A book of Middle English /

This "revised" edition of a popular text--featuring 16 selections from The Peterborough Chronicle to Chaucer--supplements Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Thompson's A Guide to Old English (rev. ed., CH, Feb'83). An introduction to Middle English with references to the selections covers pronunciation, vocabulary, inflections, syntax, and meter. The selections themselves illustrate the changing language and some of the dialectal differences. An authoritative bibliography, an expanded glossary with etymologies, and a list of textual differences between the selections and manuscript readings are included. Textual criticism and some of its procedures are partially noted; nevertheless, the emphasis on "the physicality of a document" can easily overlook the severe difficulties in establishing a reliable text (see Tim Machan's Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts, CH, May'95). (There is, for example, no text of Chaucer with "unassailable ... authority," as Seth Lerer points out in Chaucer and His Readers, CH, Feb'94). Still, this volume offers a balanced, up-to-date, and thorough approach to the study of Middle English language and literature. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. F. O'Malley Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania