Students should choose twenty primary sources and twenty secondary sources from the following lists.  At least five primary sources must be Old English and at least five primary sources must be Middle English. The secondary sources chosen may be tailored to students’ own scholarly interests, although they should keep in mind that the purpose of this list is to encourage wide reading throughout the entire medieval period, and to suggest works with which every educated medievalist should be familiar.

Students may then add ten further works, either primary or secondary sources, specific to their own interests (which may include works on this list), for a total of fifty books. All primary sources must be read in the original language, unless otherwise specified.

This list is intended as a guide.  Students who feel that their interests are not adequately represented may petition their committee for adjustments. All reading lists must be approved by the committee.

Primary Sources

1. Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy (trans.)
2. Beowulf
3. Cynewulf: “Fates of the Apostles,” “Christ II,” “Juliana,” “Elene.”
4. Anglo‑Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, eds. Dumville and Keynes, vols. 3 and 4.  [In vol. 3, the beginning and annals 755‑871, 911‑924, 933‑946. In vol. 4 compare 911‑19   (the Mercian Chronicle).
5. Aelfric. Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat (EETS 76, 82, 94, 114) [In vol. 1 read Eugenia and Aetheldryda; in vol. 2, read Swythun, Oswald, Edmund, and Eufrasia].
6. Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People (trans) 
7. Anglo Saxon Verse: “Wulf and Eadwaecer”, “Wanderer”, “Battle of Maldon”, “Seafarer”, “Dream of the Rood”, “Wife's Lament”, “Judith”
8. Mabinogion (trans.)
9. Ancrene Wisse
10. The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth Century Recluse (trans.)
11. South English Legendary (selections)
12. Marie de France. Lais (trans.)
13. Katherine Group. Seinte Katerine, ed. d'Ardenne and Dobson; Seinte Margaret and Hali Mei_had, ed. Millett &  Wogan‑Browne.
14. La3man, Brut (selections)
15. Chretien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (selections) (trans.)
16. Malory. Works. Vinaver edition
17. Alliterative Morte Arthure
18. Stanzaic Le Morte Arthur
19. Mandeville. Travels
20. The English Writings of Richard Rolle
21. Chaucer.  Book of the Duchess
22. Chaucer. Parlement of Fowles
23. Chaucer. Legend of Good Wome
24. Chaucer.  Canterbury Tales
25. Chaucer.   Troilus and Criseyde
26. Gower. Confessio Amantis (selections)
27. English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Anne Hudson (selections)
28. Lydgate,  Fall of Princes, Book I and Conclusion: 9.3134‑3628
29. Hoccleve, Regiment of Princes (selections)
30. Middle English Lyrics (Norton edition)
31. Pearl
32. Cleanness
33. Patience
34. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
35. Owl and the Nightingale
36. Langland. Piers Plowman B Text.
37. Middle English Romances: King Horn, Havelok, Athelstan, Sir Orfeo, Launfal, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell)
38. Julian of Norwich. Book of Showings, ed. E. Colledge and J. Walsh (read long version) or the TEAMS edition, ed. Georgina Rowan Crampton.
39. Book of Margery Kempe, eds. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen (EETS 212, or ed. Lynn Staley, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, MI: 1996)
40. Wynnere and Wastoure
41. The Cloud of Unknowing
42. Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection
43. Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun. Romance of the Rose (trans.)
44. Christine de Pisan. Book of the City of Ladies (trans.)
45. Froissart. Chronicles (trans.)
46. Dunbar, ed. Kinsley or Bawcutt: "Hale sterne superne"; "Quhen Merche wes with variand windis  past" ("The Thrissill and the Rois"); "Blyth Aberdeane"; "The Goldyn Targe"; "Lang heff I maed of ladyes quhytt" ("Ane Blak Moir"); "The Tretis of the tua mariit Wemen and the Wedo"; "Off  Februar the fyiftene nycht" ("The Dance of the sevin deidly synnis"); "I that in heill wes and  gladnes" ("Lament for the Makaris"); "Quhy will ye marchantis of renoun"; "The Flyting of  Dunbar and Kennedie"; "Sir Jhon Sinclair begowthe to dance" ("Of a Dance in the Quenis Chalmer"); "Schir, ye have mony servitouris"; "We that ar heir in hevins glory" ("Dirige to the king")
47. Henryson. Testament of Cresseid.
48. York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, ed. Richard Beadle and Pamela King;  also "The Second Shepherds' Play" from the Wakefield aka Towneley Cycle (available in the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Longman Anthology of British Literature)       

Secondary Sources

1. J.A.W. Bennett and Douglas Gray, Middle English Literature (1986)
2. Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers (1980)
3. Stephen G. Nichols, ed. “The New Philology”, Speculum 6 (1990) 1‑108
4. Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past (1987)
5. Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (1977)
6. Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales 2^nd. edn. (1994)
7. E.T. Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (1970)
8. Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (1989)
9. V.A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative  (1984)
10. H. Marshal Leicester, The Disenchanted Self: Representing  the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (1990)
11. Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (1973)
12. Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (1989)
13. Winthrop Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde (1984)
14. V.A. Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi (1966)
15. Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theatre of Devotion (1989)
16. David Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity (1988)
17. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast (1987)
18. Larry D. Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1965)
19. ---, Malory's Morte D'Arthur (1976)
20. John Burrow, Ricardian Poetry (1971)
21. R.S. Loomis, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (1959)
22. Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (1968)
23. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, eds. A Beowulf Handbook (1997)
24. Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne, eds. A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (2001)
25. Stanley B. Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (1986).
26. Earl R. Anderson, Cynewulf: Structure, Style, and Theme in His Poetry (1983).
27. Paul Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text (2000).
28. Clare Lees, Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England (1999).
29. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse (1990).
30. Christine Franzen, The Tremulous Hand of Worcester:  A Study of Old English in the Thirteenth Century (1991)
31. Michael O'Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England (2000)
32. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (1991)
33. James T. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St Augustine to the Renaissance (1974, repr. 2001)
34. M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066 - 1307, 2^nd. edn (1993)
35. 35. A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (1984)
36. Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games: Folkloric Patterns in The Canterbury Tales (1986)
37. Thorlac Turville Petre, The Alliterative Revival (1977)
38. Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate (1983)