Medieval Love Letters

Myra Stokes's published work ranges across the languages and literatures of other European vernaculars as well as Old and Middle English. Her books include Justice and Mercy in Piers Plowman (1984; reprinted 2020), The Language of Jane Austen (1991) and (as co-author) Studies in the Metre of Alliterative Verse (2007). With Ad Putter she edited The Works of the Gawain Poet (Penguin English Poets, 2014). Ad Putter is Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bristol, where he directs the Centre for Medieval Studies. His publications include An Introduction to the Gawain Poet (1996), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend, co-edited with Elizabeth Archibald (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and North Sea Crossings: The Literary Heritage of Anglo-Dutch Relations, 1066–1688, co-authored with Sjoerd Levelt (2021).

'This wide-ranging anthology of love-letters covers both the theory and the practice of love in the medieval period. It includes manuals of instruction on how to write a love-letter and how to seduce a woman, accompanied by model examples, alongside love-lyrics in letter-form and romantic exchanges between real-life lovers, giving fascinating glimpses of the way that life and literature inflected each other. Heartbreak, longing, emotional ecstasy, clandestine meetings, jealousy, the threat of scandal, unwanted pregnancy, all make an appearance. Translation, an extensive introduction, and ample annotation make the texts easily accessible to present-day readers.' Jill Mann, University of Notre Dame

• Part I. Introduction: The Art of the Love Letter: 1. Art and Actuality: an Overview; 2. Occasions; Ways and Means; Male and Female Voices; 3. Clerics and Convents; Part II. Fictional and Instructional Models; Text 1. Boncompagno da Signa: Rota Veneris; Text 2. London, British Library, Harley MS 3988; Text 3. The Parliament of Love; Part III. Actual Letters (Drafts, Copies, Missives); Text 4. the Norfolk Letters: the Abbot to the Nun; Text 5. Oxford, Corpus Christi, MS 154; Text 6. the Armburgh Love-Letters; Text 7. Pierre de Hagenbach and the Canoness at Remiremont – The Council of Remiremont – Conrad Pfettisheim's Account of Pierre de Hagenbach.