Readings from a selection of Middle English prose and verse texts including the Ormulum, the Agenbite of Inwit, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, illustrating the range and diversity of medieval English writing.
A reading of the opening eighteen lines of Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the celebrated seasonal description that sets the scene for the pilgrimage to Canterbury.
A combined reading and analysis of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, exploring the poem’s themes of chivalry, honour, temptation, and the supernatural, and its distinctive alliterative verse form.
A reading of the anonymous medieval lyric Thou Wanderest in this False World, a religious meditation on mortality, vanity, and the transience of earthly life.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval riddle lyric I Have a Yong Suster, exploring its playful treatment of courtly love conventions through a series of witty paradoxes.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval lyric Wanne Mine Eyhnen Misten, a short contemplation on death and mortality written in Middle English.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval carol I Syng of a Mayden, examining its Marian devotion, its delicate imagery of the Annunciation, and its carol form.
A combined reading and analysis of the anonymous medieval lyric Westron Wynde, exploring its expression of love, longing, and desire for homecoming in just four lines.
A combined reading and analysis of Edwin Brock’s Five Ways to Kill a Man, a satirical war poem tracing the history of human violence from crucifixion to modern warfare.
An experimental jazz reading of Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium, bringing the poem’s themes of aging, art, and the soul’s journey toward immortality to life through music.