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.

Chapters explain and model readings of word-choice, syntax, alliterative-verse metres & alliteration, alternating metres, rhyme, and stanza forms. Contextual chapters cover multilingualism and transnational links, manuscripts & editing, and the aural reception of Middle English poetry. In the first chapter, I lay out why I think we might want to care about Middle English in the first place!

All technical terms are explained at their first appearance, and defined in an indexed glossary. The glossary includes terms that others use, too, for interoperability.

I pay due attention to Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl-Poet, Gower, Lydgate, Laȝamon and so on, but also spend time on exciting anonymous poetry, poems by/for/about women, drama, prayers, romances, lyric… the lot.

Though it’s a teaching book first, How to Read also offered a rare chance to see the whole picture of English poetry from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. You’ll meet the odd new research finding woven into the account I offer.

Throughout, I wrote believing that Middle English poetry is exciting, challenging, fun, troubling, cool, weird, and necessary. Building on my occasional writing on, for example, Thom Gunn’s engagement with Middle English, I also fitted in a bunch of modern, present-day, and Old English poets, because Middle English isn’t isolated!

Having read the full typescript, Reader 1 called it ‘hugely helpful to students, both undergraduate and graduate’. Reader 1’s report finished with the words ‘this is an outstanding book, extraordinarily well researched (but wearing that research lightly), engaging, important, and just great.’ Reader 2 said the book is ‘comprehensive and beautifully organized’, ‘not only thorough and erudite but truly a delight to read’. Reader 2’s concluding summary: ‘I can think of no introduction to Middle English poetry that does anything like what Sawyer does here, and I expect his volume to be widely adopted.’ I am very grateful to both readers, not just for their encouragement and enthusiasm but also for generous corrections and suggestions which’ve further strengthened the book!

I wrote How to Read Middle English Poetry through chronic illness and covid. I hope it’ll serve as a little legacy of helpfulness, even if I never find a lasting place in academia. When the book comes out, please make a library buy it, and/or buy a copy yourself. And when it comes out, please tell students about it!