SELECTIONS FOR READING.  For advanced students, and as a study of language, a few selections as given in Manly’s English Poetry and in Manly’s English Prose; or selections from the Ormulum, Brut, Ancren Riwle, and King Horn, etc., in Morris and Skeat’s Specimens of Early English.  The ordinary student will get a better idea of the literature of the period by using the following:  Sir Gawain, modernized by J. L. Weston, in Arthurian Romances Series (Nutt); The Nun’s Rule (Ancren Riwle), modern version by J. Morton, in King’s Classics; Aucassin and Nicolete, translated by A. Lang (Crowell & Co.); Tristan and Iseult, in Arthurian Romances; Evans’s The High History of the Holy Grail, in Temple Classics; The Pearl, various modern versions in prose and verse; one of the best is Jewett’s metrical version (Crowell & Co.); The Song of Roland, in King’s Classics, and in Riverside Literature Series; Evans’s translation of Geoffrey’s History, in Temple Classics; Guest’s The Mabinogion, in Everyman’s Library, or S. Lanier’s Boy’s Mabinogion (i.e.  Welsh fairy tales and romances); Selected Ballads, in Athenaeum Press Series, and in Pocket Classics; Gayley and Flaherty’s Poetry of the People; Bates’s A Ballad Book.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.[69]

HISTORY.  Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 58-86, or Cheyney, pp. 88-144.  For fuller treatment, Green, ch. 2; Traill; Gardiner, etc.  Jewett’s Story of the Normans (Stories of the Nations Series); Freeman’s Short History of the Norman Conquest; Hutton’s King and Baronage (Oxford Manuals of English History).

LITERATURE.  General Works.  Jusserand; Ten Brink; Mitchell, vol.  I, From Celt to Tudor; The Cambridge History of English Literature.

Special Works.  Schofield’s English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer; Lewis’s Beginnings of English Literature; Ker’s Epic and Romance; Saintsbury’s The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory; Newell’s King Arthur and the Round Table; Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets; Rhys’s Studies in the Arthurian Legends.

Ballads.  Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads; Gummere’s Old English Ballads (one volume); Hazlitt’s Early Popular Poetry of England; Gayley and Flaherty’s Poetry of the People; Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in Everyman’s Library.

Texts, Translations, etc.  Morris and Skeat’s Specimens of Early English; Morris’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in Early English Text Series; Madden’s Layamon’s Brut, text and translation (a standard work, but rare); The Pearl, text and translation, by Gollancz; the same poem, prose version, by Osgood, metrical versions by Jewett, Weir Mitchell, and Mead; Geoffrey’s History, translation, in Giles’s Six Old English Chronicles (Bohn’s Antiquarian Library); Morley’s Early English Prose Romances; Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances; Guest’s The Mabinogion; Lanier’s Boy’s Mabinogion; Arthurian Romances Series (translations).  The Belles Lettres Series, sec. 2 (announced), will contain the texts of a large number of works of this period, with notes and introductions.