Euro
British Pound
Product Description
Hardcover, 1982 edition, (Originally 1927, with content from later works by the author from the 1930's also)
In a plain purple slipcase which is bumped at the head to rear, sllight crack but holding. Internally unmarked, as new.
The Wandering Scholars is not about scholarship, it's about poetry. Specifically, it's a history of the Latin-language, secular lyric poetry of the European middle ages. Latin was then the international language of the church, law, scholarship and diplomacy - and of a mostly forgotten grouping of poets.
Waddell also published a book of translations too, called Mediaeval Latin Lyrics.
Helen scattered translations of the poems (and sometimes fragments of originals) through the text, a large part of the book's appeal. She made confident rankings: who was a great man, who was a lesser, what was a great poem and what was not (top two: Dum Diane vitrea and Dies irae). She even staged in the text a competition for the best drinking song in the world (won by Mihi est propositum). She was a hands-on researcher, but her book was a literary composition more than a technical history.
