Middle English Lyrics

A collection attesting to the richness and lasting appeal of these short forms of Middle English verse.

A collection attesting to the richness and lasting appeal of these short forms of Middle English verse.

The body of short Middle English poems conventionally known as lyrics is characterized by wonderful variety. Taking many different forms, and covering an enormous number of subjects, these poems have proved at once attractive andchallenging for modern readers and scholars. This collection of essays explores a range of Middle English lyrics from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, both religious and secular in flavour. It directs attention to the intrinsic qualities of these short poems and at the same time explores their capacity to illuminate important aspects of medieval cultural practice and production: forms of piety, contemporary conditions and events, the historyof feelings and emotions, and the relationships of image, song, performance and speech to the written word. The issues covered in the essays include editing lyrics; lyric manuscripts; affect; visuality;mouvance and transformation; and the relationships between words, music and speech. A particularly distinctive feature of the collection is that most of the essays take as a point of departure a specific lyric whose particularities are explored within wider-ranging critical argument.

JULIA BOFFEY is Professor of Medieval Studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London; CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD is Professor of Middle English Literature at the University of Warwick.

Contributors: Anne Baden-Daintree, Julia Boffey, Anne Marie D'Arcy, Thomas G. Duncan, Susanna Fein, Mary C. Flannery, Jane Griffiths, Joel Grossman, John C. Hirsh, Hetta Elizabeth Howes, Natalie Jones, Michael P. Kuczynski, A.S. Lazikani, Daniel McCann, Denis Renevey, Elizabeth Robertson, Annie Sutherland, Mary Wellesley, Christiania Whitehead, Katherine Zieman.

Introduction
Editing Issues in Middle English Lyrics - Thomas G. Duncan
Moving Lights: An Affective Reading ofOn leome is in þis world ilist and Church Wall Paintings - Ayoush Lazikani
Blood and Chocolate: Affective Layering inSwete Ihesu, now wil I synge - Daniel McCann
Textual and Affective Stability inAll Other Love is Like the Moon - Michael Kuczynski
The Unlikely Landscapes ofOn God Ureisun of Ure Lefdi - Annie Sutherland
'Adreynt in shennesse': Blood, Shame and Contrition inQuis est iste qui uenit de Edom? - Hetta Elizabeth Howes
Ihesus Woundes so Wide and theFons Vitae: Text, Image and the Manuscript Context - Natalie Jones
'Written in Gold upon a Purple Stain': Mariological Rhetoric and the Material Culture of Aureate Diction - Anne Marie D'Arcy
Textual Lyricism in Lydgate'sFifteen Joys and Sorrows of Our Lady - Mary Wellesley
Voice and Response: Lyric Rewriting of The Song of Songs - Anne Baden-Daintree
Compiling the Lyric: Richard Rolle, Textual Dynamism and Devotional Song in London, British Library, Additional MS 37049 - Katherine Zieman
Lyric Interventions inTroilus and Criseyde - Elizabeth Robertson
Poems that Speak Volumes: Lydgate'sThoroughfare of Woe, and Lyric as Epitome - Julia Boffey
'Short song is good in ale': Charles d'Orléans and Authorial Intentions in the Middle English Ballade 84 - Denis Renevey
All Adam's Children: The Early Middle English Lyric in Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 (II) - Susanna Fein
Musical and Poetic Form inStond wel, moder, under rode - Christiania Whitehead
Tutivillus and the Policing of Speech in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 104 - Mary C. Flannery
Have This in Mind: Word and Image in Audelay's Writing - Jane Griffiths
'The Dance of the Intellect among Words': Wyatt'sIn Eternum and Late Medieval Lyric Practice - Joel Grossman
Afterword: The Study of Medieval Lyrics in 1960s Oxford and Today - John C. Hirsh
Bibliography