English Poetry Before Chaucer

This new and revised edition is intended to encourage personal appreciation and independent appraisal by students of English. It is an introduction to the poetry composed in an age that witnessed fundamental cultural developments: the emergence of the English from among the warring tribes of Europe; their conversiton to Christianity; the development of feudalism and the chivalric myth; the military adventure of the Crusades; and the growth of a vigorous citizen class in the burgeoning towns of England.