Chaucer’s literary imagination is fuelled by a highly mediated and contextualised access to his classical sources, almost always supported by, filtered through, or read against the vernacular works of European contemporaries. He is a cultural synapse between Latin literature and the vernaculars of medieval Europe. Chaucer’s classical knowledge was a bricolage made up of direct knowledge of some Latin works (especially those of Ovid and Virgil); some knowledge of Latin works supported by translations or commentaries in the European vernaculars in which he was comfortable, especially French and Italian; and some knowledge of vernacular reworkings of earlier Latin materials which he was able to finesse and nuance by referring back to the Latin originals. Throughout the House of Fame, a key text for his literary self-awareness, Chaucer imaginatively explores his own understanding of, and relationship to, antecedent literature, and particularly to the literature of Latin antiquity as it had survived into his lifetime.

In one of his last completed poems, the 1527 Replication against Certain Young Scholars late Abjured, John Skelton claims for himself Davidic authority for the divine frenzy that urges him to argue against the misplaced motivation of the ‘frenetykes’, ‘lunatykes’, ‘sysmatykes’, ‘heretykes’ who have opposed him, citing Psalm 74.5: ‘dixi inique agentibus nolite inique agere et impiis nolite exaltare cornu’[‘I said to the wicked: Do not act wickedly: and to the sinners: Lift not up the horn’]. By preaching openly throughout East Anglia, Hertfordshire and London, the Lutherans Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur had lifted up the horn of heresy. Skelton felt impelled to reply, but in so doing found himself defending not only clerical orthodoxy and sound learning, but also his own calling as a poet. Skelton is defending himself against two main charges. The first invokes the assertion that poetry is not suitable for the treatment of high matters:

1. Ye saye that poetry

2. Maye nat flye so hye

3. In theology,

4. Nor analogy,

5. Nor philology,

6. Nor philosophy,

7. To answere or reply

8. Agaynst suche heresy. (11. 306–13)

The second is the older, ultimately Platonic, charge that poets are liars:

1. Why have ye than disdayne

2. At poetes, and complayne

3. Howe poetes do but fayne? (ll. 351–53)

Skelton's first line of defence is the argument from authority. He invokes St Jerome, ‘that doctour glorious’ (l. 319), whose Epistle 53 (Ad Paulinum: De studio Scripturarum), often prefixed to the Vulgate Bible and to the Glossa ordinaria in manuscript and in print, praises the poetry of David as comparable to that of the great classical lyric poets.

This volume explores the diverse ways in which the Book of Psalms profoundly influenced medieval English literature and culture, through a series of connected overviews and special case studies. A number of recent studies have highlighted the Psalter's reception in Early Modern English (and wider European culture), while three monographs by contributors to this volume offer focused studies of the Psalter in individual periods of medieval English literature: Jane Toswell's The Anglo-Saxon Psalter, Annie Sutherland's English Psalms in the Middle Ages: 1300–1450and Michael P. Kuczynski's Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England. But as yet no single study has sought to offer a comprehensive survey of English responses to the Book of Psalms from the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the cusp of the Reformation. By bringing work by experts on both Old and Middle English literature into dialogue, this volume breaks down the traditional disciplinary binaries of pre- and post-Conquest English, late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. In order to encourage the reader to make connections both across and within these various periods and languages, the book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, with three sections designed to offer a variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature.

Section I (Translation) focuses on the development of English psalm translation from its beginnings in Old English interlinear glosses in Latin psalters through the multilingual psalters of the Anglo-Norman era to the stand-alone vernacular psalters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Concentrating on the Psalter as a book, this section charts the emergence of English as a scriptural language in the medieval period.

Section II (Adaptation) considers how medieval English prose and verse writers draw on the Psalms as a source of literary inspiration. Demonstrating how the Psalter could be adapted and redeployed within the context of medieval worship and prayer, it begins with a discussion of the first adaptation of the entire Psalter into English verse, before turning to a consideration of the development of the abbreviated psalter tradition. This section also addresses the wider influence of psalmic language and imagery on Old English praise and lament poetry, and on Middle English alliterative verse.