For the final episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina look at by far the most popular text (in its time) of all that have featured in the series: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The fictional traveller’s fantastical descriptions of different places, peoples and animals across the Holy Land and Asia are almost certainly drawn mainly from other textual sources, rather than direct experience by the unknown author, and yet the work was often used as a source of reference as well as...

For sheer scale and spectacle, surely few plays of any period can match The Digby Play of Mary Magdalene. Boasting at least fifty speaking parts, with multiple locations, scaffolds and pyrotechnics, including an ascent into heaven, this wildly ambitious piece of late Medieval theatre mixes traditional hagiographic drama with magical adventure, romance and broad comedy. For audiences of the time this was not just entertainment, but a profound social and religious experience which, despite its...

From the first recorded instance of the word ‘fart’ in English, to nuanced vignettes of sexual power dynamics, the numerous Middle English lyrics that have survived down the centuries, often scribbled in the margins of more ‘serious’ texts, offer a vivid snapshot of everyday medieval life. In the tenth episode of Medieval Beginings, Irina and Mary analyse several of these short, fleeting verses, probably set to music, and consider their possible origins and purpose, their delicious ambiguity,...

Chaucer’s 14th century tale of ‘double sorrow’, Troilus and Criseyde, set during the siege of Troy, is the subject of Irina and Mary’s ninth episode of Medieval Beginnings. Based largely on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, Chaucer’s novelistic long poem displays a psychological realism that would make Henry James envious, and, with the matchmaker-uncle Pandarus, introduces a character of startling and often perplexing opacity. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen...

Irina and Mary jump to the 14th century for an introspective Arthurian romance about a knight trying to live up to his perfect reputation. The mysterious and intricate Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is perhaps best understood as a series of games within games, in which our hero, a recurring character throughout medieval literature, is never sure what adventure he’s playing. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series,...

Irina and Mary continue their run of Romances with the Middle English Havelok the Dane, a double Cinderella story of sex, fishing and surprisingly graphic violence, written at the end of the 13th century and set in a pre-Conquest, legendary English past. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts at the top of this feed, or here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps:...

For the sixth episode in their Medieval Beginnings series, Mary and Irina go full Romance with one of the most elaborate and surprising narrative poems in medieval literature, Le Roman de Silence, a complex, 13th-century Old French tale about gender, power and transformation. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts at the top of this feed, or here:...

If a Middle Ages full of castles, jousts, hawking, illicit love affairs and playful singing in the meadows is what you’re looking for, then look no further than the Lais of Marie de France. These 12th century love stories, written in Anglo-Norman by a writer who was unusually keen to make her name known, describe noble stories of passion, devotion, betrayal, self-sacrifice and magical transformations played out in enchanted woodlands and richly-draped chambers. Irina and Mary discuss Marie’s...

In their fourth episode, Mary and Irina climb inside a tiny cell to explore the Ancrene Wisse, a guidebook written in the early 13th century, originally intended for three anchoresses, but which enjoyed a much wider audience (there was even a copy in Henry VIII’s library). The women addressed by the text lived lives of extraordinary restriction, permanently enclosed in small anchorholds in order to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation. The Ancrene Wisse is a striking literary...

In the third episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina explore the much-chronicled life of St Cuthbert, as told by the most famous writer of the early medieval period, the so-called Venerable Bede. From Cuthbert’s childhood interest in naked handstands, to his later work as a charismatic preacher who could elicit total confession, and as a hermit who enjoyed the assistance of friendly sea otters, it was a life which, as told by Bede, both challenged and conformed to the expected patterns...

In episode two of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina turn the pages of the Exeter Book, a remarkable 10th century manuscript containing numerous poems and riddles, some of which are written in the voices of women. They consider in particular the enigmatic and beautiful ‘Wife’s Lament’ and ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’, and their numerous interpretations, and compare them to an extraordinary collection of letters written by influential women to St Boniface in the 8th century. Irina Dumitrescu is...

Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu start their Medieval Beginnings series with Beowulf, a tale of monsters and heroes that is also a complex collection of interwoven stories about war and the conduct of a warrior society. They consider the poem’s preoccupations with kingship and a pagan past seen through the eyes of a Christian culture, as well as many of the mysteries which still surround its, not least its authorship and many narrative curiosities. Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English...

Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu introduce their strange and wonderful voyage through the literary landscape of the Middle Ages, and talk about what listeners can expect over the twelve episodes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.