I. Literary backgrounds

Erich Auerbach Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, 1953).

ed. W. R. J. Barron The Arthur of the English (Cardiff, 2001).

John Burrow Medieval Writers and their Work: Middle English Literature and its Background, 1100-1500 (Oxford, 1982).

H. J. Chaytor From Script to Print: an Introduction to Medieval Literature (Cambridge, 1945).

M. T. Clanchy From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066-1307 (London, 1979).

Janet Coleman English Literature in History, 1350-1400: Medieval Readers and Writers (London, 1981).

Pamela Gradon Form and Style in Early English Literature (London, 1971), esp. Chap. 4, pp. 212-272.

Gisela Guddat-Figge Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Middle English Romances Münchner Universitäts-Schriften Philosophische Facultät: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie, Vol. 4 (Munich, 1976).

David Lawton (ed.) Middle English Alliterative Poetry and its Literary Background: Seven Essays (Cambridge, 1982).

Malcolm Parkes "The Literacy of the Laity" in David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby, eds. Literature and Western Civilization: The Medieval World (London, 1973).

Paul Zumthor Introduction à la poésie orale (Paris, 1983).

Exempla:

Caesarius of Heisterbach (J. Strange (ed.)) Dialogus miraculorum 2 vols. (Cologne, 1851; repr. Ridgewood, NJ, 1966).

T. Crane (ed.) The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry Pub. Folklore Soc. 26 (London, 1890).

W. Dick (ed.) Gesta Romanorum (Leipzig, 1890; repr. Amsterdam 1970).

J. Mosher The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature of England (New York, 1911).

J. Welter L'exemplum dans la littérature réligieuse et didactique du moyen âge (Paris, 1927).

Sermons:

G. R. Owst Preaching in Medieval England, c. 1350-1450 (Cambridge, 1926).

-- Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1961).

II. Romance

A. Bibliographical aids

J. Burke Severs (ed.) A Manual of the Writings in Middle English Fasc. 1, vol. 1: Romances (New Haven, 1967).

Joanne Rice Middle English Romance: an annotated bibliography (New York, 1987).

B. The word "romance"

Reinald Hoops Der Begriff "Romance" in der mittelenglischen und frühneuenglischen Literatur Anglistische Forschungen 68 (Heidelberg, 1929).

Paul Strohm "The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce" Genre 10 (1977), 1-28.

C. Studies of genre

Gillian Beer Romance (London, 1970), esp. pp. 16-31.

Dorothy Everett "A Characterization of the English Medieval Romances" in Essays on Middle English Literature (Oxford, 1955).

Carol Fewster Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987).

Dieter Mehl "Die kürzeren mittelenglischen 'Romanzen' und die Gattungsfrage" Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 38 (1964), 524ff.

John Finlayson "Definitions of Middle English Romance" Chaucer Review 15 (1980-1), 44-62 and 168-81.

Northrop Frye The Secular Scripture: a Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, MA, 1976).

Paul Strohm "Middle English Narrative Genres" Genre 13 (1980), 379-88.

see also Amsler (Theoretical approaches).

D. The "exemplary romance" controversy

Diana Childress "Between Romance and Legend: 'Secular Hagiography' in Middle English Literature" Philological Quarterly 57 (1978), 311-22.

Margaret Hurley "Saints' Legends and Romance Again: Secularization of Structure and Motif" Genre 8 (1975), 60-73.

Hanspeter Schelp Exemplarische Romanzen im Mittelenglischen Palæstra 246 (Göttingen, 1967).

see also Kratins, Hume (Amis and Amiloun), Klausner (Awntyrs of Arthure, Guy of Warwick), Crane Dannenbaum(Guy of Warwick, Insular Romance).

E. Critical studies

Elizabeth Archibald "Women and Romance" in H. Aertsen and A. Macdonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 153-70.

Geraldine Barnes Counsel and Strategy in Middle English Romance (Woodbridge, 1993).

W. R. J. Barron English Medieval Romance (London, 1987).

Piero Boitani English Medieval Narrative in the 13th & 14th centuries (Cambridge, 1982), esp. ch. 3, "The World of Romance".

Susan Crane Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley, 1986) esp. Amis and Amiloun, Havelok the Dane, King Horn, Guy of Warwick.

A. S. G. Edwards "Middle English Romance: the Limits of Editing, the Limits of Criticism" in T. W. Machan Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation (Binghamton, 1991), 91-104.

Maureen Fries "The Characterization of Women in the Alliterative Tradition" in Levy and Szarmach Alliterative Tradition, 25-46.

John Ganim "History and Consciousness in Middle English Romance" The Literary Review 25 (1980), 481-501.

-- Style and Consciousness in Middle English Narrative (Princeton, 1983), esp. Ch. 1 "Community and Consciousness in the Early Middle English Romances".

D. H. Green Irony in the Medieval Romance (Cambridge, 1979).

Phillipa Hardman "Fitt Divisions in Middle English Romances: a Consideration of the Evidence" Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), 63-80.

Laura Hibbard (Loomis) Mediæval Romance in England (Oxford, 1924; repr. New York, 1960).

Andrea Hopkins The Sinful Knight: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance (Oxford, 1990) esp. Guy of Warwick, Sir Isumbras, Sir Gowther.

L. H. Hornstein "Middle English Romances" in J. Burke Severs (ed.) Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata (Pittsburgh, 1971), pp. 55-95.

Kathryn Hume "The Formal Nature of Middle English Romance" Philological Quarterly 53 (1974), 158-80.

George Kane Middle English Literature: a Critical Study of the Romances, the Religious Lyrics , and Piers Plowman (London, 1951).

Erik Kooper "Love and Marriage in the Middle English Romances" in H. Aertsen and A. Macdonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 171-88.

Ojars Kratins "Treason in the Middle English Metrical Romances" Philological Quarterly 45 (1966), 668-688.

Dieter Mehl The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1968).

D. D. R. Owen (ed.) Arthurian Romance: Seven Essays (Edinburgh, 1970).

Derek Pearsall "The Development of Middle English Romance" Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965), 91-116.

-- "The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century" Essays and Studies 29 (1976), 56-83.

-- "Understanding Middle English Romance" Review 2 (1980), 105-25.

Lee Ramsay Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington, IN, 1983).

Edmund Reiss "Romance" in T. J. Heffernan (ed.) The Popular Literature of Medieval England Tennessee Studies in Literature 28 (Knoxville, 1985), 108-130.

V. B. Richmond The Popularity of Middle English Romance (Bowling Green, OH, 1975).

L. M. Sklute "The Ambiguity of Ethical Norms in Courtly Romance" Genre 11 (1978), 315-32.

John Stevens Medieval Romance: Themes and Approaches (London, 1973).

Andrew Taylor "Fragmentation, Corruption, and Minstrel Narrative: the Question of the Middle English Romances" Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992), 38-62.

Wim Tigges "Romance and Parody" in H. Aertsen and A. Macdonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 129=52.

A. M. Trounce "The English Tail-Rhyme Romances" Medium Ævum 1 (1932), 87-108, 168-82; 2 (1933), 34-57, 189-98; 3 (1934), 30-50.

Eugene Vinaver The Rise of Romance (London, 1971).

IV. Theoretical approaches

David Aers (ed.) Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, & History (New York, 1986).

Mark E. Amsler "Literary Theory and the Genres of Middle English Literature" Genre 13 (1980), 389-96.

Derek Brewer (ed.) Studies in Middle English Romances: some new approaches (Cambridge, 1988).

Jennifer Fellows, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, Judith Weiss (eds.) Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff, 1996).

L. A. Finke and M. B. Shichtman Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca, 1987).

Carol Meale (ed.) Readings in Middle English Romance (Cambridge, 1994).

Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows, Carol Meale (eds.) Romance in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1991).

Structuralist:

Eugene Dorfman The Narreme in the Medieval Romance Epic: an Introduction to Narrative Structures (Toronto, 1969).

Jörg Fichte "The Middle English Arthurian Romance" in P. Boitani and A. Torti, eds. Literature in Fourteenth-century England (Tübingen/Cambridge, 1983).

W. W. Ryding Structure in Medieval Narrative (The Hague, 1971).

James A. Schultz The Shape of the Round Table: Structures of Middle High German Arthurian Romance (Toronto, 1983).

Susan Wittig Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances (Austin, TX, 1978).

Oral Formulaic:

A. C. Baugh "The Authorship of the Middle English Romances" MHRA Bulletin 22 (1950), 13-28.

-- "Convention and Individuality in the Middle English Romances" in J. Mandel and B. Rosenberg, eds. Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley (Brunswick, NJ, 1970), 123-46.

-- "Improvisation in the Middle English Romances" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959), 418-54.

-- "The Middle English Romances: Some Questions of Creation, Presentation, and Preservation" Speculum 42 (1967), 1-31.

Franz Bäuml "Medieval Texts and the Two Theories of Oral Formulaic Composition: A Proposal for a Third Theory" New Literary History 16/1 (1984), 51-66.

Ruth Finnegan Oral Poetry, its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge, 1977).

John Miles Foley The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology (Bloomington, IN, 1988).

W. E. Holland "Formulaic Diction and the Descent of a Middle English Romance" Speculum 48 (1973), 89-109.

Murray McGillivray Memorization in the Transmission of the Middle English Romances (New York, 1990).

W. A. Quinn and A. S. Hall Jongleur: A Modified Theory of Oral Improvisation and its Effects on the Performance and Transmission of Middle English Romance (Washington, DC, 1982).

R. A. Waldron "Oral-Formulaic Technique and Middle English Alliterative Poetry" Speculum 32 (1957), 792-804.

Narratological:

Mieke Bal Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto, 1985).

F. Calin and W. Calin "Medieval Fiction and New Novel: Some Polemical Remarks on the Subject of Narrative" Yale French Studies 51 (1974), 235-50.

A. J. Greimas Structural Semantics: an Attempt at a Method (Lincoln, NB, 1983).

Gerald Prince Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative (The Hague, 1982).

E. B. Vitz "Desire and Causality in Medieval Narrative" Romanic Review 71 (1980), 213-43.

-- Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology: Subjects and Objects of Desire (New York, 1989).

Marxist:

Fredric Jameson "Magical narratives: romance as genre" New Literary History 7 (1975), 135-64.

Stephen Knight "The Social Function of the Middle English Romances" in David Aers (ed.) Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History (New York, 1986), 99-122.

Raymond Williams Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977).

Folkloric:

Gerald Bordman Motif-index of the English Metrical Romances (Helsinki, 1963).

V. A. P. Lowe "Folklore as a Unifying Factor in The Awntyrs of Arthure" Folklore Forum 13 (1980), 199-223.

Vladimir Propp, trans. L. Scott Morphology of the Folk-tale (Bloomington, 1958).

Bruce Rosenberg "The Morphology of the Middle English Metrical Romances" Journal of Popular Culture 1 (1967), 63-77.

F. L. Utley "Folklore, Myth, and Ritual" in D. Bethurum (ed.) Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature (New York, 1960), pp. 83-109.

Computer-assisted analysis:

John Bradley TACT 1.2 (text retrieval software) UTCS 1990.

D. I. Lancashire "Chaucer's Repetends from the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales" in R. Taylor (ed.) The Centre and its Compass (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993).

Toshio Saito and Mitsunori Imai, eds. A Concordance to the Middle English Metrical Romances 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1988).

Reception/Audience:

K. Brunner "Middle English Metrical Romances and their Audience" in MacE. Leach (ed.) Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia, 1961), 219-228.

-- "Der Überlieferung der mittelenglischen Versromanzen" Anglia 76 (1958), 64-73.

Speech act theory:

J. L. Austin How to do Things with Words (Oxford, 1962).

Mary Louise Pratt Towards a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (Bloomington, IN, 1977).

J. R. Searle Speech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge, 1969).

-- Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge, 1979).

Paul Zumthor "The Text and the Voice" New Litarary History 16/1 (1984), 67-92.