Medieval Literature

What ideas led to the chivalric ideal? Was St. Augustine a Platonist? Why exactly should children not read Chaucer's The Miller's Tale? Is Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as violent as the movies make it seem?

The more distance is established between the Middle Ages and our own, the more mysterious they become. It's easy to think the world then was more earthy, more full of life, more dark, more violent, more perverse than the world today, or maybe even more Christian, closer to the reality of things, a better place to raise kids.

Why is it so easy to transpose a mythic or legendary status on former historical periods? in particular, why the Medieval period? They aren't called (inaccurately) the Dark Ages because we don't know anything about them—why do we treat them as if they are? Is it because so much of the literature reflects a mystical or fantastical imagination? Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Mabinogian are all highly symbolic and wrapped in chimerical invention, and the common response is to assume the Middle Ages themselves were similarly cloaked.

While some crazy historian might try to actually affirm that they were, the truth is a bit more reassuring, if more mundane. People haven't changed a whole lot since the days of knights and castles and Crusades; just as we are better able to apprehend certain truths when they're presented in fairy tale terms, so too the Medieval writers understood their readers (or hearers) needed something more material to grasp if they were going to get the spiritual and philosophical truths behind the pretense.

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy with four levels of interpretation in mind—the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. Any great work of literature can obviously be enjoyed at face value—how the author uses the language, how he presents a scene and conveys a sense of characterization, etc. This is the level on which nearly everyone can enjoy literature.

The allegorical level is that which presents a hidden truth in plain language. For instance, Dante might be writing about a forest, but that forest represents the author's own spiritual confusion at the time of writing. The moral interpretive level is a jump back to the obvious; writers need to be sure to include direct moral exhortation and reproof for the benefit of their audience.

Modern writers still have one or all of these interpretive levels in mind when composing their work (except, perhaps, the author of a text message, especially if that author happens to be a teenager). Dante's final (and for him, most important) interpretive consideration has fallen largely out of use; some theorize the anagogical mode was never successfully employed. Readers of the Bible and the Divine Comedy would have to disagree—the anagogical mode is acheived when even the literal elements of the story are such that spiritual or divine truths are expressed. Easy to confuse with the allegorical, the anagogical mode is distinct and extremely difficult to manage, even for most great writers.

Medieval audiences would have understood all these forces at work in the composition of any work, especially the Classically educated who were most likely to be reading anything at all. If we transpose our own modern and postmodern sensibilities on Medieval literature, it will seem boring, weird, slightly insane, perhaps even heretical.

If, however, we learn to read Medieval literature as its original audience would have, we'll discover one of the most vibrant and fascinating eras in the history of the written word. Because its authors didn't feel like they needed to make everything they wrote "entertaining," it often became so on its own due to the passion and clarity of expression with which they wrote. It also made everything they wrote something apprehendable and worthy of contemplation, a trait sadly lacking in much modern fare.

Our Medieval literature section is a little smaller than we'd like. Partly, this is because many Medieval texts are hard to come by. Partly, too, it's because by comparison much more was written in the centuries following the Renaissance (which signaled the end of the Middle Ages) than in the centuries before. At least, that we know of. Bear with us as we expand our selection, and in the meantime experience the grandeur of Medieval literature, not as we think or assume it must have been, but as it really was.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
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24 Items found Print
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Beowulf
by Anonymous (translation by Frederick Rebsamen)
from HarperCollins
Medieval Poetic Epic for 8th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
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Beowulf the Warrior - Student Guide
by David M. Wright
2nd edition from Memoria Press
for 8th-9th grade
in Memoria Press Literature & Poetry (Location: LITSG-MP)
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Canterbury Quintet
by Geoffrey Chaucer
from Little Leaf Press
for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$8.50 (1 in stock)
Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by Kolve V.A. & Glending Olson)
2nd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$11.90 (1 in stock)
Condition of Creatures
by Georgia Ronan Crampton
from Yale University Press
for Adult
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Everyman and Other Miracle and Morality Plays
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by Anonymous
from Dover Publications
Medieval Drama for 9th-Adult
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Everyman: A Morality Play
by Anonymous
from Samuel French
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Five Sons of King Pandu
by Elizabeth Seeger
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Greenleaf Guide to Medieval Literature
by Cynthia Shearer
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for 10th-12th grade
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History of the Kings of Britain
Penguin Classics
by Geoffrey of Monmouth
from Penguin Classics
Historical Fairy Tale for 10th-12th grade
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
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Imitation of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis
from Dover Publications
Devotional Material for 10th-Adult
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Imitation of Christ
by Thomas a Kempis
from Hendrickson Publishers
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Imitation of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis
from Whitaker House
Devotional Material for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
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La Vita Nuova
by Dante Alighieri
from Dover Publications
Medieval Poetry for 10th-Adult
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Letters of Abelard and Heloise
by Peter Abelard, Heloise
Revised from Penguin Putnam
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Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (abridged)
by Sir Thomas Mallory, illustrated by Arthur Rackham
from Weathervane Books
for 7th-12th grade
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$12.00 (1 in stock)
Saga of the Volsungs
by Anonymous, Jesse L. Byock
from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
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$16.00 $8.00 (1 in stock)
Selected Canterbury Tales
Dover Thrift Editions
by Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by J. U. Nicolson)
from Dover Publications
for 10th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by Anonymous, translated by Jessie Weston
2nd edition from Dover Publications
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by Anonymous, translated by Burton Raffel
Reprint from Signet Classics
for 9th-Adult
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
by Anonymous, translated by Jessie L. Weston
from Dover Publications
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Song of the Cid
by Anonymous
Dual Language from Penguin Classics
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The Koran
by Anonymous
Revised from Penguin Classics
for 10th-Adult
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Vinland Sagas
by Anonymous
from Penguin Classics
for 11th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$4.00 (1 in stock)