Medieval Legends and Satires

This volume of translations is prepared especially for the use of college sophomores who are studying English poetry of the fourteenth century, but it is hoped that other readers may be interested in these old legends. Ideally, it would be better for students to read the original texts, but every teacher knows how difficult it is to provide texts in this field. The various Middle English Readers are not frankly popular in their choice of subject matter, and the publications of learned societies are far too expensive to be available for classroom work. It does not seem, therefore, entirely an offense against scholarship to offer students a volume that will serve humbly as companion to “Piers Plowman, “The Pearl,” Chaucer’s poems, and various romances and lyrics which are studied in carefully edited texts.

The modern translations are literal, but a certain freedom has been used in reshaping sentences and in omitting conventional phrases when they proved too monotonous in their repetitions. Quite enough tags and awkward constructions have been preserved to illustrate fully the style of medieval clerks.