Middle Ages Reading List
I am currently reading these works as part of
a Great Books reading program. This list
roughly covers the years 300-1400, but I have included some works on
ancient Judaism and early Christianity that I did not read earlier.
More about my reading lists
- Historic Overview:
- Durant. Age of Faith
- Cantor. Civilization of the Middle Ages
- Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe
- Davies. Europe: A History (chapters 1-6)
- Gies
- Life in a Medieval Village
- Life in a Medieval City
- Life in a Medieval Castle
- A Medieval Family
- Macaulay, David. Castle
- Late Antiquity:
- Late Paganism
- Gibbon. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chapters 1-38,
Antonines to the Fall of Rome)
- Plotinus. Enneads (selections)
- Ancient Israel and Medieval Judaism
- Ancient History:
- Grant, Michael. The History of Ancient Israel
- Josephus. Jewish War
- Yadin. Masada
- Finkelstein. Akiba
- Yadin. Bar Kokhba
- Avi-Yonah, Michael. Jews of Palestine: A Political
History from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest
- Bible:
- [The Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures)
is on my Ancient Near East reading
list]
- Holtz, ed. Back to the Sources (Intro. and ch. 1)
- Graves and Patai. Hebrew Myths
- Heschel. Prophets
- Alter. Art of Biblical Narrative,
Art of Biblical Poetry
- Apocrypha
- Midrash:
- Holtz (ch. 3)
- Midrash (selections)
(Classic Midrash, pub. by Paulist Press)
- Talmud:
- Holtz (ch. 2, 8)
- Neusner. Oral Torah
- Neusner. Introduction to Rabbinic Judaism
- Steinsaltz. Essential Talmud
- Pirke Avot
- Mishnah
- Medieval Jewish Literature:
- Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse
- Ben-Ezra
- Halevi
- Medieval Jewish Philosophy:
- Holtz (ch. 4, 5)
- Maimonides
- Mysticism and Kabbalah:
- Holtz (ch. 6)
- Heschel. "The Mystical Element in Judaism." In
Finkelstein (ed.). The Jews: Their History, Culture,
and Religion
- Scholem. Kabbalah
- _____. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism
- _____. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Primary sources:
- Essential Kabbalah
- Early Kabbalah
- Sefer Yetzirah
- Zohar (abridged translations by
Scholem, Matt [Paulist Pr.], and Berg [Essential
Zohar])
- Safed Spirituality
Modern Practice:
- Weiner. 9 1/2 Mystics
- Cooper. God is a Verb
- Silberman. Heavenly Powers
- Jewish Folklore:
- Jewish Folktales
- Yiddish Folktales
- Frankel. Classic Tales
- Golem
- The Book of Legends (Sefer Ha-Aggadah)
- Early Christianity
- New Testament
- Frye. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature
- Augustine. Confessions
- Islam:
- Qur'an
- Armstrong, Karen. Muhammad, Islam
- Gibbon. (chapters 50-52, Islamic World)
- Hourani. History of the Arab Peoples
- Firdausi
- Ibn Hazm. Ring of the Dove
- Omar Khayyam
- 'Attar. Conference of the Birds
- Rumi (Coleman Barks, tr.?)
- Hafiz
- Ibn Khaldun. Prolegomena
- Perfumed Garden (16th C)
- Rushdie. Satanic Verses
- "Dark Ages" / Northern Sagas (600-1100):
- Gibbon. (chapters 39-49 and 53-57, Fall of Rome through 11th C)
- Lacey and Danziger. Year 1000
- Beowulf (tr. Chickering, Liuzza, Heaney)
- Song of Roland (11th C)
- Nibelungenlied
- Njal's Saga
- Romance of the Rose (?)
- Bede (?)
- High Middle Ages (1100-1400):
- Gibbon. (chapters 58-71, Crusades to Fall of Constantinople)
- Tuchman. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
- Norwich. Shakespeare's Kings
- Curtius. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages
- Abelard and Heloise
- Goliards & Carmina Burana (13th C)
(The Virgin and the Nightingale [tr. Fleur Adcock]
or The Goliard Poets [tr. Whicher; New Directions] or
Helen Waddell)
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Dante
- Petrarch
- Boccaccio. Decameron
- Chaucer:
- Canterbury Tales
- Troilus and Criseyde
- Howard, Donald. Chaucer
- Brewer. Chaucer and His World (?)
- Coghill. The Poet Chaucer (?)
- Jones, Terry. Chaucer's Knight
- Donaldson. Swan at the Well
- Astell. Chaucer and the Universe of Learning
- "Pearl Poet." Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Langland. Piers Plowman
- Adams, Henry. Mont St.-Michel and Chartres
- Macaulay, David. Cathedral
- Huizinga. Autumn of the Middle Ages (new trans.)
