Librarian for English
Example Reference Sources
- Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature This link opens in a new windowThe Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature contains over 400 articles and aims to map, over time, the world’s entire landscape of literary expressions and criticism, weaving together the various fields and approaches that make up literature.
Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature by Call Number: Clemons Reference PN669 .E53 2000ISBN: 9780313300547Publication Date: 2000While the volume is primarily devoted to the early literature of England, it also includes entries for historical persons and subjects of cultural relevance which would have been discussed in literary works or which might have affected their creation. Multicultural in scope, the book also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and culture of the Middle Ages.
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, 4 Volume Set by Call Number: Clemons Reference - 4 volumes: PR260 .E53 2017ISBN: 9781118396988Publication Date: 2017Bringing together scholarship on multilingual and intercultural medieval Britain like never before, The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain comprises over 600 authoritative entries spanning key figures, contexts and influences in the literatures of Britain from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries.
Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs by Call Number: 2 volumes - Clemons Reference GR35 .M43 2000ISBN: 9781576071212Publication Date: 2000Over a decade in the making, Medieval Folklore is your A-Z guide to the mundane and supernatural lore of the Middle Ages. Definitive and lively articles focus on the great myths and legends of the age; daily and nightly customs and activities; religious beliefs of pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jew; key works of oral and written literature; traditional music and art; holidays and feasts; food and drink; and plants and animals (real and mythic).
The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (4 Volume Set) by Call Number: Access online using Link in VirgoISBN: 9780198662624Publication Date: 2010The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages is a major reference resource for all key aspects of European history, society, religion, and culture from circa 500 CE to circa 1500 CE.
Routledge Revivals: Key Figures in Medieval Europe (2006) by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781351681674Publication Date: 2017Key Figures in Medieval Europe includes individuals from places such as medieval England, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, and Scandinavia, as well as those from the Jewish and Islamic worlds. In one convenient volume, students, scholars, and interested readers will find the biographies of the people whose actions, beliefs, creations, and writings shaped the Middle Ages, one of the most fascinating periods of world history.
Recommended Book Series
The Bloomsbury Cultural History series takes a topic and looks at it through the ages from antiquity to modernity. We have access to some volumes of possible interest online and others in print format. Here are a few that might be of interest:
A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age by Call Number: Print - Ivy QL85 .C85 2007ISBN: 9781845203696Publication Date: 2007
A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780857856876Publication Date: 2018
A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Middle Ages by Call Number: Ebook - Access through link or using Database Bloomsbury Cultural HistoryISBN: 9781350094482Publication Date: 2023
A Cultural History of Gardens in the Medieval Age (vol. 2 of set) by Call Number: Print - Fine Arts - SB451 .C85 2013 v.2ISBN: 9780857850300Publication Date: 2015
A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages (vol. 2 of set) by Call Number: Print - Clemons HQ21 .C83 2014 v.2ISBN: 9781472554772Publication Date: 2014
Helpful URLs
- Ask a LibrarianQuestions? Ask us! Chat, call, text, or email anytime.
- Purchase RecommendationsIs there an ebook you think the UVA Library should own but doesn't? Make a purchase recommendation.
- Using Databases Off GroundsHave questions about accessing databases from off-grounds? Find more information here.
Library Research
This guide was created to help you prepare for your research into medieval romance.
Both your annotated bibliography assignment and final paper will require research. In preparation, you will want to start thinking some about possible questions/topics of interest related to one or more of the works you have read. You will also want to spend some time thinking about how you will conduct your research when the time comes.
- Fine-tune your searches.
Think broadly when brainstorming search terms. What synonyms or related terms could stand in for your key search terms?
You can combine search terms using AND ("La Chanson de Roland" AND women) and OR ("middle ages" OR "medieval period")
In many databases, the asterisk (*) is a truncation or "wildcard" symbol that will match all possible endings for a word stem. For example, hero* will match hero, heroes, heroism, heroics, heroin, etc.
Most databases have filters or facets that allow you to narrow your results by subject, date range, etc. Limit your searches to help you find the sources you need.
- Think about where you might find the type of information you are seeking.
Will you find the research you need in a print book or e-book? A journal article? A magazine? A newspaper? An interview? Cast a wide net when looking for the types of resources that could help answer your research question or support an argument you are making.
- Know the difference between academic and non-academic sources, and when it's appropriate to use them.
Most databases allow you to limit results to academic/scholarly/peer-reviewed sources. Be mindful of your assignment and what you're being asked to provide. Need a refresher? Watch the short video Peer Review in 3 Minutes.
- When you find a good source, use it to find other good sources.
Use the subject terms and keywords associated with an article or essay to find other articles and essays on similar topics. Scholarly essays and journal articles will have works cited, bibliographies, or footnotes you can mine for additional resources.
Need help? Ask a librarian.
Finding articles
MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB) indexes the broadest range of resources about literature in all languages, as well as film, television, and popular culture, including over 4,000 journals as well as books and dissertations. For articles not available full-text in MLA, click on “Find article @ UVa Libraries,” or look up the journal title in Virgo, the library catalog.
International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) lists articles from books and journals on any topic relating to the European Middle Ages (ca. 400-1500)
JSTOR includes older issues of scholarly journals in many disciplines including literature, from the start to 3-5 years ago.
Project Muse offers searchable full text of nearly 600 scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, mostly from North American university presses. Older volumes are often available from JSTOR.
Google Scholar is useful for finding scholarly articles, books, and websites. It can also be useful for seeing who has cited an article or essay after it was published.
Finding book essays & articles using Virgo
Virgo, the UVA Library’s primary search tool, contains catalog records for books, print journals, DVDs, maps, and digitized materials, as well as links to online articles from our rich array of subscription journals. You can search catalog materials and articles together, or view those results separately, using the facets provided to limit your results by author, format, publication period, and more. To find online content, use Filter Results By (on the left) and choose Online.
Example subject terms of possible interest:
- Chansons de geste -- History and criticism
- Chanson de Roland
- English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism
- French literature -- To 1500 -- History and criticism
- Lays -- History and criticism
- Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism
- Marie -- de France -- active 12th century -- Lais
- Romances -- History and criticism
- Romances, English -- History and criticism
Print books and Ebooks of possible interest
Courtly Pastimes by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781000798883Publication Date: 2022The modern concept of passing leisure hours pleasantly would, in the Middle Ages, have fallen under the rubric of Sloth, a deadly sin. Yet aristocrats of past centuries were not always absorbed in affairs of state or warfare. What did they do in moments of peace, "downtime" as we might call it today? In this collection of essays, scholars from various disciplines investigate courtly modes of entertainment ranging from the vigorous to the intellectual: hunting, jousting, horse racing; physical and verbal games; reading, writing, and book ownership. Favorite pastimes spanned differences of gender and age, and crossed geographical and cultural boundaries.
Example essay: "Marie de France at play: Equitan as Courtly diversion or carnivalesque subversion?"
Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780511519505Publication Date: 1995This wide-ranging study explores the ideological framework of genre in Old French and Occitan literature by charting the relationship between ideology and gender in five key genres: the chansons de geste, courtly romance, the Occitan canso, hagiography, and the fabliaux. Simon Gaunt offers new readings of canonical Old French and medieval Occitan texts such as the Chanson de Roland, Chrétien de Troyes's Chevalier de la charrette, and lyrics by Bernart de Ventadorn, and in addition he considers many less well-known works and less familiar genres such as hagiography and the fabliaux. Drawing on contemporary feminist theory, he examines how masculinity, as well as femininity, is constructed in medieval French and Occitan texts, and shows that gender is a crucial element in the formation of the ideologies that underpin medieval literary genres. Example chapter: "Monologic masculinity: The chanson de geste"
The Hero's Place: Medieval Literary Traditions of Space and Belonging by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780813217833Publication Date: 2009The Hero's Place presents an innovative study of how the spaces described in a literary work contribute dynamically and profoundly to that work's meaning. See section on "La Chanson de Roland"
An Introduction to the Chansons de Geste by Call Number: Print - Clemons PQ201 .J66 2014ISBN: 9780813049892Publication Date: 2014Loosely based on French history but often embellished in fantastical ways and written to be performed by minstrels and jongleurs, chansons de geste are one of the most important traditions of the French Middle Ages. With an overview of the principal epic cycles, their literary and historical analogues, close readings, contemporary versions and allusions, notes on dates and versification, and a glossary of key terms, Catherine Jones makes these poems accessible to students and any reader interested in learning more about this lively genre. She presents an essential survey of traditional scholarship, such as debates about sources and elements of style, and raises intriguing contemporary questions related to alterity, gender, and genre.
Marie de France: a Critical Companion by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781846158612Publication Date: 2012This new companion to the works of Marie de France offers fresh insights into the standard critical debates. The aim of this Companion is both to provide information on what can be gleaned of her life, and on her poetry, and to rethink standard questions of interpretation, through topics with special relevance to medieval literature and culture. The variety of perspectives used highlights both the unity of Marie's oeuvre and the distinctiveness of the individual texts. After situating her writings in their Anglo-Norman political, linguistic, and literary context, this volume considers her treatment of questions of literary composition in relation to the circulation, transmission, and interpretation of her works. Her social and historical engagements are illuminated by the prominence of feudal vocabulary, while her representation of movement across different geographical and imaginary spaces opens a window on plot construction. Repetition and variation are considered as a narrative technique within Marie's work, and as a cultural practice linking her texts to a network of twelfth-century textual traditions.
Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9781846158391Publication Date: 2011The popular genre of medieval romance explored in its physical, geographical, and literary contexts. The essays in this volume take a representative selection of English and Scottish romances from the medieval period and explore some of their medieval contexts, deepening our understanding not only of the romances concerned but also of the specific medieval contexts that produced or influenced them. Example essays: "What's in a name? : Anglo-Norman romances or Chansons de gest?" , "Roland in England: Contextualising the Middle English Song of Roland" & "Modern and medieval views on swooning: The literary and medical contexts of fainting in romance"
Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9781782045861Publication Date: 2015An examination of the depiction and function of memory in a variety of romances, including Troilus and Criseyde and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Middle English romances many memories are created, stored, forgotten, and rediscovered by both the characters and audience; such memory work is not, however, either simple or obvious. This study examines the ways in which recollection is achieved and sustained through physical, cognitive, and interpretative challenges. It uses examples such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, and Emaré, alongside romances by Chaucer and Malory,to investigate the genre's reliance on individual and collective memorial processes. The author argues that a tale's objects, places, dreams, discoveries, disguises, prophecies, and dramatic ironies influence that romance's essential memory work, which relies as much on creativity as it does accuracy. He also explores the imaginative crafts of memory that are employed by romances themselves.
Narrative Technique in the Lais of Marie de France by Call Number: Ebook (also owned in print - check Virgo)ISBN: 9780807891391Publication Date: 1974 (2017)In this volume, Judith Rice Rothschild examines Marie de France's narrative technique through close readings and comparisons of the Lais.
The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781108749589Publication Date: 2023This new Companion provides a broad and perceptive overview of the most important vernacular literary genre of the Middle Ages. Freshly commissioned, original chapters from seventeen leading scholars introduce students and general readers to the form's poetics, narrative voice and manuscript contexts, as well as its relationship to the Mediterranean world, race, gender and the emotions, among many other topics. Providing fresh perspectives on the first pan-European literary movement, essays range across a broad geographical area, including England, France, Italy, Germany and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a varied linguistic spectrum, including Arabic, Hebrew and Yiddish. Exploring the celebration of chivalric ideals and courtly refinements, the volume excavates the tensions and traumas lying beneath decorous surface appearances.
The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9780429590924Publication Date: 2022The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature offers a new, inclusive, and comprehensive context to the study of medieval literature written in the English language from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Middle Ages. Utilising a Trans-European context, this volume includes essays from leading academics in the field across linguistic and geographic divides. Extending beyond the traditional scholarly discussions of insularity in relation to Middle English literature and 'isolationism', this volume: Oversees a variety of genres and topics, including cultural identity, insular borders, linguistic interactions, literary gateways, Middle English texts and traditions, and modern interpretations such as race, gender studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism.
Water in Medieval Literature: An Ecocritical Reading by Call Number: Ebook - Access online using link in VirgoISBN: 9781498539852Publication Date: 2018Ecocritical thinking has sensitized us more than ever before to the tremendous importance of water for human life, as it is richly reflected in the world of literature. The great relevance of water also in the Middle Ages might come as a surprise for many readers, but the evidence assembled here confirms that also medieval poets were keenly aware of the importance of water to sustain all life, to provide understanding of life's secrets, to mirror love, and to connect the individual with God. In eleven chapters major medieval European authors and their works are discussed here, taking us from the world of Old Norse to Irish and Latin literature, to German, French, English, and Italian romances and other narratives. Example essay: "Water worlds in the Lais by Marie de France: The search for happiness in a fluid world"
For fun - Digital Collections
- The Camelot Project (University of Rochester)The Camelot Project is designed to make available a database of Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies, and basic information.
- Chanson de Roland - Digital BodleianTake a look at one fully digitized and one partially digitized original manuscript of the Chanson of Roland.
- The Crusades Project (University of Rochester)The last twenty years have witnessed an exponential rise in interest in the crusades and their influences on Western and Eastern cultures. One recently emerging area of interest is the profound influence the crusades have had on European and Middle-Eastern literature. This bibliography (a partner site to the Camelot Project) will provide annotations of narratives that take their influence and inspiration from the historical crusades.