One of the chief functions of poetry in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was to praise gods, people and things. Burrow's study spans over two thousand years, from Pindar to Christopher Logue, but its main concern is with the English poetry of the Middle Ages, a period when praise poetry flourished.

J. A. Burrow shows that the literature of authors such as Chaucer, Gower, and Langland is more readily accessible than usually imagined, and well worth reading too. By placing medieval writers in their historical context - the four centuries between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance - Professor Burrow explains not only how they wrote, but why. This book provides a valuable introduction to the problems which a modern reader encounters when approaching...

"This book, first published in the Longman Annotated Anthologies of English Verse series under the general editorship of Professor Alastair Fowler, provides a representative cross-section of non-dramatic English and Scottish poetry between 1300 and 1500 in freshly-edited texts with full annotation. John Burrow has chosen complete poems wherever possible, and substantial single extracts from works too long to give in full. The total of 7000 lines includes...