Boydell Brewer: 336 books

Marie de France is the author of some of the most influential and important works to survive from the middle ages; arguably best-known for her Lais, she also translated Aesop's Fables (the Ysopë), and wrote the Espurgatoire seint Patriz (St Patrick's Purgatory), based on a Latin text. The aim of...

One of the biggest attractions of George R.R. Martin's high fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, and by extension its HBO television adaptation, Game of Thrones, is its claim to historical realism. The author, the directors and producers of the adaptation, and indeed the fans of the books and show,...

This volume examines the erotic in the literature of medieval Britain, primarily in Middle English, but also in Latin, Welsh and Old French. Seeking to discover the nature of the erotic and how it differs from modern erotics, the contributors address topics such as the Wife of Bath's opinions on marital...

The artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-1994) had a lifelong appreciation of medieval culture. But with the possible exception of Edward II, Jarman's films have not been identified to date as making a major contribution to the depiction of the Middle Ages in cinema. This book is the first to uncover...

Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends...

"A senior scholar writing here at the height of his powers and bringing experience and insight to an important topic... the second chapter is one of the best short, general introductions to the artistry of the poem I have read... A dizzying and engaging narrative." Dr Chris Jones, Senior...

Although there were a number of outstanding women writers of the late middle ages, it was not thought that women composed lyric poetry. Albrecht Classen's careful investigation of archival material, however, proves this to be a misconception, and in this volume he presents a selection of secular love...

Goscelin of St Bertin's 'Book of Encouragement and Consolation' (Liber Confortatorius) is extraordinary both as an example of high-medieval spiritual practice and as a record of a personal relationship. Written in about 1083 by the monk Goscelin to a protegee and personal friend, the recluse Eva,...

In 2001, George Bush provoked global uproar by describing the nascent War on Terror as a "Crusade". His comments, however, were welcomed by Al-Qaeda, who had long been describing Western powers in precisely the same terms, as modern Crusaders once again invading the Middle East. Ten years...

It is hard to overstate the importance of this trilogy of prose romances in the development of the legend of the Holy Grail and in the evolution of Arthurian literature as a whole. They give a crucial new impetus to the story of the Grail by establishing a provenance for the sacred vessel - and for...

It is often said that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently, and perhaps no type of "doing" is more fascinating than sexual desires and behaviours. Our modern view of medieval sexuality is characterised by a polarising dichotomy between the swooning love-struck knights...

The quest for the Holy Grail is one of the most important elements in the story of King Arthur. Yet even among the many interested in the stories of the Round Table, very few have read at first hand the medieval masterpieces which over a period of some forty years, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth...

The scale of the 2012 bicentenary celebrations of Dickens's birth is testimony to his status as one of the most globally popular literary authors the world has ever seen. Yet Dickens has also become associated in the public imagination with a particular version of the Victorian past and with respectability....

This book is a prose translation of a selection of women saints' lives from the Gilte Legende, the Middle English version of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea, one of the most influential books to come from the middle ages. Because of its popularity and subject matter, the Gilte Legende was widely...