Medieval Veeky Forums

Check these out. Most are a bit modernised. Þ, ȝ, and the other signs used in ME are rendered into modernised spelling. Þ being 'th' and stuff like that... They are also annotated.
d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text-online

Who /Beowulf/ in this thread?

I can barely recognise few words in Old English.

Ye olde Infynyte Ieste is parhaps what ye seeketh in bokes en sooch.

Fuck, this just gave me a hard-on.

What is wrong with me?

To be fair, it must not be something user shows to strangers...

Anyone into Spanish (including Catalan) medieval literature? I just read Don Quijote, the chronicles of Pero López de Ayala, Amadís de Gaula and Tirant lo Blanc. Very nice.

Don Quijote is not medieval.

Read El Cantar de Mio Cid.

Actually, that photo is a bit outdated. I haven't finished resorting my books since the move, but I have more TEAMS works now (great original texts, fully glossed).

Oh yeah I forgot to add that one to the list. Do you recommend anything else?

Cantar de Roldán, perhaps.

I thought that was French?

That's going on my "to find" list. Okay, here's my current medieval and related books, for those who like them.
1/6

2/6 Arthurian books.

3/6

4/6 Dante

5/6 Beowulf, etc.

6/6 Chaucer. There's a few more around, but that's certainly most of them in my collection.

Who here is into Icelandic Family Sagas? Read about 10 in the past few weeks, super good.

For someone who has never read any medieval lit, how does one get into it? Is there any literature I should be familiar with beforehand or any "entry level" books for medieval?

Start with La Chanson de Roland and then keep going with Chrétien's arthurian romances. Maybe throw in Tristan & Iseult (which surprises me because no pictures has it in it, yet I can see Wolfram's Parzival.)

just to add on to that question, (and it may seem ignorant) is it worth getting into medieval literature? what is it that people like about it? how does it affect your relationship with the language?

Personally, I'd read a few easier ones first, rather than jumping right into Piers or the Pearl-poet. Morte d'Arthur is a great saga and quite readable in original, and if you don't mind translations, de Troyes, Breton lays, and Froissart are solid. Then you can appreciate Chaucer and Pearl-poet better, and get into weirder things.

I just enjoy reading about medieval adventures and courteous love, with a clear hint on how vital christianism was viewed back then.

Just read the original old French when you can, it's very similar to old English.

Honestly, just read Dante and Chaucer. Most of Medieval literature is simplistic and formulaic (obsessed with banal allegory), it's not until Dante comes along and inaugurates a sophisticated literary tradition (which Chaucer, Boccacio etc. pick up) that what people are writing develops past tedious romances and devotional works.

Do you have a good edition of Chaucer that you'd recommend (aside from the Riverside, which I already own).

I have these two editions of Canterbury and Troilus & Cressida. They're printed with an approximation of Chaucer's original language with copious notes explaining the language and references. Something I'd expect from a more academic textbook; but even then most of them are modernized texts. My old English professor from university said that you lost something of Chaucer's power in the "translations."

Also, are those Cambridge and Broadview companions good supplemental material, or are they better for more general readers?

That Broadview Chaucer (the blue spine one) is excellent. Instead of using multiple source manuscript sources (as most do, in order to be as complete as possible in terms of extant tales), it just gives a complete copy of the Ellesmere manuscript, with nice supplementary material from/about his era.

Thanks. I'd never actually read into the publishing/academic history of the text. I guess it would be too convenient to have the whole text survive in one piece across the centuries.

The blue and red Broadviews are mostly Tales, with some supplementary work. The Companion to Chaucer and his Contemporaries is one of the most useful books I've seen, though. It covers Chaucer's world and how the medieval mind experienced life by splitting essays and extracts from primary texts up into these chapters:
1. Politics and Ideology
2. The Structure of Society
3. Daily Life in Medieval England
4. Religious Life, Ritual, and Prayer.
5. War, Pageantry, and the Knighthood.
6. Reading, Literacy, and Education.
7. Science, Medicine, Psychology, and Alchemy.
8. International Influences and Exchanges.
If you've read the Tales once and plan to visit them again, read the Companion first or alongside--unless you're already an expert on the period.

Definitely, and there remain 83 manuscripts of varying completeness. Remember that the work is far from complete, though: In the General Prologue, some thirty pilgrims are introduced. According to the Prologue, Chaucer's intention was to write two stories from the perspective of each pilgrim on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine (making for a total of four stories per pilgrim, or roughly 120 stories). He only finished (or at least, we only have) 24. It was insanely ambitious, and he died before it got anywhere near done.

Thanks for that. I recently reread Tristram Shandy and, in wanting to reread Rabelais, I ended up going all the way back to Chaucer and Boccaccio. I'll definitely look into those books.

The Editorial Akal has some very good editions on medieval and golden century poetry.

Halal af senpai

Karel ende Elegast is absolute shite mate

Thanks for posting these.
Which ones have you been reading?

I'd like to get into medieval books. have yet to read canterbury tales but care to recommend me some others?

Well, it depends on your taste. Marie de France's Breton lais are quick studies of courtly and not-so-courtly love, including a werewolf story (Bisclaveret). The Pearl-poet is quite profound, especially when you get into his non-Gawain work, but it's not the kind of theological musing that interests everyone. If you want a foundational text for the middle ages, it's Boethius, even before Dante. Chretien de Troyes and Malory are the prime Arthurian romances.
If Christian mystics are your thing, you can read Julian of Norwich and The Cloud of Unknowing to see how it should be done (and maybe Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias), and then Margery Kempe's hilarious autobiography to see how a crazy fraud uses the power of self-delusion to break out of her life and do whatever the hell she wants. Siege of Jerusalem is crude, bloody, anti-Muslim propaganda, but entertaining for sheer excess. Other romances like King Horn and Havelok are fun in the Arthurian style, and shorter allegorical pieces like the Owl and the Nightengale, The Floure and the Leafe, The Assemblie of Ladies, and The Isle of Ladies are useful looks at how the courtly allegory worked.

Upweards

The Penguin Classics Canterbury Tales is surprisingly good. I'd put it on par with The Riverside newspaper :^)

There are some plays from the cycles that are pretty fun. Secunda Pastorum (The Second Shepherds' Play) was pretty dank desu.
It's not just romances in ME.

Thanks man, i'll check it out. probably gonna start with the canterbury tales and then the song of roland, since when i replied i didn't read the rest of the thread but that book peaked my interest.

When i was in london last week, besides buying loads of classic for cheap (Britain's got the cheapest books) i found this book (pic) which looked quite interesting. anyone read it?

I'm more interested in Manuscript Miniatures actually (have some 800 saved on pinterest), anyone know of a good book about that? I already have like a small book of hours which is quite cool

It would be better to read CT after reading some earlier ME works. Something from the Gawain poet at least.

There are several good books about illumination/miniatures out there, but I'd have to go look at my shelves. Incidentally, the expression is "piqued my interest." It's a very common slip. Here's an original manuscript page I have.

Actually "peaked my interest" is your choice of: a retro-verbization of the renominalized "peak"; or a simple alternative, transitive re-verbization of the noun "peak"; which irregardless is to say that it is the equivalent, with the standard definition of "peak" as verb, to the expression "made my interest peak". It's figuratively a lexical blend and not a slip, doggy diamonds etc.

It's a modern mistake based on a homophone, and "irregardless" is a redundant word.

D E C A M E R O N

Yeah old English is pretty different. It's what the Anglo Saxon spoke before the Normans, so there's no Latin influence yet. If you spoke German you might pick up a few words but not much

I just started reading Röde Orm today. I've been åretty interested for a while, partly because it's one of only like three books that are often suggested for a national literary cannon that aren't set in "present day" or are otherwise fantastical in their story. After this I'm gonna find Aniara.

But I like it quite a bit so far. It's a little alienating when it's written in 1950s swedish trying to mimic viking-age swedish, but the text tells a very engaging tale. Even when it just reads like historical facts, it just makes me want to know more.

So it's something in the vein of pic related then?

>The story where the gardener at the nunnery pretend he's dumb so all the nuns fuck him.

>the story where the husband doesn't want anymore kids so he gets his servant to interrupt him before climax allowing him to pull out without sinning

>the story where the man is impotent so pretend to his wife he is religious and observes all the saints days so he isn't face with his own sexual failure and she gets kidnapped by a pirate who gives her the D

Remember the one about that North African girl ( I can't recall from exactly where she was; Barbary coast IIRC ) that wanted to serve God only to wind up in a hut of a hermit that ended up fucking her because he told that her pussy is hell and that his erect dicc the devil that needs to be driven back to hell?

W E W

I've read Beowulf, Táin Bó Cuailnge and a load of other Irish lit and some medieval poetry. I'm about half way through The Divine Comedy and I bought Decameron the other day.

Translated half the poem in my OE class last year. This year I'm taking Chaucer and Medieval Lit (excluding Chaucer) and I can't wait

>The story where the jew gets converted into becoming a christian after going to rome and realizing even with the corruption how glorious christianity must be for everyone to keep converting

mein got, censor it!

Remember Sir Chapeletto ( I think that is how you spell his name )?

Sounds good, recommended translation/version?

I read this in english and it was easily the most enjoyable book I read this year so far

I read it in Latvian, can't help with English translations at all.

I just read the free kindle version from Amazon. Seemed ok to me

don't have an e-reader. i want to look smart

bump

Update on my (OP) progress with Sir Gawain.
This shit's tough.

Not using a translation for help?

...

No. However, the edition I have is heavily annotated and has modernised the spelling of the old letters (Þ, ȝ, etc.).
The notes are very helpful but it's a laborous task to pay attention to all of them; though you must. The language is difficult in various ways. One being that Northerners (it is written in Northern Midlands dialect) used different spelling at times. For example, the first word in Sir Gawain is 'SiÞen' (following, afterwards, then) or 'Sithen' (that's the modernised spelling). In other ME texts I had seen it as 'sethen' When I first saw 'sithen' it didn't occur to me that it was the same word. What is more, in this Northern dialect they have different verb endings -es, -ande (PrP) which differ from the -th and others used by the Southern authors.

In this edition (Penguin Classics' The Works of the Gawain Poet from 2014) on few occasions when the meaning of a sentence is difficult to decode from annotating the words alone, the authors have translated the whole sentence instead of annotating the words seperately as they do for almost all the words on the page; and you have to go to the glossary to check which word is which if there are few you can't recognise.

I am paying so much attention to all the words since next semester I'll be studying History of the English Language and the semester after that Historical Linguistics. I am reading Sir Gawain and the other ME texts for my ME literature classes but I'm paying that much attention to each word because of the linguistic classes. The exams for them usually consist of tracing sound changes, commenting on changes of meaning, translating ME texts...

Nonetheless, the 193 page glossary, and the 130 pages of notes for Sir Gawain alone make it a pretty self-sufficient volume.
I will proceed with it tomorrow.

I remember when I started Piers Polowman and gave up after the Prologue. It seems much easier now.

>pic related is from Sir Gawain
l.132 is one example where they have translated the whole sentence and I had to go back to the glossary to see which word meant 'quickly' and which 'aproached'

Yep, that Pearl-poet dialogue is a bastard. At least it makes Chaucer seem easy! Remember, reading it out loud often helps, especially if you try to pronounce the words wrong--i.e. as per their nearest modern equivalent, rather than as the word would have been pronounced back pre-vowel shifts.

Just pretend you're a Cornish farmer.

I usually only do that during sex, but okay.

I read it with Merwin's, which translates it whole next to the original. You actually guess at and get used to the old letters easily enough, they're not much of a bother, but I had the same problem with identifying single elements in the most difficult sentences using the fully translated verses. It was my understanding that several of those passages with obscure expressions required interpretative leaps anyway, adding to the confusion...
>Northerners (it is written in Northern Midlands dialect) used different spelling at times
Sometimes different spellings of a same word too, though that's common in ME texts.

I liked Raffel's introduction, which if you don't have time to read secondary material on Gawain does a good job of placing it in context (his translation itself is the usual mixed bag of brilliant ideas, excessive liberties and disagreeable choices, and of no use in understanding the language)

Perhaps the biggest issue would 'ȝ'. It may stand for 'gh' 'w' 's' 'y'.

I love Old Norse/Old English lit. Volsunga, Egil's and Njal's are the GOAT sagas. Also fond of the Eddas and Beowulf.

>neigh
Not too hard a guess desu

reading the canterbury tales cause i cheated when it was assigned reading in hs

I don't get it. Why don't you read italian if you like it so much? It's definitely worth the trouble and it isn't a hard language to learn.

Should I read The Canterbury Tales in Canterbury?

Only after you get used to such constructions. I am working on it.

Dante's 14th-century Tuscan dialect isn't modern Italian, and it's not that easy to just pick up. That's like asking someone who doesn't know any English why they don't just learn English to read Shakespeare.

Show me your Medieval readings soundtrack, Veeky Forums.

youtube.com/watch?v=2lw8nH6dQIo
youtube.com/watch?v=15BN6dhh9aw
youtube.com/watch?v=rxlwCTOuTSs
youtube.com/watch?v=NPDCsi1mbhE
youtube.com/watch?v=XgjZxQLiv7k
youtube.com/watch?v=9ti59NdbG1c
youtube.com/watch?v=xaRNvJLKP1E

Ditto

Is his Tuscan readable if you know 14th-c French or did he deliberately avoid leaning that way

bump

As an Italian I'm pretty sure it isn't but feel free to give it a try.

Seriously, 300 lines into Sir Gawain and the poet has used at least 10 different words that mean 'man'

>that freke fell for The Gome

>that hathel fell for the schalk

> tfw taken two classes on Chaucer and English medieval lit

Though I feel I'm at the end of the good material in English before 1600 now. And I mean I have read a lot of it. To the point of reading some middle english epic poems that maybe 5 people alive have read today (Cursor Mundi)

I started reading some Norman romances in the original (with some dictionary help, I only know modern french) but those seem kinda lame so far. Only good poetry I've found from that region and time so far have been the Troubadours.

Can anyone rec me some obscure chanson de geste/cantar de gesta?
Or maybe even some essays about the genre.

The Voyage of Saint Brendan is fantastic