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Middle English Breton Lays

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Breton literature
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lays
Marie de France
women writers

Product details

  • ISBN 9781879288621
  • Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
  • Publication Date: 01 Nov 1995
  • Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

Written approximately between 1150 and 1450, the Middle English Breton Lays emulate the Lais of Marie de France, regarded as one of the first female writers to compose poetry in her own vernacular language. Following the lai genre, these Middle English poems are short, rhymed narratives of love, marriage, and chivalry, often involving encounters with fairies and other Celtic supernatural figures. Each of the eight poems in this volume—Sir Orfeo, Lay le Freine, Sir Degare, Emare, Sir Launfal, Sir Gowther, Erle of Tolous, and Sir Cleges—reveal differences in dialect that showcase the complexity of the Breton Lay genre as representative of different English regional areas and manuscripts, and the overarching themes of each lay offer insights into medieval English family values, interpersonal morals, and romantic ideals. This edition improves upon its predecessors by furnishing introductory readers with detailed introductory statements and notes for each of the lays.
About
Anne Laskaya is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon. Eve Salisbury is Professor of English at Western Michigan University where she teaches the works of late medieval poets—Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Gower, Christine de Pizan, and Marie de France—Middle English and Arthurian literature, Medieval Literary Theory, British Literature I, and Medieval Drama. She has also taught a graduate seminar on medieval marriage at the Newberry Library in Chicago.