The Owl and the Nightingale

An edition and accompanying translation of this late C13th anthology of early Middle English verse.  In addition to the original text and Modern English translations, the edition contains a substantial scholarly introduction, notes and a substantial bibliography.

Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 (II), a thirteenth-century manuscript, contains the longest surviving English verse sequence from the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales’s Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript and presented here with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus.

This scholarly presentation of the text is designed for both research and classroom use, intended for teachers, scholars and students.