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A retelling of the medieval poem about a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and the tales they tell each other. With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a motley crowd of pilgrims drawn from all walks of life-from knight to nun, miller to monk-reveal a picture of English life in the fourteenth...

Seth Lerer tells a masterful history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition features a new chapter on the influence of biblical translation and an epilogue on the relationship of English speech to writing. A unique blend...

"More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment,...

Anglo-Saxon Keywords presents a series of entries that reveal the links between modern ideas and scholarship and the central concepts of Anglo-Saxon literature, language, and material culture. • Reveals important links between central concepts of the Anglo-Saxon period and issues we think about today • Reveals how material culture-the history of labor, medicine, technology, identity, masculinity, sex, food, land use-is as important as the history...

This book contains all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets written from 1593-1601. Each sonnet is presented on its own page, so the sonnets stand on their own as individual works.

Many of the animals we encounter in everyday life, from pets and farm animals to the wild creatures of field and forest, have remained the same since medieval times. But the words used to name and describe them have often changed beyond recognition, starting with the Old English word for “animal” itself, deor (pronounced DAY-or). In The Deorhord, Hana Videen presents a glittering Old English bestiary of animals real and imaginary, big and small,...

"All around the world, from the dry desert to the wet jungle, from the sleeping city to the icy pole, baby animals and their parents are sharing the wonder of a twinkling star. This enchanting version of a favorite lullaby is a celebration of love."-- Provided by publisher.

Charles Robinson (1870-1937) was born into a family of illustrators - his younger brother was William Heath Robinson and his older brother was Thomas Heath Robinson - and rose to become one of the most fashionable book-illustrators of his era. At age twenty-five he illustrated his first full book, A Child's Garden of Verses, with over 100 images. These illustrations for Stevenson's most endearing and popular book bear the influence of the Art Nouveau...

Medieval anchorites willingly embraced the most extreme form of solitude known to the medieval world, so they might forge a closer connection with God. Yet to be physically enclosed within the same four walls for life required strength far beyond most medieval Christians. This book explores the English anchoritic guides which were written, revised and translated, throughout the Middle Ages, to enable recluses to come to terms with the enormity of...

• Birds have always been a popular and accessible subject, but most books about medieval birds are an overview of their symbolism generally: owl for ill-omen, the pelican as a Eucharistic image and the like. The unique selling point of this book is to focus on one bird and explore it in detail from medieval reality to artistic concept. • This book also traces how and why the medieval perception of the swan shifted from hypocritical to courtly...