English Poetry Before Chaucer

English Poetry Before Chaucer is interesting and thought-provoking. It is a fine guide to re-reading – not so much a handbook to early English literature as a true ‘companion’, one who enjoys showing you all his favourite haunts. […] Learned, insightful, sometimes eclectic, Swanton’s English Poetry Before Chaucer offers a wealth of specific reading on some important, and often-taught, poems.
Susan Yager, The Medieval Review Online * (English Poetry Before Chaucer, The Medieval Review Online *
These strategies of pedagogy are as important as the scholarship and Swanton has written that rare hybrid, the textbook that can surprise the teacher, the monograph that the student can read without constant recourse to a dictionary of literary terms.
Chris Jones, TOEBI Newsletter * TOEBI Newsletter *
Michael Swanton’s book was welcomed in 1987 for several reasons: its lively independent engagement with critical issues, its determination to discuss particular texts in some detail rather than indulge in a uniform survey, and its refusal to treat the Norman Conquest as if it were some kind of insurmountable divide. Its value has not diminished . . . The chronology, bibliographies and notes on writers, works and sources are also particularly valuable, providing basic information which the student cannot readily find elsewhere.
Joyce M. Hill