Harvard Studies in Medieval Latin

Solomon and Marcolf pits wise Solomon, famous from the Bible, against a wily peasant named Marcolf. Cited by Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World, Solomon and Marcolf is widely known by name. But until now it has not been translated into any modern language. The present volume offers an introduction, followed by the Latin and English, detailed commentary, and reproductions of woodcut illustrations from the 1514 edition.

Working in a renewed Aristotelian tradition, Guillelmus de Aragonia wrote De nobilitate animi, “On Nobility of Mind,” around 1280–1290 and taught that true nobility is an acquired, not inborn, quality. This edition, based in part on hitherto unknown manuscripts, presents the Latin text with an English translation, an introduction, and appendix.

The Cambridge Songs is the most important anthology of songs from before the thirteenth-century Carmina Burana. It contains panegyrics and dirges, political poems, comic tales, religious and didactic poems, and poetry of spring and love. This edition includes a substantial introduction, the Latin texts and English prose, and extensive commentary.

Solomon and Marcolf: Vernacular Traditions offers an array of relevant texts, in English for the first time, that display the mysteries of the “rogue biography” that is Solomon and Marcolf. The astonishingly varied and fascinating pieces have been translated from medieval and early modern French, Russian, German, Icelandic, Danish, and Italian.