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Middle English Literature: A Historical Sourcebook

This anthology makes available a selection of historical texts, cultural documents, and images in order to further readers’ thinking about Geoffrey Chaucer’s and other Middle English writers’ works. Several of the historical writings have been regularly mentioned in literary and historical studies while some are less familiar, for instance, the Anonimalle Chronicle’s account of the 1381 revolt and Henry Knighton’s description of the pestilence alongside Froissart’s description of a tournament Richard II held in 1390. The cultural documents are necessarily of many kinds, some again frequently noted in literary and historical criticism while others less so: parliamentary and local acts and trials, letters and testimonies, moral, homiletic, and educational tracts. The images are principally of manuscript pages and illuminations and, like the others, chosen for the student of Middle English literature.