynkyn de Worde around 1496, and subsequently reprinted by him at least twice. It consists of forty-eight prose tales, which, though generally brief, are representative of this genre of popular… Read More »Vol. 23 The Myracles of Oure Lady
Edited by Valerie Edden (1990). Edition from Bodl. MS Rawlinson A 389 Richard Maidstone (d. 1396) was a Carmelite friar, whose skill as a poet has only recently been acknowledged. The popularity of his Penitential Psalms is attested by their survival in twenty manuscripts and the inclusion of extracts from them into anthologies. They use the psalm texts as a… Read More »Vol. 22 Richard Maidstone’s Penitential Psalms
Edited by Geoffrey Lester (1988) Edition from Oxford MS Bodl. Douce 291 This is an edition of the first English translation of the late fourth- or early fifth-century Epitoma Rei Militaris of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, the most influential military manual in use during the Middle Ages. According to the colophon, the translation was completed in 1408 for Thomas of Berkeley,… Read More »Vol. 21 The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De Re Militari
Edited by Maldwyn Mills. Edition from MS Auchinleck, Advocates’ 19.2.1 As one of the romances ‘praised’ by Chaucer in Sir Thopas, Horn Childe has been viewed by most scholars other than Trounce as rym doggerel, much inferior to the better-known King Horn. Matters have not been helped by the relative inaccessibility and shortcomings of the editions of Caro (1889) and… Read More »Vol. 20 Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild
Purchase this volume Edition From Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2498 C William Marx, Jeanne F Drennan, (eds.) (1987) The volume presents a critical edition of the Pepys text of the two linked narratives, with variants from University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection MS 501 and a parallel text of their Anglo-Norman source as preserved in BL MS Royal 20.B.V. The… Read More »Vol. 19 The Middle English Prose Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel of Nicodemus
Edited by Rodney Mearns (1985). Edition from BL MS Cotton Caligula A II The Vision of Tundale is a translation in a popular verse form of a Latin prose text. The English poem, which numbers 2320 lines, survives in whole or in part in five mid- or late-fifteenth-century manuscripts, and was composed in octosyllabic couplets. The Latin work, which originates… Read More »Vol. 18 The Vision of Tundale
Edited by Sarah M. Horrall (1985) Edition From MS St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, E.I.I The Middle English prose Lyf of Oure Lady and its Latin source the Vita Sancte Marie of the English Franciscan Thomas of Hales have not previously been edited, nor has the connection been made between the Middle English and the Latin texts. The Middle English… Read More »Vol. 17 The Lyf of Oure Lady: the Middle English Translation of Thomas of Hales’ Vita Sancte Marie