Anne Laskaya

A good collection, although one that's been done before in various forms (see the volumes by Mills and Rumble). The TEAMS series is always to be commended for being inexpensive and for the straightforwardness of its notes and introduction. That said, I would have liked to see stronger gestures towards resistant readings of these tales, and all the TEAMS volumes could use even more apparatus, as they're going to see a lot of use in undergrad classrooms. Primarily, they need pronoun charts (as a work like Sir Gowther takes a lot of effort to navigate otherwise).

Orfeo is of course the star, with Gowther behind it, but I rec teaching Emare and Sir Cleges. The former is long, but it's easy (i.e., highly repetitive) Middle English, and the second is good for introducing students to genre (since it combines two--quasi-bourgeois advice literature and rolicking physical humor (is that a genre?)--strangely).… (mehr)