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  1. Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. [A general discussion of the genre, audience, and historical backgrounds.]
  2. Brownlee, Kevin, and Marina Scordilis. Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985.
  3. Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. [Delineates distin-guishing features of English romance as well as cultural and ideological issues.]
  4. Fewster, Carol. Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987. [Discusses theories and approaches, implied audiences, style, structure, and romance narrativity.]
  5. Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
  6. Hudson, Harriet. “Middle English Popular Romances: The Manuscript Evidence.” Manuscripta 28 (1984), 67–78. [Discusses the provenance of romance manuscripts and their probable audiences.]
  7. Hume, Kathryn. “The Formal Nature of Middle English Romance.” Philological Quarterly 53 (1974), 158–80. [Distinguishes three types of romance based upon the hero’s ability to fulfill his destiny.]
  8. Knight, Stephen. “The Social Function of the Middle English Romance.” In Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, & History. Ed. David Aers. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Pp. 99–122.
  9. Loomis, Laura A. [Hibbard]. “The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330–1340.” PMLA 57 (1942), 595–627. [Study of internal evidence in order to locate the manuscript’s production in a commercial scriptorium in London.]
  10. ———. Mediæval Romance in England: A Study of the Sources and Analogues of the Non-Cyclic Metrical Romances. 1924; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1960. [A useful study of various versions of thirty-nine English romances.]
  11. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. 146–52. [Addresses historical contexts, audience, generic definitions, narrative techniques of several categories of romance.]
  12. Pearsall, Derek. “The Development of Middle English Romance.” Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965), 91–116. [Follows the growth and development of the genre from 1240 to 1400.]
  13. ———. “Middle English Romance and Its Audience.” In Historical & Editorial Studies in Medieval & Early Modern English for Johan Gerritsen. Ed. MaryJo Arn and Hanneke Wirtjes, with Hans Jansen. Froningen: Wolters-Noordhoof, 1985. Pp. 37–47. [Discusses a range of possible audiences from urban to provincial.]
  14. Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. [A general survey of the origins of medieval romance as well as the major types of English romance plots. Includes a chronological list of romances.]
  15. Strohm, Paul. “Storie, Spelle, Geste, Romaunce, Tragedie: Generic Distinctions in the Middle English Troy Narratives.” Speculum 46 (1971), 348–59. [A useful study of genre as perceived by medieval writers.]
  16. ———. “The Origin and Meaning of Middle Engish Romaunce.” Genre 10 (1977), 1–28. [Discusses the use of the term from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries and addresses such related terms as storie, geste, and lay.]
  17. Wittig, Susan. Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. [A study of the problems of stylistic analysis and various structural units.]

Select Bibliography for King Horn

Manuscripts

  1. Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.27.2.
  2. British Library MS Harley 2253.
  3. Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108.

Critical Editions

  1. Allen, Rosamund S., ed. King Horn. New York: Garland Medieval Texts, 1984.
  2. Hall, Joseph, ed. King Horn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901.
  3. French, Walter Hoyt, and Charles Brockway Hale, eds. Middle English Metrical Romances. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930.
  4. Gibbs, A. C., ed. King Horn, Havelok, Floriz & Blauncheflur, Orfeo, Amis & Amiloun. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966.
  5. McKnight, George H. ed. King Horn, Floriz & Blauncheflur, The Assumption of Our Lady. EETS o.s. 14. London: Oxford University Press, 1901; rpt. 1962.
  6. Sands, Donald B., ed. Middle English Verse Romances. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966.

Related Studies

  1. Allen, Rosamund “The Date and Provenance of King Horn: Some Interim Reassessments.” In Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane. Ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig. Suffolk, England: St. Edmundsburg Press, 1988. Pp. 99–126. [Based on both internal and external evidence, argues a later date for all MSS than previously thought.]
  2. ———. “Some Textual Cruces in King Horn.” Medium Aevum 53 (1984), 73–77. [Isolates six examples where cruces occur by comparing three MS versions.]
  3. Dannebaum, Susan. “‘Fairer Bi One Ribbe/Thane Eni Man That Libbe’ (King Horn C315–16).” Notes and Queries 226 (1981), 116–17. [Posits a masculine ideal for physical beauty operating within the poem that derives from Adam and Christ.]
  4. French, Walter H. Essays on King Horn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1940. [Contains theories about meter, text, and personal names.]
  5. Hearn, Matthew. “Twins of Infidelity: The Double Antagonists of King Horn.” Medieval Perspectives 8 (1993), 78–86. [“King Horn deals with the turbulent historical forces of its time in a rather oblique fashion, repressing the real or ‘historically accurate’ traces of domestic social tensions and projecting them instead onto a set of fictional antagonists more ideologically digestible to its audience: infidel Saracens and the traitor Fikenhild” (p. 79).]
  6. Hurt, James R. “The Texts of King Horn.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 7 (1970), 47–59.
  7. Hynes-Berry, Mary. “Cohesion in King Horn and Sir Orfeo.” Speculum 50 (1975), 652–70. [Argues that all episodes fit into a “cohesively progressive pattern” in which every incident contributes to narrative development.]
  8. Jamison, Carol. “A Description of the Medieval Romance Based upon King Horn.” Quondam-et-Futurus 1:2 (Summer 1991), 44–58. [General discussion of generic evolution, poetic style, audience, and structural principles.]
  9. McLaughlin, John. “The Return Song in Medieval Romance and Ballad: King Horn and King Orfeo.” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975), 304–07. [Links twentieth-century Serbo-Croatian heroic poetry, medieval French romances, and nineteenth-century Scottish ballads, by recognizing a “return song” pattern common to all.]
  10. Nimchinsky, Howard. “Orfeo, Guillaume, and Horn.” Romance Philology 22 (1968), 1–14. [Comparative cross-cultural study of similar passages.]
  11. O’Brien, Timothy. “Word Play in the Allegory of King Horn.” Allegorica 7 (1982), 110–22. [Magic rings, Horn’s disguises, and the love triangle “comment upon the political and psychological meanings contained in the poem’s word play” (p. 121).]
  12. Purdon, Liam. “King Horn and the Medieval Trope of Christ the Lover-Knight.” Proceedings of the PMR Conference at Villanova 10 (1985), 137–47. [Horn is not only physically beautiful but achieves a state of moral perfection. By incorporating features of the trope of Christ the Lover-Knight the poet establishes the logic of Horn’s many trials and generates the poem’s suspense.]
  13. Quinn, William A. Jongleur: A Modified Theory of Oral Improvisation and Its Effects on the Performance and Transmission of Middle English Romance. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. [Discusses the close relationship between oral performance and the making of written texts.]
  14. Scott, Anne. “Plans, Predictions, and Promises: Traditional Story Techniques and the Configuration of Word and Deed in King Horn.” In Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches. Ed. D. S. Brewer. Cambridge: Brewer, 1988. Pp. 37–68. [Explores the “binding power of promises, intentions, and desires” and the poet’s means of reaffirming and challenging “traditional narrative techniques” (p. 47).]
  15. Speed, Diane. “The Saracens of King Horn.” Speculum 65 (1990), 564–95. [The Saracens named in the poem are not “figures from real life,” but rather a “literary phenomenon.”]
  16. Ziegler, Georgianna. “Structural Repetition in King Horn.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81 (1980), 403–08. [Divides the narrative into four parts and draws attention to “the skillful interweaving of matter with form” (p. 403).]

Select Bibliography for Havelok the Dane

Manuscripts

  1. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Laud Misc. 108 (c. 1300–25).
  2. Cambridge University Library Add. 4407 (fragments).

Editions

  1. French, Walter Hoyt, and Charles Brockway Hale, eds. Middle English Metrical Romances. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1930. [Older edition with textual notes and limited glossary.]
  2. Holthausen, Ferdinand, ed. Havelok. London: Sampson Low Marton & Co., 1901. [Brief notes and glossary.]
  3. Madden, Sir Frederic, ed. Havelok the Dane. Roxburghe Club. London: W. Nicol, Shakespeare Press, 1828.
  4. Sands, Donald B., ed. Middle English Verse Romances. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966. [An edition with regularized spelling for modern students and scholars; discusses major textual cruces for this audience and updates French and Hale and Skeat.]
  5. Skeat, W. W., ed. The Lay of Havelok the Dane. Second ed. Revised by Kenneth Sisam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. [Early scholarly text with more intensive textual/cultural notes than F&H, but much superseded by later editions.]
  6. ———. The Lay of Havelok the Dane. EETS e.s. 4. London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868. [Identifies the poem as in no way connected with France, but derived from British or Welsh traditions. Cautions against close association with the lays of Marie de France.]
  7. Smithers, G. V., ed. Havelok. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. [Updated edition that includes thorough introduction to the poem’s sources, date of composition, dialect and provenance, with commentary on the text. The edition also prints lines connected with the poem from Cambridge University Library MS Add. 4407 which do not appear in Laud MS 108.]

Related Studies

  1. Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. [Comprehensive general study of generic features, historical contexts, and evolutionary principles.]
  2. Boitani, Piero. English Medieval Narrative in the 13th and 14th Centuries. Trans. Joan Krakover Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. [Surveys several medieval English literary genres, including religious writing, comic writing, dream visions, and romances, with separate chapters on Gower and Chaucer; compares English with French culture and romance with epic; discusses how Chaucer uses romance.]
  3. Bradbury, Nancy Mason. “The Traditional Origins of Havelok the Dane.” Studies in Philology 90 (1993), 115–42. [Employs folklore methods for tracing oral origins of the Havelok story as presented in the English poem.]
  4. Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. [Sees the exile and return pattern of Havelok as a frame for ideological expression of the nobility’s interest in land and personal title.]
  5. Delaney, Sheila, and Vahan Ishkanian. “Theocratic and Contractual Kingship in Havelok the Dane.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 22 (1974), 290–302. [Argues for a date in later decades of the thirteenth century and marks parallels between Havelok and Edward I.]
  6. Halverson, J. “Havelok the Dane and Society.” Chaucer Review 6 (1971), 142–51. [Supports the view of a non-noble audience for the poem.]
  7. Hanning, Robert W. “Havelok the Dane: Structure, Symbols, Meaning.” Studies in Philology 64 (1967), 586–605. [Argues that despite its lack of aesthetic beauty, the poem is deserving of commendation for its unified structure, for its consistent use of central symbolic acts or devices, and for the way in which structure and symbols cooperate to establish and clarify the work’s central meanings (p. 587).]
  8. Haskin, Dayton. “Food, Clothing and Kingship in Havelok the Dane.” American Benedictine Review 24 (1973), 204–13. [Furthers the discussion of Havelok’s kingship “by attending to the hero’s interaction with his subjects and his dependence upon them for his eventual truimph, with a view of amplifying our understanding of the poet’s vision of the apt ruler” (p. 205).]
  9. Hirsch, John C. “Havelok 2933: A Problem in Medieval Literary History.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 78 (1977), 339–49. [“Such romances as Havelok tell us not so much what the lower classes thought of the upper, as what the upper classes liked to think the lower classes thought of them” (p. 343).]
  10. Kretzschmar, William A., Jr. “Three Stories in Search of an Author: The Narrative Versions of Havelok.” Allegorica 5 (1980), 21–97. [Compares first 800 lines of Gaimar’s Estoire des Angleis (c. 1150) with the Lai d’Haveloc of the latter half of the twelfth century. Presents complete text and translation of the Lai.]
  11. Levine, Robert. “Who Composed Havelok for Whom?” Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), 95–104. [Rejects the characterization of the poem’s audience as lower class.]
  12. Liuzza, Roy Michael. “Representation and Readership in the ME Havelok.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994), 504–19. [Sees the catalogue of fish as part of a larger system of economic exchange.]
  13. McIntosh, Angus. “The Language of the Extant Versions of Havelok the Dane.” Medium Aevum 45 (1976), 36–49. [Disputes, by linguistic analysis, the scholarly presumption of Lincolnshire origin; instead, argues Norfolk influence.]
  14. Mills, Maldwyn. “Havelok’s Return.” Medium Aevum 45 (1976), 20–35. [Explores the return scene to shed light on the genesis and unity of the poem.]
  15. ———. “Havelok and the Brutal Fisherman.” Medium Aevum 36 (1967), 219–30. [Argues that Grim is not as good as he seems.]
  16. Pearsall, Derek. “John Capgrave’s Life of St. Katharine and Popular Romance Style.” Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1975), 121–37. [John Capgrave, a fifteenth-century Augustinian friar, knew and mimicked romance formulae found in Havelok in his Life of St. Katharine. The close thematic associations of hagiography and romance are textually manifest as well.]
  17. Purdon, Liam O. “The Rite of Vassalage in Havelok the Dane.” Medievalia et Humanistica 20 (1993), 25–39. [The rites solidifying the connection between a vassal and his feudal lord combine homage, fealty, and investiture with a fief. These rites, incomplete or bypassed, help to explain the motives and actions of characters in the romance.]
  18. ———. “‘Na Yaf He Nouth a Stra’ in Havelok.” Philological Quarterly 69 (1990), 377–83. [Argues that the feudal act of renunciation is suggested by the placement, repetition, and language of this particular expression.]
  19. Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. [A study of the Middle English romance with a chapter on the child exile story, comparing the characters of the king and traitors and the relation of heroes to heroines in Havelok and King Horn. Sees royalist sympathies and a concern for the rule of law in thirteenth-century England.]
  20. Reiss, Edmund. “Havelok the Dane and Norse Mythology.” Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966), 115–24. [Reveals Scandinavian mythological traces in several characters of the poem.]
  21. Scott, Anne. “Language as Convention, Language as Sociolect in Havelok the Dane.” Studies in Philology 89 (1992), 137–60. [Views formulaic style of Havelok as an expression of Havelok’s acquisition of “language” or “sociolect” appropriate for a king.]
  22. Smithers, G. V. “The Style of Havelok.” Medium Aevum 57 (1988), 190–218. [Meticulously detailed study of repetition, periphrasis, apostrophe, simile, hyperbole, and other devices, with comparisons to Anglo-Norman rhetorical practice on which these devices may have depended.]
  23. ———. “The Scansion of Havelok and the Use of ME -en and -e in Havelok and by Chaucer.” In Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday. Ed. Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. Pp. 195–234. [Preliminary study of versification for his 1987 edition.]
  24. ———. “Four Notes on Havelok.” In So Meny People, Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh. Ed. Michael Benskin and M. L. Samuels. Edinburgh: Middle English Dialect Project, 1981. Pp. 191–209. [Precedes his 1987 edition with a fuller discussion of certain textual cruces.]
  25. Staines, David. “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes.” Speculum 51 (1976), 602–23. [Argues that Havelok is a mirror for princes with implicit admonitions to treat the lower classes well and observe the rule of law. Sees a number of interesting parallels between Havelok and Edward I.]

Select Bibliography for Bevis of Hampton

Manuscripts

  1. Auchinleck MS, fols. 176–201.
  2. University Library, Cambridge Ff. 2.38.
  3. Caius College, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius 175.
  4. Royal Library, Naples, XIII, B 29.
  5. Duke of Sutherland (now Egerton 2862).
  6. Chetham Library, no. 8009, Manchester.
  7. Douce fragments, No. 19.
  8. Early printed text by Wynkyn de Worde.

Edition

  1. Kölbing, Eugen, ed. The Romance of Sir Beves of Hamtoun. EETS e.s. 46, 48, 65. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co., 1885–94, rpt. as 1 vol., 1973.

Related Studies

  1. Baldwin, Charles Sears. Three Medieval Centuries of Literature in England 1100–1400. New York: Phaeton Press, 1968. Pp. 109–12, 255–56. [Study of several genres in their historical contexts.]
  2. Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. London: Longman, 1987. [Though the analysis of Bevis is by no means extensive, references are useful in that they place the work in the larger context of a Middle English romance tradition.]
  3. Baugh, A. C. “The Making of Beves of Hampton.” Bibliographical Studies in Honor of Rudolf Hirsch. Ed. William E. Miller and Thomas G. Waldman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974. Pp. 15–37. [This study is important not only for the textual tradition of Bevis, but for its insights with respect to a Middle English romance tradition generally.]
  4. Bennett, J. A. W. Middle English Literature. Ed. Douglas Gray. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp. 91, 125–26, 194. [General information.]
  5. Brownrigg, Linda. “The Taymouth Hours and the Romance of Beves of Hampton.” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 1 (1989), 222–41. [Looks for stylistic similarities between Bevis and one of the outstanding contemporary examples of English MS illumi-nation.]
  6. Burrow, J. A. Essays on Medieval Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Pp. 63, 68, 107. [Argues Chaucer’s use of Bevis in Sir Thopas.]
  7. Jacobs, Nicolas. “Sir Degarré, Lay le Freine, Beves of Hamtoun, and the ‘Auchinleck Bookshop.’” Notes and Queries 227 (Aug. 1982), 294–301. [Demonstrates the interrelatedness of these Auchinleck romances. Draws parallels between the dragon fight in Degaré and that in Bevis.]
  8. Kane, George. Middle English Literature: A Critical Study of the Romances, the Religious Lyrics, Piers Plowman. London: Methuen, 1951. Pp. 10, 27, 46, 50–51, 58. [Situates Bevis in the romance tradition.]
  9. Kinghorn, A. M. The Chorus of History: Literary-Historical Relations in Renaissance Britain. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1971. Pp. 146–47. [Shows the popularity of Bevis in MS and printed editions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.]
  10. Loomis, Laura A. [Hibbard]. Mediæval Romance in England. London: Oxford University Press, 1924; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1960. [A comprehensive study of sources and analogues.]
  11. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. 211–21. [A good treatment of the structure of Bevis, despite a disconcerting and misleading tendency to call the work a novel.]
  12. Weiss, Judith. “The Major Interpolation in Sir Beues of Hamtoun.” Medium Aevum 48 (1979), 71–76. [Changes made to the Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone have the effect of “stamping the ineradicable basic Englishness of its hero firmly on our minds at the close of the romance” (p. 76).]

Select Bibliography for Athelston

Manuscript

  1. Caius College Library, Cambridge MS 175. Fols. 120r–31r. [The MS also contains Richard Coeur de Lyon, Sir Isumbras, the Life of St. Catherine, a short work entitled Matutinas de cruce, Beves of Hampton, and De Spiritu Gurydonis. Athelston appears before Beves of Hampton.]

Editions

  1. French, Walter Hoyt, and Charles Brockway Hale, eds. Middle English Metrical Romances. New York: Prentice Hall, 1930. Pp. 179–205.
  2. Hartshorne, C. H., ed. “King Athelstone.” In Ancient Metrical Tales. London: W. Pickering, 1829. Pp. 1–34.
  3. Hervey, Lord Francis, ed. Corolla Sancti Edmundi: The Garland of Saint Edmund King and Martyr. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1907. Pp. 525–55.
  4. Sands, Donald B., ed. Middle English Verse Romances. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966. Pp. 130–53.
  5. Trounce, A. McI., ed. Athelston: A Middle English Romance. EETS o.s. 224. London: Oxford University Press, 1951. [A critical edition, including comprehensive notes and introductory materials.]
  6. Wright, T., and J. O. Halliwell. Reliquiae Antiquae. Vol. 2. London: J. R. Smith, 1845. Pp. 85–103.
  7. Zupitza, J. “Die Romanze von Athelston.” Englische Studien 13 (1883), 331–414.

Translation

  1. Rickert, Edith. Early English Romances in Verse. The New Medieval Library. Vol. 8. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966. Pp. 67–85.

Related Studies

  1. Bennett, J. A. W. “Havelok; Gamelyn; Athelston; Sir Amadace; Libeaus Desconus.” In Middle English Literature. Ed. Douglas Gray. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp. 154–69.
  2. Beug, Kurt. “Die Sage von König Athelstan.” Archiv 148 (1925), 181–95. [Admits the relevance of the Queen Emma legend, but points to a historical Wymound, who was found guilty of simony by a Westminster council in 1102.]
  3. Dickerson, A. Inskip. “The Subplot of the Messenger in Athelston.” Papers on Language and Literature 12 (1976), 115–24. [An analysis of the importance of the messenger — intriguingly named Athelston — who provides a kind of moral center to the work, since he stands in contrast to his namesake Athelston the king, who is easily duped and not easily dissuaded from his folly. As a middle-class character, the messenger thus provides the focus for a middle-class audience critical of abuses of royal prerogatives and power.]
  4. Gerould, Gordon Hall. “Social and Historical Reminiscences in the Middle English Athelston.” Englische Studien 36 (1906), 193–208. [Argues that the historical reminiscence is to the famous dispute between Henry II and Thomas Becket, which ended in Becket’s death and his subsequent beatification. Becket’s cult was widespread by the fourteenth century.]
  5. Hibbard, Laura A. [Loomis]. “Athelston, A Westminster Legend.” PMLA 36 (1921), 223–44. [Argues that the source for the romance is the legendary Queen Emma and the Ploughshare, a story disseminated by monastic writers.]
  6. ———. Mediæval Romance in England. New York: Burt Franklin, 1960. Pp. 143–46. [Places Athelston among “legendary English heroes,” arguing a strong connection between the fictional hero and the historical Athelstan, King of England from 925–39, conqueror at the Battle of Brunanburh, and the “storied king for whom Guy of Warwick fought with the Danish giant Colbrand.”]
  7. Kiernan, Kevin S. “Athelston and the Rhyme of the English Romances.” Modern Language Quarterly 36 (1975), 338–53. [Focuses on the artistry of the tail-rhyme stanza and argues that irregularities in the stanzaic structure in Athelston are purposeful, deliberate attempts to marry form and content in the work. Concludes that the work is among the most closely knit of Middle English romances.]
  8. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. Pp. 146–52. [Places Athelston within the category of “homiletic romances,” and in an analysis which focuses on both the specific details of the romance and on short comparisons with a great many other works in Middle English, concludes that it is “one of the most impressive of the homiletic romances” (p. 152).]
  9. Pearsall, Derek. “The Development of Middle English Romances.” Medieval Studies 27 (1965), 91–116. [Discusses the “grammar” of romance: formal and literary conventions, social contexts, popular, non-courtly perspectives, and newly emergent bourgeois audience.]
  10. Pigg, Daniel. “The Implications of Realist Poetics in the Middle English Athelston.” English Language Notes 32 (1994), 1–8. [Considers the importance of realist — as opposed to nominalist — sign theory in relation to feudal monarchy. The Earl of Dover’s false accusations threaten both the realist understanding of sign and referent and the feudal institutions that such a system of signs upholds.]
  11. Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman. “The Female Body Politic and the Miscarriage of Justice in Athelston.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995), 79–98. [Argues that the poem attacks the tyranny of Richard II, but not monarchy itself; the poem may thus date as late as 1399. Furthermore, Athelston uses a female/maternal metaphor for the body politic itself, which becomes silenced within the romance.]
  12. Schmidt, A. V. C., and Nicholas Jacobs. Medieval English Romances, Part One. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980. Pp. 123–50. [General study of select romances.]
  13. Taylor, George. “Notes on Athelston.” Leeds SE 3 (1934), 24–25. [Challenges several emendations made by previous editors.]