Tamara Atkin & Francis Leneghan 
The Psalms and Medieval English Literature 
From the Conversion to the Reformation

An examination of how The Book of Psalms shaped medieval thought and helped develop the medieval English literary canon.


The Book of Psalms had a profound impact on English literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the late medieval period. This collection examines the various ways in which they shaped medieval English thought and contributed to the emergence of an English literary canon. It brings into dialogue experts on both Old and Middle English literature, thus breaking down the traditional disciplinary binaries of both pre- and post-Conquest English and late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. Its three main themes, translation, adaptation and voice, enable a rich variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature to emerge.


TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London; FRANCIS LENEGHAN is Associate Professor of Old English at The University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford


Contributors: Daniel Anlezark, Mark Faulkner, Vincent Gillespie, Michael P. Kuczynski, David Lawton, Francis Leneghan, Jane Roberts, Mike Rodman Jones, Elizabeth Solopova, Lynn Staley, Annie Sutherland, Jane Toswell, Katherine Zieman.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: a Case Study of Psalm 50.1-3 in Old and Middle English – Francis Leneghan

Some Anglo-Saxon Psalters and their Glosses – Jane Roberts

The Eadwine Psalter and Twelfth-Century English Vernacular Literary Culture – Mark Faulkner

‚In eching for the beste‘: the Fourteenth-Century English Prose Psalter and the Art of Psalm Translation – Annie Sutherland

The Wycliffite Psalms – Elizabeth Solopova

Rolle’s
English Psalter and the Possibilities of Vernacular Scriptural Commentary – Katherine Zieman

Making the Psalter Sing: the Old English
Metrical Psalms, Rhythm and
Ruminatio – Francis Leneghan

The Psalms in the
Old English Office of Prime – Daniel Anlezark

Psalm Genres in Old English Poetry – M J Toswell

Articulating the Psalms in Middle English Alliterative Poetry:Some Passages of
Piers Plowman, St Erkenwald and
Pearl – Mike Rodman Jones

Maidstone’s Psalms and the King’s Speech – Lynn Staley

The Songs of the Threshold:
Enargeia and the Psalter – Vincent Gillespie

Psalms as Public Interiorities: Eleanor Hull’s Voices – David Lawton

Vox ecclesiae, vox Christi: the Psalms and Medieval English Ecclesiology – Michael Kuczynski

Über den Autor

M.J. TOSWELL is a Professor at the University of Western Ontario.