Medieval English Literature: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Medieval English Literature, credited to Willliam Paton Ker, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Medieval English Literature by Willliam Paton Ker. Read in English by Christine Rottger. I have very little doubt in my own mind that why so many young men despise and even deride knowledge is because knowledge has been presented to them in so arid a form, so little connected with anything that concerns them in the remotest degree. We ought, I think, to wind our way slowly back into the past from the present; we ought to start with modern problems and modern ideas, and show people how they came into being; we ought to learn about the world, as it is, first, and climb the hill slowly. But what we do is to take the history of the past, Athens and Rome and Judæa, three glowing and shining realms, I readily admit; but we leave the gaps all unbridged, so that it seems remote, abstruse, and incomprehensible that men should ever have lived and thought so. I was reading a few days ago a little book by Professor Ker, on mediæval English, and reading it with a species of rapture. It all came so freshly and pungently out of a full mind, penetrated with zest and enjoyment. One followed the little rill of literary craftsmanship so easily out of the plain to its high source among the hills, till I wondered why on earth I had not been told some of these delightful things long ago, that I might have seen how our great literature took shape. Such scraps of knowledge as I possess fell into shape, and I saw the whole as in a map outspread. (excerpted from Joyous Gard by Arthur Christopher Benson)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Medieval English Literature
• Author credits: Willliam Paton Ker
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 9
• Listed recording duration: 5:45:09

Catalogue topics

• literary criticism

Track guide

1. 01 - Introduction — 18:03
2. 02 - The Anglo-Saxon Period — 51:29
3. 03 - The Middle English Period (1150-1500) — 1:02:43
4. 04 - The Romances — 59:37
5. 05 - Songs and Ballads — 30:37
6. 06 - Comic Poetry — 23:08
7. 07 - Allegory — 23:48
8. 08 - Sermons and Histories, In Verse and Prose — 23:43
9. 09 - Chaucer, Note on Books, Supplementary Note by R.W. Chambers — 52:01

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.