Floure and the Leafe, the Assembly of Ladies, the Isle of Ladies

by Derek Pearsall

An asset to any study of gender in medieval England, this volume contains three poems that complement each other in their treatments of relations between the sexes. "The Floure and the Leafe" explores the courtly imagery of the flower and leaf, wherein the flower symbolizes the fickleness and shallow attraction characteristic of men, compared to the evergreen persistence of the leaf, likened to the long-suffering of women. Meanwhile, "The Assembly of Ladies" recounts the activities of a group of women while describing the differences between the sexes. Finally, the dream poem "The Isle of Ladies" tells of a male dreamer's interactions with the ladies of an all-female island.

Genres: Medieval, Poetry, Classics

152 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1980

About the author

Derek Pearsall (b.1931) is a prominent medievalist and Chaucerian who has written and published widely on Chaucer, Langland, Gower, manuscript studies, and medieval history and culture.

He is the Co-director, Emeritus, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York; Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University. He earned a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 from the University of Birmingham .

Reviews

[Chrysophylax · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good edition of three Middle-English poems. The only thing that bothered me was that Pearsall was inconsistent with his glosses. He glosses the same word three times on the same page yet when that word occurs again twenty pages later he would not gloss it.