The Romance of the Rose
10 best books like The Romance of the Rose (Guillaume de Lorris): The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, The Heptameron, Troilus and Criseyde, Parzival, The Lais of Marie de France, The History of the Franks, Piers Plowman, Tristan: With the Tristran of Thomas, The Quest of the Holy Grail
| Author | Pierre Abélard |
| ISBN | 0140448993 |
The story of the relationship between Abélard and Héloïse is one of the world’s most celebrated and tragic love affairs. It is told through the letters of Peter Abélard, a French philosopher and one of the greatest logicians of the twelfth century, and of his gifted pupil Héloïse. Through their...
| Author | Christine de Pizan |
| ISBN | 0140449507 |
Written by Europe’s first professional woman writer, The Treasure of the City of Ladies offers advice and guidance to women of all ages and from all levels of medieval society, from royal courtiers to prostitutes. It paints an intricate picture of daily life in the courts and streets of fifteenth-century...
| Author | Marguerite de Navarre |
In the early 1500s five men and five women find themselves trapped by floods and compelled to take refuge in an abbey high in the Pyrenees. When told they must wait days for a bridge to be repaired, they are inspired - by recalling Boccaccio's Decameron - to pass the time in a cultured manner by each telling...
| Author | Geoffrey Chaucer |
| ISBN | 0140442391 |
Set against the epic backdrop of the battle of Troy, Troilus and Criseyde is an evocative story of love and loss. When Troilus, the son of Priam, falls in love with the beautiful Criseyde, he is able to win her heart with the help of his cunning uncle Pandarus, and the lovers experience a brief period of bliss...
| Author | Wolfram von Eschenbach |
| ISBN | 0140443614 |
Composed in the early thirteenth century, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the re-creation and completion of the story left unfinished by its initiator Chretien de Troyes. It follows Parzival from his boyhood and career as a knight in the court of King Arthur to his ultimate achievement as King...
| Author | Marie de France |
| ISBN | 0140447598 |
This is a prose translation of the lais or poems attributed to Marie de France. Little is known of her but she was probably the Abbess of the abbey at Shaftesbury in the late 12th century, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and hence the half-sister of Henry II of England. It was to a king, and...
| Author | Gregory of Tours |
| ISBN | 0140442952 |
Written following the collapse of Rome's secular control over western Europe, the History of Gregory (c. AD 539-594) is a fascinating exploration of the events that shaped sixth-century France. This volume contains all ten books from the work, the last seven of which provide an in-depth description...
| Author | William Langland |
| ISBN | 0393975592 |
Astonishing in its cultural and theological scope, William Langland's iconoclastic masterpiece is at once a historical relic and a deeply spiritual vision, probing not only the social and religious aristocracy but also the day-to-day realities of a largely voiceless proletariat class. E. Talbot...
| Author | Gottfried von Straßburg |
Gottfried's version of this legendary romance--in which Tristan and Isolde chance to drink a magic potion that causes them to fall in love--portrays Tristan in the round as an attractive and sophisticated pre-Renaissance man. While Gottfried adheres faithfully to the events as set down by Thomas,...
| Author | Anonymous |
| ISBN | 0140442200 |
Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism, reinterpreting ancient Celtic myth as a profound spiritual fable. It recounts the quest of the knights of Camelot - the simple Perceval, the thoughtful...
Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance
| Author | Heldris de Cornualles |
| ISBN | 0870135430 |
This bilingual edition, a parallel text in Old French and English, is based on a reexamination of the Old French manuscript, and makes Silence available to specialists and students in various fields of literature and women's studies.
The Roman de Silence, an Arthurian romance of the...
| Author | Andreas Capellanus |
| ISBN | 0231073054 |
After becoming popularized by the troubadours of southern France in the 12th century, the social system of courtly love soon spread. Evidence of the influence of courtly love in the culture & literature of most of western Europe spans centuries. This unabridged edition of codifies life at Queen...
| Author | Chrétien de Troyes |
| ISBN | 0300070217 |
In this extraordinarily fine translation of Cligès, the second of five surviving Arthurian poems by twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, Burton Raffel captures the liveliness, innovative spirit, and subtle intentions of the original work. In this poem, Chrétien creates his most...
| Author | Jean Froissart |
| ISBN | 0140442006 |
The Chronicles of Froissart (1337-1410) are one of the greatest contemporary records of fourteenth-century England and France. Depicting the great age of Anglo-French rivalry from the deposition of Edward II to the downfall of Richard II, Froissart powerfully portrays the deeds of knights in battle...
| Author | Larry Dean Benson |
| ISBN | 1879288389 |
Professor Benson's edition of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and the Alliterative Morte Arthure has been long out of print. Benson's edition of these important Middle English poems is here revised and updated by Professor Edward E. Foster, taking into account recent scholarship, to once again be available...
| Author | Jean de Joinville |
| ISBN | 0140441247 |
Two famous, firsthand accounts of the holy war in the Middle Ages translated by Margaret R. B. Shaw
Originally composed in Old French, the two chronicles brought together here offer some of the most vivid and reliable accounts of the Crusades from a Western perspective. Villehardouin's Conquest...
| Author | Snorri Sturluson |
| ISBN | 0140441832 |
This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led to his death and marked the end of an era in which...
