Author Description

This edition contains two poems valuable to the study of satire of social abuses in the fourteenth century: Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Both combine two genres of medieval poetry: dream visions and poetic debates. As the editor observes, the poem's perspectives are truly dizzying: on the one hand, economics, politics, ethics and social relations are seen as an interrelated set of universal, timeless principles; on the other, they appear as actual, contingent conditions that have resulted from specific acts in history. The editions include notes, glosses, an introduction, and a glossary, making them accessible to beginning and advanced students in Middle English alike.