Wynnere and Wastoure and the Parlement of the Thre Ages (TEAMS Middle English Texts)

This edition contains two poems valuable to the study of satire of social abuses in the fourteenth century: Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Both combine two genres of medieval poetry: dream visions and poetic debates. As the editor observes, the poem's perspectives are truly dizzying: on the one hand, economics, politics, ethics and social relations are seen as an interrelated set of universal, timeless principles; on the other, they appear as actual, contingent conditions that have resulted from specific acts in history. The editions include notes, glosses, an introduction, and a glossary, making them accessible to beginning and advanced students in Middle English alike.