Findern Manuscript: A New Edition of the Unique Poems (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781789622416)

The Findern Manuscript (Cambridge University Library, Ff.1.6): A New Edition of the Unique Poems is the first critical edition of the thirty-four unique and unattributed Middle English poems contained in Cambridge, University Library MS Ff.1.6. This collection of unique poems is significant for its size and thematic coherence, and for the insight it provides into regional literary culture, that of south Derbyshire, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The poems, mainly short lyric texts, but also the narrative poem, The Parliament of Love, two topical complaints, and a romance known as the 'Alexander-Cassamus Fragment', are significant for the evidence they provide for creative responses to the metropolitan literature of previous generations, especially to the works of Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and Lydgate, some of which are also anthologized in the manuscript. The poems explore a range of amatory, religious and philosophical themes in a variety of lyric forms and
genres. Their anonymity and experimentation with lyric voice and style make them an important site for exploring the contribution of women, as well as men, to late medieval regional literary culture.


Author: Joanna Martin
ISBN-10: 1789622417
ISBN-13: 9781789622416
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/30/2020
Pages: 176
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 0.70d

About the Author

Joanna Martin is Associate Professor of Middle English and Older Scots, School of English, University of Nottingham. Her previous books include (with Emily Wingfield) Pre-Modern Scotland, Literature and Governance, 1420-1587 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Maitland Quarto Manuscript: A New Edition of Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 1408 (Boydell and Brewer, 2015).