The Medieval City This course explores themes and texts in relation to urban space, with special reference throughout to the literary, social and mental world of London, the metropolis of medieval England. As a centre of power, display and text, London had no rival in the British Isles, with the result that there is a rich array of visual, literary and documentary material to explore. This reading list is designed to provide some essentials and a guide, but you are encouraged to use the material to follow up further reading to enrich and extend the themes chosen beyond what is specified here. For the purposes of the course, the medieval period in England will be understood to last until at least the Catholic resurgence under Queen Mary (d 1558) Many of the articles listed are available on Jstor through the University Library. Introductory Reading Please read a selection from this list of Introductory Reading before the course begins. Sections from some of these studies will also be recommended for particular classes. All the essays in the collection edited by Butterfield are germane. The study by Girouard invites reflections on the broader question of how urban living affects lives and mentalities. The seminal book by Murray, one of the recent classics of medieval historical writing, explores that same broad theme but with more precise reference to medieval rationality and the rise of the universities, all (as they remain) urban phenomena. The study by Hutton introduces the theme of festivity and the festive year, as important for the medieval city as for the countryside (on which see the volume edited by Hanawalt et al). The volume edited by Rawcliffe and Wilson offers valuable insights into what was once a major provincial city of medieval England. The others are self explanatory. https://londonist.com/2013/10/fly-through-17th-century-london A. Butterfield, ed., Chaucer and the City (Cambridge, 2006) M. Girouard, Cities and People, a Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London, 1985) B. Hanawalt, et al., eds., City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (University of Minnesota Press, 1994) R. Hutton. Seasonal Festivity in Late Medieval England: Some Further Reflections, The English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 66-79 A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978) C. Rawcliffe, C. and R. Wilson, (eds.), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004) 1
R. Hanna, London Literature, 1300-1380 (Cambridge, 2005) L. R. Mooney and E. Stubbs, Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375-1425 (Woodbridge, 2013) See also https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london/permanentgalleries/medieval-london The virtual St. Paul s Project (including the acoustic files) https://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/ E. Keyser, The Festive Decorum of Cleanness, in L. D. Benson and J. Leyerle, eds., Chivalric Literature (1980). Class 1: Visions of the city William Dunbar, London thou art of townes (poem in praise of London; numerous online texts) A. V. C. Schmidt, ed., Piers Plowman / William Langland : a parallel-text edition of the A, B, C and Z versions, 2 vols. (London, 1995) Matthew Paris, map of London http://worldcitieshistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/medieval-london.html Pearl (numerous editions available; the one volume edition by E. V. Gordon is still of value). Revelation Chapter 21 (best read in the King James Bible) Haveloc in Four Romances of England, ed. by Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999). Available at http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/salisbury-four-romances-of-englandhavelok-the-dane Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller s Tale (in the Riverside Chaucer) J. A. Burrow, ed., Thomas Hoccleve s Complaint and Dialogue (EETS, 1990) D. Keene, Text, Visualisation and Politics: London, 1150-1250, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 18 (2008), 69-99 2
A. Butterfield, ed., Chaucer and the City (Cambridge, 2006) M. Girouard, Cities and People, a Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London, 1985) A. Hostetter, Food, Sovereignty, and Social Order in Havelok the Dane, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 110 (2011), 53-77 J. A. W. Bennett, Chaucer at Oxford and at Cambridge (Toronto, 1974) https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london/permanent-galleries/medievallondon https://londonist.com/2013/10/fly-through-17th-century-london Class 2: The city and the numinous Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prioress s Tale, The Parson s Tale (in the Riverside Chaucer) Anonymous, St. Erkenwald, various editions, including Clifford Peterson (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) The Diary of Henry Machyn: Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, ed J. G. Nichols (1848) available on Google books B. Millett, ed., Ancrene Wisse (EETS 2005-6) there are numerous other editions, and various translations, including one by Millett. R. M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/st_ives_bridge C. Page, The Christian West and its Singers (New Haven and London, 2010), 505-9 (on bridge chapels) C. M. Dowding, A Certain Tourelle on London Wall Was Granted for Him to Inhabit the Same : London Anchorites and the City Wall, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 42 (2016), 44-55 K. Lavezzo, The Minster and the Privy: Rereading The Prioress s Tale, PMLA, 126 (2011), 363-382 3
R. Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (Leicester, 1995) M. Otter, New Werke : St. Erkenwald, St. Albans, and the Medieval Sense of the Past, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 24 (1994) 387-414 The virtual St. Paul s Project https://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/ Class 3: The city and the performative Langland Piers Plowman (Prologue and Passus 1) Agincourt carol (text in H. Deeming, The Sources and Origin of the Agincourt Carol Early Music, 35 (2007), 23-36) G. Kipling, ed., The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne (Early English Text Society Original Series, 1996) J. G. Nichols, ed., The Diary of Henry Machyn: Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London (London, 1848) available on Google books I. W. Archer, City and Court Connected: The Material Dimensions of Royal Ceremonial, ca. 1480 1625, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71 (2008), 157-179 H. Carrel, The Ideology of Punishment in Late Medieval English Towns, Social History, 34 (2009), 301-320 D. Kathman, The Rise of Commercial Playing in 1540s London, Early Theatre, 12, (2009), 15-38 J. Dillon, Clerkenwell and Smithfield as a Neglected Home of London Theater, Huntington Library Quarterly, 71 (2008), 115-135 Ronald Hutton, Seasonal Festivity in Late Medieval England:Some Further Reflections, The English Historical Review, 120 (2005), 66-79 C. Page, The Owl and the Nightingale (London, 1989), 110-33 Class 4: The city and the outcast 4
William Langland, Piers Plowman Moore, N., ed., The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew s Church in London, Early English Text Society, Original Series 163 (Oxford, 1923), 19-20. The story about the Jew and the antiphoner Chaucer, The Prioress s Tale C. Brown, A study of the miracle of Our Lady told by Chaucer s Prioress (Oxford, 1910). To be read in relation to Robert M. Correale, Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, II (2005), 583ff Cleanness, especially 1093ff The Requiem Mass http://www.requiemsurvey.org/latintext.php M. A. Krummel, The Semitisms of Middle English Literature - Wiley Online Library D. Despres, The Protean Jew in the Vernon Manuscript, in S. Delany, ed., Chaucer and the Jews (2002), 145-164 R. I. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society : Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 (Oxford, 2007) Anonymous Sir Orfeo, various editions (eg. A. J. Bliss), also online http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/laskaya-and-salisbury-middle-english-bretonlays-sir-orfeo https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-lost-hospitals-of-londonleprosaria Peter Richards, The Medieval Leper and his Northern Heirs (Cambridge, 1977) Derek Pearsall, Lunatik Lollares in Piers Plowman, in Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (eds.), Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the late Middle Ages in England Cambridge, 1990), 167-85 5