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The Middle Ages section of Norton
Topics Online includes topic clusters
on Medieval Estates and Orders, King Arthur,
and The First Crusade. The texts and images
gathered here shed light on how people in
medieval Britain understood the relationship
between the various orders of society, between
the present and the legendary past, and between
Christians and those branded as infidels.
Suggested uses of Norton
Topics Online: The Middle Ages with The
Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Seventh Edition (anthology page references
for the new Seventh Edition are included below):
Medieval Estates and Orders:
Making and Breaking Rules
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Geoffrey Chaucer,
The Canterbury Tales |
NAEL7.1.213 |
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especially The
General Prologue |
NAEL7.1.215 |
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The Wife of Bath's
Prologue |
NAEL7.1.253 |
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and the Nun's
Priest's Tale |
NAEL7.1.296 |
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Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery
Kempe |
NAEL7.1.367 |
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Julian of Norwich,
A Book of Showings to the Anchoress
Julian of Norwich |
NAEL7.1.356 |
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The Dream of the Rood |
NAEL7 |
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William Langland,
Piers Plowman |
NAEL7.1.319 |
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Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene |
NAEL7.1.622 |
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Medieval Estates
and Orders: Making and Breaking Rules offers
insights into the complex and contested
social structure of medieval Britain through
texts ranging from monastic rules to records
of rebellion. This cluster will be especially
helpful to readers of Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, allowing us to understand Chaucer
in the context of the late-medieval genre
of estates satire. We are introduced to
the "Old Woman" from the Romance
of the Rose, whom Chaucer reinvented
as the Wife of Bath, and to contemporary
accounts of the Uprising of 1381, which
lies in the background of the Nun's
Priest Tale. The selections relating
to women in and outside of religious orders
add to our knowledge of the lives of medieval
women such as Julian of Norwich and Margery
Kempe, while those dealing with the image
of the Christian warrior will enrich readings
of texts ranging from The Dream of the
Rood to Piers Plowman. Students
studying later literary periods will have
an opportunity to contrast the images of
holiness, hypocrisy, and knighthood found
here with those in Spenser's Faerie
Queene, and to compare a medieval rebellion
with the seventeenth-century English Revolution.
Arthur and Gawain: Making Romance
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Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight |
NAEL7.1.156 |
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Sir Thomas Malory, Morte Darthur |
NAEL7.1.421 |
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Geoffrey Chaucer,
The Wife of Bath's Tale |
NAEL7.1.272 |
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Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene |
NAEL7.1.622 |
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Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, The Idylls of the King |
NAEL7.2.1282 |
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and The Lady
of Shalott |
NAEL7.2.1204 |
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William Morris, The Defense of
Guenevere |
NAEL7.2.1606 |
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Arthur and Gawain: Making Romance focuses on the legendary king who was at once an international figure
and claimed as a hero by more than one
medieval nation. The texts and images collected
here will supplement the section Legendary
Histories of Britain in the Norton
Anthology, as well as providing a rich
context for readings of Sir Gawain and
the Green Knight, Malory's Morte
Darthur, and Chaucer's Wife
of Bath's Tale. This cluster also
offers an excellent starting point for
students wishing to explore the later Arthurian
tradition, exemplified in Spenser's Faerie
Queene, Tennyson's Idylls of
the King and The Lady of Shalott,
and William Morris's The Defense
of Guenevere.
The First Crusade: Sanctifying
War
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Geoffrey Chaucer,
The Canterbury Tales (especially
The General Prologue) |
NAEL7.1.215 |
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William Langland, Piers Plowman |
NAEL7.1.319 |
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Margery Kempe,
The Book of Margery Kempe |
NAEL7.1.367 |
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Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene |
NAEL7.1.622 |
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John Bunyan,
The Pilgrim's Progress |
NAEL7.1.2141 |
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John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel |
NAEL7.1.2079 |
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William Blake,
And did those feet |
NAEL7.2.85 |
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The First
Crusade: Sanctifying War offers a range
of contemporary perspectives on an event
which profoundly affected the history of
Christian Europe and the Middle East. The
texts gathered here present the image of
Jerusalem and the idea of pilgrimage in
medieval thought, providing crucial contexts
for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
Langland's Piers Plowman, and The
Book of Margery Kempe. This section
also offers a valuable background to later
imaginings of the pilgrim and Jerusalem
by writers ranging from Edmund Spenser
to William Blake. The harsh depiction of
the realities of medieval warfare included
here provide an instructive contrast to
the conventions of chivalric literature
and Arthurian romance, and the accounts
of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan and Ibn Al-Athir
offer an alternative view of the crusade
from the standpoint of its victims.
The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf
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Bede, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People |
NAEL7.1.23 |
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The Dream of the Rood |
NAEL7.1.26 |
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Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney |
NAEL7.1.29 |
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The Wanderer |
NAEL7.1.99 |
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The Wife's Lament |
NAEL7.1.102 |
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The Battle of the Maldon |
NAEL7.1.103 |
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The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf allows students to see Beowulf and its place in literary history in the context of early Germanic literature. There was little known about these contexts before nineteenth-century philologists, editors, and translators, eager to establish their native traditions, made the poem available once more. Beowulf thus became a major text in a European revival of ancient Germanic literature, which includes, besides Anglo-Saxon, works in Old Saxon, Old and Middle High German, and Old Icelandic. This topic provides excerpts from several of these works, which illuminate the world of Beowulf and its pagan characters as well as its Christian poet and his original audience.
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