How Medieval Songs Come Down

This volume by Arc Humanities Press, doubling as a special issue of the journal Early Middle English, honours the long and prolific career of scholar and poet Carter Revard (1931–2022). The volume includes contributions by Keith Busby, Susanna Fein, Thomas Goodmann, Richard Firth Green, Steven Justice, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Nancy P. Pope, and Suzanne M. Yeager, along with Revard's unpublished edition and translation of a thirteenth-century Anglo-French parlour game (edited by Susanna Fein and David Raybin). In recognition of Revard's deep interest in early Middle English and Anglo-French literature, these essays offer new research that reflects his “sleuthing” for the scribe of Harley 2253 as well as topics in medieval social history and literary codicology. Taken together, the essays deepen our understanding of the intricate social and political contexts of literary transmission, and of manuscript production and reception.

Susanna Fein edited and translated the contents of British Library, MS Harley 2253 (3 vols., 2014–2015) and also produced Studies in the Harley Manuscript (2000), home of Carter Revard’s landmark essay on the Harley scribe. She is the editor of The Chaucer Review and a scholar of medieval manuscripts and poetry.

Thomas Goodmann edited Approaches to Teaching Langland’s “Piers Plowman” (2018), and has served as executive director of the New Chaucer Society, and president of TEAMS: Teaching Association for Medieval Studies. He taught at Washington University and the University of Miami.