Library: Poetry by Credo Reference: Medieval & Renaissance Poetry

Notable Poems

At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners, by John Donne
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels; and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go.
Carmina Burana
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
A collection of 228 troubadour songs in Latin and German, discovered in 1803 by Freiherr Christoph von Arentin in the monastery of Benedikt Beuren, about 60 miles south of Munich. Dating from the early 13th century, they are a mixture of moral-satirical texts, love lyrics (some of them very sexually explicit) and drinking songs.
Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
From Brewer's Curious Titles
An epic poem by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who completed it in 1321, just before his death. The original title was simply Commedia (Italian, ‘ play’), and it was not until after the 16th century that it became known as the Divina Commedia. There are three parts, Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio and Paradiso.
Hamlet: Topic Page
A tragedy by William Shakespeare, first performed c. 1601. A bad, perhaps pirated, Quarto (Q1) was published in 1603. Modern editors use a second Quarto (Q2), published in 1604, and the text in the First Folio of 1623.
Piers Plowman, by William Langland
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
Attributed to William Langland, Piers Plowman is a major alliterative narrative poem, composed in the later 14th century and extant in three versions, conventionally known as the A, B and C texts. It is now generally accepted that Langland is responsible for each of these versions.
Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Allegory by John Bunyan, published in 1678-84, that describes the journey through life to the Celestial City of a man called Christian. On his way through the Slough of Despond, the House Beautiful, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and other landmarks, he meets a number of allegorical figures.
Romeo & Juliet: Topic Page
A romantic tragedy by Shakespeare. It was published in quarto in a corrupt form in 1597, and in a better edition in 1599.
The Rubiayat of Omar Khayyam
From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
Verses by Omar Khayyam, a Persian scholar and poet who died in 1123.

Early Poets

Dante Alighieri (1265- 1321): Topic Page
Italian poet, b. Florence. Dante was the author of the Divine Comedy, one of the greatest of literary classics.
William Blake (1757 - 1827): Topic Page
William Blake, born in London where he spent all but three years of his life, was both poet and visionary artist. Despite having a number of artist friends, he was one of the first unrecognized geniuses of the Romantic age.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 - 1400): Topic Page
English poet. The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, reveals his knowledge of human nature and his stylistic variety, from the sophisticated and subtly humorous to the simple and bawdy.
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
English poet and divine. He is considered the greatest of the metaphysical poets.
Omar Khayyam (11th Century)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Persian poet and mathematician, b. Nishapur. He was called Khayyam [tentmaker] probably because of his father's occupation. The details of his life are mostly conjectural, but he was well educated and became celebrated as the outstanding mathematician of his time.
William Langland (1332- 1400)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Putative author of Piers Plowman. He was born probably at Ledbury near the Welsh marshes and may have gone to school at Great Malvern Priory. Although he took minor orders he never became a priest.
John Milton (1608 - 1674): Topic Page
English poet and prose writer. His epic Paradise Lost (1667) is one of the landmarks of English literature.
Su Tung Po (1036 - 1101)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Chinese poet. He was also called Su Shih. Born in present-day Sichuan prov., he was one of a literary family. Su occupied many official posts, rising to president of the board of rites (which regulated imperial ceremonies and worship).
Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207 - 1273)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Great Islamic Persian sage and poet mystic, b. in Balkh. His father, a scholar, was invited by the Seljuk sultan of Rum to settle in Iconium (now Konya), Turkey.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616): Topic Page
English dramatist and poet, b. Stratford-on-Avon. He is widely considered the greatest playwright who ever lived.
Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599): Topic Page
English poet. His major work is the allegorical epic The Faerie Queene, of which six books survive (three published in 1590 and three in 1596). Other books include The Shepheard's Calendar (1579), Astrophel (1586), the love sonnets Amoretti, and the marriage poem Epithalamion (1595).
Snorri Sturlason (1179 - 1241)
From The Companion to British History
Statesman, historian and poet, was Law Speaker of the Icelandic Althing (Parliament) from 1215 to 1218 and again from 1222 to 1231.