Troilus and Criseyde
10 best books like Troilus and Criseyde (Geoffrey Chaucer): Troilus and Cressida, The Faerie Queene, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The History of the Kings of Britain, The Lais of Marie de France, Arthurian Romances, The Book of Margery Kempe, Piers Plowman, Revelations of Divine Love, The Romance of the Rose
| Author | William Shakespeare |
| ISBN | 0671669168 |
When I was young and naive, I loved Troilus and Cressida for its brave cynicism, but now that I am older--and my outlook is bleaker--I appreciate it for its realism and compassion. Shakespeare shows us a world in which lovers yearn to be true and warriors strive to be brave, but both inevitably fail,...
| Author | Edmund Spenser |
| ISBN | 0140422072 |
The Faerie Queene was the first epic in English and one of the most influential poems in the language for later poets from Milton to Tennyson. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance and renaissance epic to expound the glory of the Virgin Queen. The poem recounts...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
| Author | Unknown |
| ISBN | 0451528182 |
Contains the greatest "OH FUCK" moment in medieval literature!
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - listed here as written by Unknown, though I believe it may have been penned by that prolific Greek author Anonymous - is a classic tale from Arthurian legend in which the code of honor attributed...
| Author | Geoffrey of Monmouth |
| ISBN | 0140441700 |
Completed in 1136, The History of the Kings of Britain traces the story of the realm from its supposed foundation by Brutus to the coming of the Saxons some two thousand years later. Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such as Lear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous...
| 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 | Chrétien de Troyes |
| ISBN | 0140445218 |
Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chrétien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen...
The Book of Margery Kempe
| Author | Margery Kempe |
| ISBN | 0393976394 |
The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436-8) is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic. Known as the earliest autobiography written in the English language, Kempe's Book describes the dramatic transformation of its heroine from failed businesswoman and lustful young wife to devout...
| 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...
Revelations of Divine Love
| Author | Julian of Norwich |
| ISBN | 0140446737 |
One of the first woman authors, Julian of Norwich produced in Revelations of Divine Love a remarkable work of revelatory insight, that stands alongside The Cloud of Unknowing and Piers Plowman as a classic of Medieval religious literature
After fervently praying for a greater understanding...
| Author | Guillaume de Lorris |
| ISBN | 0192839489 |
This is a new translation of The Romance of the Rose, an allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every...
Alternate cover edition of ISBN10: 0140422536; ISBN13: 9780140422535
Written in the middle of his career, Idylls of the King is Tennyson's longest and most ambitious work. Reflecting his lifelong interest in Arthurian themes, his primary sources were Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the Welsh...
| Author | Dante Alighieri |
| ISBN | 0140441050 |
Dorothy L. Sayers's landmark translation follows Dante's terza rima stanza's and brings his poetry vividly to life. Her work was completed after her death by Barbara Reynolds, who provides a foreword on the importance of the translation and an introduction on Dante's view of Heaven. This edition...
| Author | George Herbert |
| ISBN | 0140424555 |
George Herbert combined the intellectual and the spiritual, the humble and the divine, to create some of the most moving devotional poetry in the English language. His deceptively simple verse uses the ingenious arguments typical of seventeenth-century 'metaphysical' poets, and unusual imagery...
| Author | Chrétien de Troyes |
| ISBN | 0820321419 |
Erec and Enide marks the birth of the Arthurian romance as a literary genre. Written circa 1170, this version of the Griselda legend tells the story of the marriage of Erec, a handsome and courageous Welsh prince and knight of the Round Table, and Enide, an impoverished noblewoman. When the lovers become...
