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Category: publication

Book contract: How to Read Middle English Poetry

I have just signed the contract for my second book, How to Read Middle English Poetry, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

How to Read explains, in clear, student-friendly terms, how to find, understand, and analyse English poetry 1150–1500, for study or pleasure. I built the book to be useful even if you don’t have a great library or anthology to hand. Where possible, the discussion uses poetry in the fine TEAMS-METS series, which all have stable print forms, but can be read for free online.

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Published: Verse-Craft, Editing, and the Work

The unbeginning of Orfeo in one copy: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 19.2.1, f. 300r.

The Review of English Studies has just published my latest article, ‘Verse-Craft, Editing, and the Work: Shadows of Orfeo‘. In it, I explore what potential the concept of the work has to help us in understanding early English material which exists in multiple witnesses, using Orfeo as my example and attention to the craft of verse as my method.

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Pearl and Thom Gunn’s ‘Lament’

Pearl ll. 1165–70, as they appear in the sole surviving copy: London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x, f. 55r.
Pearl ll. 1165–70, as they appear in the sole surviving copy: London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x, f. 55r.

I don’t normally find myself writing about Thom Gunn’s poetry. But I like Gunn, and while reading The Man with Night Sweats earlier this year I stumbled on a passage in ‘Lament’ which sounded insistently like the end of Pearl.

Could this be an allusion, or was my mind merely seeing Pearl everywhere? I tweeted, and friends agreed that there might be a there there. Looking more closely, I realised that ‘Lament’ displays some formal resemblances to Pearl too. It was time to write a note.

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