[PDF] Early Fiction In England eBook

Author : Laura Ashe
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 14,16 MB
Release : 2015-09-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0141392886

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A brilliant new anthology that shows how fiction was reinvented in the twelfth century after an absence of hundreds of years. Essential for all students of medieval literature, Early Fiction in England includes extracts by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Marie de France, Chaucer and many others, in new translations and with illuminating introductions. Before the twelfth century, fiction had completely disappeared in Europe. In this important and provocative book, Laura Ashe shows how English writers brought it back, composing new tales about King Arthur, his knights and other heroes and heroines in Latin, French and English. Why did fiction disappear, and why did it come to life again to establish itself the dominant form of literature ever since? And what do we even mean by the term 'fiction'? Gathering extracts from the most important texts of the period by Wace, Marie de France, Chaucer and others, this volume offers an absorbing and surprising introduction to the earliest fiction in England. The anthology includes a general introduction by Laura Ashe, introductions to each extract, explanatory notes and other useful editorial materials. All French and Latin texts have been newly translated, while Middle English texts include helpful glosses. Laura Ashe is a University Lecturer in English and Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Her first book Fiction and History in England, 1066-1200 (Cambridge University Press, 2007) has been followed by numerous articles and edited collections; she is now writing the newOxford English Literary History vol. 1: 1000-1350 (Oxford University Press).

Author : Steve Mentz
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 18,90 MB
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 9780754654698

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Steve Mentz provides a comprehensive historicist and formalist account of prose romance, the most important genre of Elizabethan fiction. He explores how authors and publishers of prose fiction in late sixteenth-century England produced books that combined traditional narrative forms with a dynamic new understanding of the relationship between text and audience. Though prose fiction would not dominate English literary culture until the eighteenth century, Mentz demonstrates that the form began to invent itself as a distinct literary kind in England nearly two centuries earlier.

Author : Laura Ashe
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 38,99 MB
Release : 2011-03-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780521174367

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The century and a half following the Norman Conquest of 1066 saw an explosion in the writing of Latin and vernacular history in England, while the creation of the romance genre reinvented the fictional narrative. Where critics have seen these developments as part of a cross-Channel phenomenon, Laura Ashe argues that a genuinely distinctive character can be found in the writings of England during the period. Drawing on a wide range of historical, legal and cultural contexts, she discusses how writers addressed the Conquest and rebuilt their sense of identity as a new, united 'English' people, with their own national literature and culture, in a manner which was to influence all subsequent medieval English literature. This study opens up new ways of reading post-Conquest texts in relation to developments in political and legal history, and in terms of their place in the English Middle Ages as a whole.

Author : Ethel Mary Wilmot-Buxton
Publisher : Forgotten Books
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 49,46 MB
Release : 2016-09-30
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781333801328

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Excerpt from Stories of Early England Now, the boys and girls of the present day should lose the chance of knowing these charming tales of olden days because they were told and written down in what seems to them a foreign tongue. The Celtic tales really are foreign to English children, for the Eng. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Author : Tim Killick
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 32,78 MB
Release : 2016-05-23
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1317171462

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In spite of the importance of the idea of the 'tale' within Romantic-era literature, short fiction of the period has received little attention from critics. Contextualizing British short fiction within the broader framework of early nineteenth-century print culture, Tim Killick argues that authors and publishers sought to present short fiction in book-length volumes as a way of competing with the novel as a legitimate and prestigious genre. Beginning with an overview of the development of short fiction through the late eighteenth century and analysis of the publishing conditions for the genre, including its appearance in magazines and annuals, Killick shows how Washington Irving's hugely popular collections set the stage for British writers. Subsequent chapters consider the stories and sketches of writers as diverse as Mary Russell Mitford and James Hogg, as well as didactic short fiction by authors such as Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Amelia Opie. His book makes a convincing case for the evolution of short fiction into a self-conscious, intentionally modern form, with its own techniques and imperatives, separate from those of the novel.

Author : Michael Wood
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 13,84 MB
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0141961155

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A VILLAGE AND ITS PEOPLE THROUGH THE WHOLE OF ENGLISH HISTORY The village of Kibworth in Leicestershire lies at the very centre of England. It has a church, some pubs, the Grand Union Canal, a First World War Memorial - and many centuries of recorded history. Bought in the thirteenth century by William de Merton, who founded Merton College, Oxford, it also lodges 750 years of village history. Michael Wood tells the extraordinary story of one English community over fifteen centuries - from the moment that the Roman Emperor Honorius sent his famous letter in 410 advising the English to look to their own defences to the village as it is today. He builds on this unique archive, enlisting the help of Kibworth's inhabitants in a village-wide archaeological dig and the first complete DNA profile of an English village. The story of Kibworth is the story of England itself, a Who Do You Think You Are? for the entire nation. 'Better than any historian for decades, Wood brings home not just the ways in which buildings, landscapes and written texts may be read, but the sensual beauty of encounters with them' TLS

Author : Leah Orr
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 24,54 MB
Release : 2017-10-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0813940141

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The eighteenth century British book trade marks the beginning of the literary marketplace as we know it. The lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 brought an end to pre-publication censorship of printed texts and restrictions on the number of printers and presses in Britain. Resisting the standard "rise of the novel" paradigm, Novel Ventures incorporates new research about the fiction marketplace to illuminate early fiction as an eighteenth-century reader or writer might have seen it. Through a consideration of all 475 works of fiction printed over the four decades from 1690 to 1730, including new texts, translations of foreign works, and reprints of older fiction, Leah Orr shows that the genre was much more diverse and innovative in this period than is usually thought. Contextual chapters examine topics such as the portrayal of early fiction in literary history, the canonization of fiction, concepts of fiction genres, printers and booksellers, the prices and physical manufacture of books, and advertising strategies to give a more complex picture of the genre in the print culture world of the early eighteenth century. Ultimately, Novel Ventures concludes that publishers had far more influence over what was written, printed, and read than authors did, and that they shaped the development of English fiction at a crucial moment in its literary history.

Author : Martin Puchner
Publisher : W. W. Norton
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 25,74 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Anthologies
ISBN : 9780393933642

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A classic, reimagined.

Author : Sharon Kay Penman
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company
Page : 784 pages
File Size : 47,13 MB
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1429939524

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In When Christ and His Saints Slept master storyteller and historian Sharon Kay Penman illuminates one of the lesser-known but fascinating periods of English history. The next addition in this highly acclaimed historical fiction series of the middle ages, and the first of a trilogy that will tell the story of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. When Christ and His Saints Slept begins with the death of King Henry I, son of William the Conqueror and father of Maude, his only living legitimate offspring.