Contents

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Historical Overview
• Literary Overview
• Sample Reading : Ancrene Wisse
• Reference

Chapter 1 also includes detailed readings of the following literary texts:

• The Battle of Maldon
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• The Towneley Second Shepherds' Play (Secunda Pastorum)

Suggested essay questions

• Translation of texts lies at the core of medieval intellectual culture. Think of as many examples as you can in the period you are studying, particularly of literary texts, taking note of the source languages. What effect does the centrality of translation have on our understanding of artistic originality?
• From Beowulf and romance knights to the historical realities of war and the ideology of the second estate, the armed male appears constantly in medieval literature and culture. Are women always marginal in relation to the armed male? Consider your selected texts and discuss the relationship between women, men, and battle.
• Most of the population of medieval England (and this is particularly true of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries) rarely or never moved outside the vicinity of where they were born. Yet the period is full of people on the move-pilgrims, itinerant preachers, kings and their courts in progress around the country, armies off to fight, merchants, heroes in search of fame, exiles, travelling judges, and so on. How important to the meaning of your selected texts is travel and the encounter with the foreign?
• Consider the number and significance of the references to money in the late medieval texts, the Book of Margery Kempe and Piers Plowman. To what extent does money shape relationships between people?