Medieval/Early Literature

[Anonymous No.17100510]

/lit/ is boring right now so I'm going to make an interesting and quality thread.

What are some of the greatest early/medieval works of literature you have read and would recommend?

I'm finishing up Njal's Saga and I'm enthralled by it. Seriously top 5-10 works of literature I have ever read.

Are the other Icelandic sagas worth looking into?

[Anonymous No.17100827]

I like Beowulf. Since I'm guessing you already speak Icelandic it shouldn't be that hard to learn Old English.

[Anonymous No.17100926]

The New Testament is absolutely kino. Also check out Völuspá.

[Anonymous No.17100947]

>>17100827
Norwegian, actually, so close. I will check out Beowulf, thanks.
>>17100926
I have read the Edda, but I'll look into some New Testament books.

[Anonymous No.17101046]

>>17100926
>The New Testament
it's from the antiquity

[Anonymous No.17101061]

>>17100510
Gottfried von Strassburg's version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult

[Anonymous No.17101064]

>>17100510
The Alexandreis is pretty good.

[Anonymous No.17101088]

Don Quixote
The Qur'an

[Anonymous No.17101126]

Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes

>>17100510
you mean like this, or older?

[Anonymous No.17101272]

>>17101088
>Don Quixote

>1600
>medieval

[Anonymous No.17101930]

bump

[Anonymous No.17101950]

>>17101126
Holy shit, there is a writer whose name was "Cretin"?

[Anonymous No.17102305]

>>17100510
based and sagapilled

[Anonymous No.17103623]

bump

[Anonymous No.17103666]

>>17100510
Piers Plowman. Bizarre as fuck but a very interesting read

[Anonymous No.17103748]

Read the Nibelungenlied and drink deep from its fountain. The main character Siegfried represents the old heroic days when giants (Nephilim) mated with the daughters of men and gave birth to superhumans (the mighty men of old, men of renown), placed within the mediocre timeline of effeminate courtiers.

[Anonymous No.17104330]

>>17101088
>>17101272
Don Quixote is medieval. The Quran is not

[Anonymous No.17104338]

>>17101950
Chretien means Christian. A 2 second jewgle search tells me that

[Anonymous No.17105080]

>>17104330
mother fucker 1600s isnt medieval you braindead faggot

[Anonymous No.17105103]

Was reading The Lesser Key of Solomon. Weird shit man.

[Anonymous No.17105115]

>>17100510

[Anonymous No.17105130]

>>17100510
genji no monogatari is pretty interesting. I took a class in college where we just spent the whole semester dissecting it

[Anonymous No.17105262]

A lot of medieval lit, particularly the narratives are quite alien and jarring in the way they unfold and resolve. But some of the oriental stuff seems a lot less crazy to me, like the Chinese poet Shi Wu from the 13th century's poetry can still be read with pleasure and familiarity.

[Anonymous No.17105305]

Read some Jung and wanted to learn more about alchemy so I grabbed Theatrum Chemmicum Britannicum unedited in PDF form. It's a collection from the 1600s of English writings on alchemy going back as far as the 1200s I think. It was near indecipherable at first, for instance I don't think they used the letter S like we do today because every normal s was written with an f, fs were still normal as well. Stuff like that made it difficult and that's not even getting into the vocab. But it was really fun to figure out, like a literary puzzle. And as a bonus you can learn about alchemy as a spiritual philosophy. It does talk about making gold often but surprise, it's just a metaphor for how to live your best life.

[Anonymous No.17105316]

>>17100510
Reinaert de vos is pretty good, but I doubt that it has ever been translated in English.

[Anonymous No.17105327]

GReat medieval tales, ye seyde? Longen yew to goon on pilgrimages?

[Anonymous No.17105469]

>>17105327
BASED

[Anonymous No.17105579]

>>17100510
>What are some of the greatest early/medieval works

Scotland
From Scotland the first surviving piece of story literature is The Bruce by John Barber
Robert Henryson who is regarded as one of the best poets who lived
Murdoch Nisbet's New Testament is a good book as it was translated from Wycliffe's so it allows the reader to compare the Scots and the English.

Ossian is one but since his works don't survive in any ancient Scottish manuscript it is up to the person to say if he counts it as old or not.

If you want anymore detail or types of books from Scotland just ask.

[Anonymous No.17105582]

>>17103748
>Nibelungenlied
That's a very lucky book.
One copy of it existed before it was printed much like Ossian's good quality works so all it would have taken was one hungry dog and it would have disapeared.

[Anonymous No.17105590]

>>17100510
Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
I like medieval and early modern English literature for the language.

[Anonymous No.17105830]

>>17105305
>Theatrum Chemmicum Britannicum unedited in PDF form
Could you please upload this as I'd love to read it and I can't seem to find it anywhere.

[Anonymous No.17105860]

>>17100510
The Heliand is a great retelling of the NT with viking aesthetics.

[Anonymous No.17106056]

Hervarar Saga/Tyrfing cycle which isn't in the Eddas is very classic. One of the first to be translated and read in English afaik. Seems to have been very influential on Tolkien, he lifted the concept of the riddle contest between Golum and Bilbo almost entirely from it, I think the titular cursed sword also influenced the Ring having capricious power and passing on through generations causing misfortune.

[Anonymous No.17106106]

>>17100510
From England, early med: Beowulf, anglo saxon riddles, poems like the wanderer, the seafarer, the ruin. Beowulf would be interesting for you since you've read the Norse stuff so you can see a Christian's take on the style
Late med: Anything Chaucer, Canterbury Tales obviously

[Anonymous No.17106111]

>>17105130
Genji is quintessential medieval literature, for sure. Pillow Book as well.
>>17105327
based as hell

[Anonymous No.17106211]

>>17105327
Canterbury Tales are beautiful but they are more early Renaissance/ humanist than medieval in tone. Same with Boccaccio.

[Anonymous No.17106284]

Geoffroi de charney has some bangers.
Fiori has some good shit if your into western martial arts.
I guess it's right at the end of the period, but the faithful Executioner is a great biography.

[Anonymous No.17106289]

>>17100510
I really found the Nuremberg Chronicle to be masterful

[Anonymous No.17106342]

>>17100510
I already speak English and a good deal of French. I plan to bring my french fully up to speed by reading some french works and then learn German in a years time perhaps. Anons, how hard would it be to read Medieval or just non contemporary texts in these languages? Difficult/big time investment, easy or is it even worth trying? Get a translation instead?

Also if I know German and English I imagine old English being a mix of these would be even easier to get into, but again I'm not sure how worthewhile that time investment would be

[Anonymous No.17106405]

>>17106342
It's a fucking nightmare.

[Anonymous No.17106409]

piers plowman

[Anonymous No.17106700]

bump

[Anonymous No.17106710]

>>17106342
German and English and if you've read a lot of middle english will help with old English but it isn't a complete substitute and you still need to learn how the language operates and the vocabulary and there's maybe around 400 worthwhile things in the old English canon, medieval french has a lot more than that so it's really up to what you'd prefer, any language is worth it if you really like it in my opinion, also old English can be useful for some similar languages like old norse so think about it like that too

[Anonymous No.17107308]

best languages for medieval lit are Old Icelandic and Old Japanese

[betterthanfood No.17107364]

>>17105830
>>17105305
Same.

[Anonymous No.17107461]

>>17107364
I'll try finding it now. I just found it online somewhere years ago not sure if I still have it. I wanna say it was maybe on Archive.org?

[Anonymous No.17107534]

>>17107364
I was spelling it very wrong here is an archive link that I'm pretty sure is what I grabbed. It seems like pictures of the actual book but its legible enough. I don't think I ever had an actual ebook version of it

https://archive.org/details/theatrumchemicum00ashm/mode/2up

[Anonymous No.17107628]

>>17105115
Man, the 10 volume colleciton is so expensive.

[Anonymous No.17107723]

>>17105305
Upload it

[Anonymous No.17107735]

>>17107723
I just linked it one post above yours. Here is the archive link again with like a dozen different file formats available for download.
https://archive.org/details/theatrumchemicum00ashm/mode/2up

[Anonymous No.17107747]

>>17107735
and yes I read all 500 pages of this on a kindle don't try to tell me its illegible. It gets a lot easier to read after several dozen pages and you get the hang of the parlance.

[Anonymous No.17107772]

>>17107735
Sorry my mistake

[Anonymous No.17107835]

>>17100510
>>17100947
based norwaybro, I'm studying norwegian and about to read the sagas
>>17103748
also based, whats a good translation? was thinking of getting pic rel

[Anonymous No.17107871]

>>17104330
Retard

[Anonymous No.17108333]

Genji.

[Anonymous No.17108544]

>>17107835
>i'm studying norwegian
baseret

[Anonymous No.17108570]

>>17107835
>also based, whats a good translation? was thinking of getting pic rel
I read it with this translation. I don't know a lick of Middle High German to be able to give an honest take but the translator noted he tried his best to remain faithful to the syntax and vocab (although English lacks the words to capture the nuance of a few words) in prose. It is highly readable and contains a lot of notes to catch the historical/cultural references.

[Anonymous No.17108622]

>>17108333
best edition of this?

[Anonymous No.17108744]

>>17108544
takk min kule venn

[Anonymous No.17109374]

>>17108622
Tyler

[Anonymous No.17109597]

>>17100510
La Commedia

[Anonymous No.17110105]

bump

[Anonymous No.17110514]

xmas bump