Troy Book


Book Description

To introduce John Lydgate's landmark poem the Troy Book to students and non-specialist readers, the editor has selected the essential passages from the poem and bridges any gaps with textual summaries. Also included are an introduction, gloss, notes, and a glossary. John Lydgate, a monk of the great Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, began composing the poem, an ambitious attempt at recounting the Trojan War in Middle English, in October 1412 on commission from Henry, Prince of Wales (later King Henry V), and completed it in 1420. The poem is an interesting study for those interested in medieval approaches to classical sources, as well as for its often contradictory and complicated take on contemporary chivalry.




John Lydgate


Book Description

Originally published in 1970, John Lydgate sets out to restore a sense of perspective to the work of Lydgate, not by attributing a spurious modernity as a precursor of the Renaissance, but by accepting the fact that he is fundamentally medieval. The book analyses Lydgate’s background in literary tradition and compares this with Chaucer’s work. The book looks at Lydgate as a professional craftsman and examines how his work adapted to the demands and occasions of his age. Without over-valuing the poetry, this approach makes it possible to discriminate with increased objectivity between the more and less worthwhile and to distinguish the unexpectedly large number of poems in which craftsman-like competence rises to rhetorical artistry of a high order. In accepting Lydgate as the epitome of his age, the book also provides a diagram of the medieval poetic mind in its basic form and suggests the usefulness of Lydgate as a source book for the understanding of medieval literature.




The Orphic Argonautica


Book Description







Error in Shakespeare


Book Description

The traditional view of Shakespeare’s mastery of the English language is alive and well today. This is an effect of the eighteenth-century canonisation of his works, and subsequently Shakespeare has come to be perceived as the owner of the vernacular. These entrenched attitudes prevent us from seeing the actual substance of the text, and the various types of error that it contains and even constitute it. This book argues that we need to attend to error to interpret Shakespeare’s disputed material text, political-dramatic interventions and famous literariness. The consequences of ignoring error are especially significant in the study of Shakespeare, as he mobilises the rebellious, marginal, and digressive potential of error in the creation of literary drama.







The Seege of Troye


Book Description




The Trojan Mirror


Book Description

The book examines four Middle English narratives of the Trojan War as examples of the medieval appropriations of classical history and classical narrative traditions as a discourse related to issues of contemporary politics and morality. The medieval stories of the fall of Troy are viewed as educational texts offering advice on moral and political conduct related in their aims to the genre of the medieval speculum. Four major verse narratives of the history of the Trojan War composed in Middle English at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century are discussed: the anonymous Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, the Laud Troy Book, the Seege of Troye and John Lydgate's Troy Book.




The Fall of Princes


Book Description

“A heart-wrenching, beautiful, darkly comic, deeply necessary tale that stuns again and again with razor-sharp prose and glittering wit. Robert Goolrick is, without question, one of the greatest storytellers of our time.” —Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife In the spellbinding new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Goolrick, 1980s Manhattan shimmers like the mirage it was, as money, power, and invincibility seduce a group of young Wall Street turks. Together they reach the pinnacle, achieving the kind of wealth that grants them access to anything--and anyone. Until, one by one, they fall. Goolrick’s literary chops are on full display, painting an authentic portrait of a hedonistic era, tense and stylish, perfectly mixing adrenaline and melancholy. Stunning in its acute observations about great wealth and its absence, and deeply moving in its depiction of the ways in which these men learn to cope with both extremes, it’s a true tour de force. “An addictive slice of semiautobiographical fiction . . . Goolrick vividly plumbs the depths of fortune and regret. The result is a compulsively readable examination of the highs and lows of life in the big city.” —Publishers Weekly “A compelling, wholly seductive narrative voice . . . Goolrick’s stellar prose infuses this redemption story with a good deal of depth and despair, making it read like the literary version of The Wolf of Wall Street.” —Booklist “A dark, intoxicating morality tale . . . With his impeccable prose, Goolrick focuses his unflinching eye on the grittiness beneath the sleek facade of nightclubs, fashion, and monied Manhattan extravagance. Beautifully crafted, seductive, and provocative.” —Garth Stein, author of A Sudden Light and The Art of Racing in the Rain