I have a yong suster

"Although the relationship of Middle English poetry to folksong is now generally recognized, few scholars have pursued the implications of this relationship in depth. This study explores the relationship of the Middle English lyric (primarily, though not exclusively, the secular lyric) to the various forms of folksong and popular song for which we have manuscript evidence or testimony from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The author interprets the poems in their cultural and manuscript contexts, but also applies structuralist and semiotic analytical methods as tools for a more systematic interpretive approach to material not immediately accessible to the present-day reader. Those medieval lyrics which can most profitably and convincingly be related to an oral popular tradition of folksong are often the ones which modern readers find most attractive and interesting. Through a context-sensitive, cultural and historical textual hermeneutic applied to such a selection of Middle English lyrics, the book attempts to shape for the reader a sense of the nature, extent and dynamics of the popular literary culture of the medieval and early modern period."--BOOK JACKET.

Year

2001

Language

English

Publisher

Four Courts Press

Editions

1

Pages

240

ISBN

9781851826278

Data source: Wikidata