The Alliterative Morte Arthure: The Owl and the Nightingale and Five Other Middle English Poems in a Modernized Version, with Comments on the Poems

Poets of every age deal with roughly the same human emotions, and for the experienced reader poetry is interesting or not depending upon the moment-by-moment intensity of its appeal. This skillful rendering by John Gardner of seven Middle English poems into sparklingly modern verse translation—most of them for the first time—represents a selection of poems that, generally, have real artistic value but are so difficult to read in the original that they are not as well known as they deserve to be. The seven poems are: The Alliterative Morte Arthure, Winner and Waster, The Parlia­ment of the Three Ages, Summer Sunday, The Debate of Body and Soul, The Thrush and the Nightingale, and The Owl and the Nightingale.