Books to buy for 2022-23 academic year

IMPORTANT NOTE: retailers may take a couple of weeks to order these books for you. You are strongly advised to place your orders in advance of the start of term.

• The Norton Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, ed. by David Lawton (Norton, 2019) OR The Canterbury Tales: Seventeen Tales and The General Prologue, ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson, 3^rd edition (Norton, 2018) OR The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson, 3^rd edition (OUP, 2008). Please ensure that you acquire ONE of these three editions for your study of The Canterbury Tales in term 1, weeks 1-5.
• The Poems of The Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by M. Andrew and R. Waldron, 5th edn (Exeter, 2007), ISBN978-0-859-89790-7. You will need this book for term 1, weeks 7-8. **IMPORTANT NOTE: please ensure that you do NOT purchase The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript in Modern English Prose Translation by the same editors and publisher, as this version does not include the original Middle English text that we will be studying.**

• The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume B: The Sixteenth Century The Early Seventeenth Century, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt et al, 10th edition (2018) ISBN 9780393603033. You will need this book for your work in term 2.
• Other primary texts for the module will be provided in digital formats.

How to obtain books

For information about buying books at Warwick see here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/retail/shops/booksgiftsLink opens in a new window

Secondhand copies are widely available from sources such Abebooks if you wish to reduce costs.

Pre-owned copies of set books may also be available free of charge from the English department for students who may struggle to buy books. For an up to date list of books available, please email our Widening Participation Officer, charlotte.pearce@warwick.ac.uk.

Suggested summer background reading

• For an introduction to the literature of the medieval period, our focus in term 1, you might like to read J.A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2008) or Thorlac Turville-Petre, Reading Middle English Literature (Oxford, 2007). For an overview historical and social developments, we recommend Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348-1500 (Penguin, 1990) or Chris Wickham, Medieval Europe (Yale, 2016)
• For a taste of some of the texts we'll be studying, you might like to read the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, which we'll be studying in the first half of term 1. You can find it in any of the editions of Chaucer recommended above, or with an interlinear modern English translation on the Harvard Geoffrey Chaucer websiteLink opens in a new window. Or you could try Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a modern English translation. We'll be studying this poem in its original language in the second half of term 1, but the set text that we'll be using comes with a code giving you access to a modern English translation.