Description

Authors of the Middle Ages is a new series, designed for research and reference. Each volume, by an expert on the subject, gives an account of the facts known about the Author's life and immediate historical context, together with a review of subsequent scholarship. This is supported by citation of al known contemporary references; a dated and classified list of manuscripts and editions; and a bibliography of secondary sources. The aim is to combine, in one compact volume, a biography of a medieval author with all the information needed for further research. The series is divided into sections. A first, edited by M. C. Seymour, focuses on English Writers of the Late Middle Ages, a second, more general section, edited by Patrick J. Geary, deals with Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West. John Trevisa (d. 1402) is renowned for his major literary translations of the Polychronicon, the encyclopedia of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and other works. What is known of his life and context as a factious Oxford scholar, possibly associated with Wyclif and the English translation of the Bible, and as a turbulent canon of Gloucestershire is here set out. The work is based on fresh research in university and diocesan records, and supported by an appendix of transcriptions of unpublished archival material.