A (Modern) Reader’s Guide to Medieval Poetry

My recommendations for texts, translations, and reading practices.

After three essays that explored poetry as the first language of the soul, the centrality of the Psalms in the medieval poetic experience, and the classical poets who inspired medieval poets, we can conclude this introduction to medieval poetry with some practical recommendations.

This will be a two-part post. In this first part, we’ll cover some general issues relating to the difficult but wonderfully rewarding task of reading medieval poetry, and we’ll also discuss the first two texts on my list. These are the ones I would recommend if I were approached by hypothetical individuals who had no interest in reading more than two medieval poems. In the second part, I’ll round out the list with the next group of poems—i.e., the ones I would recommend to these hypothetical individuals after the first two had left them thirsty for more. As John Donne wrote in one of his sonnets,

But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.

He was not, I concede, referring to medieval literature here. He was referring to God. But the two are not unrelated. One is infinite Beauty; the other is a garden of beautiful language. One is eternal Truth; the other makes true wisdom alive to our minds. One is perfect Goodness; the other sings to us—enamors us—of that which is good.