Apocalypse is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imagery drawn from the Hebrew Bible, cosmological and (pessimistic) historical surveys, the division of time into periods, esoteric numerology, and claims of ecstasy and inspiration. Almost all are written under pseudonyms, claiming as author a venerated hero from previous centuries, as with the Book of Daniel, composed during the 2nd century BC but bearing the name of the legendary Daniel.
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus.
TheDream of the Rood is one of the Christian poems in the corpus of Old English literature and an example of the genre of dream poetry. Like most Old English poetry, it is written in alliterative verse. Rood is from the Old English word rōd 'pole', or more specifically 'crucifix'. Preserved in the 10th-century Vercelli Book, the poem may be as old as the 8th-century Ruthwell Cross, and is considered one of the oldest works of Old English literature.
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages. The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works. Just as in modern literature, it is a complex and rich field of study, from the utterly sacred to the exuberantly profane, touching all points in-between. Works of literature are often grouped by place of origin, language, and genre.
The Dream of Scipio, written by Cicero, is the sixth book of De re publica, and describes a dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he oversaw the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.
The Book of the Duchess, also known as The Deth of Blaunche, is the earliest of Chaucer's major poems, preceded only by his short poem, "An ABC", and possibly by his translation of The Romaunt of the Rose. Based on the themes and title of the poem, most sources put the date of composition after 12 September 1368 and before 1372, with many recent studies privileging a date as early as the end of 1368.
The aisling, or vision poem, is a Mythopoeic poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry. The word may have a number of variations in pronunciation, but the is of the first syllable is always realised as a ("sh") sound.
Old East Slavic literature, also known as Old Russian literature, is a collection of literary works of Rus' authors, which includes all the works of ancient Rus' theologians, historians, philosophers, translators, etc., and written in Old East Slavic. It is a general term that unites the common literary heritage of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine of the ancient period. In terms of genre construction, it has a number of differences from medieval European literature. The greatest influence on the literature of ancient Rus' was exerted by old Polish and old Serbian literature.
Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, Medieval literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century.
The Blickling homilies are a collection of anonymous homilies from Anglo-Saxon England. They are written in Old English, and were written down at some point before the end of the tenth century, making them one of the oldest collections of sermons to survive from medieval England, the other main witness being the Vercelli Book. Their name derives from Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which once housed them; the manuscript is now Princeton, Scheide Library, MS 71.
In Dante's Inferno, contrapasso is the punishment of souls "by a process either resembling or contrasting with the sin itself." A similar process occurs in the Purgatorio.
Experimental literature is a genre of literature that is generally "difficult to define with any sort of precision." It experiments with the conventions of literature, including boundaries of genres and styles; for example, it can be written in the form of prose narratives or poetry, but the text may be set on the page in differing configurations than that of normal prose paragraphs or in the classical stanza form of verse. It may also incorporate art or photography. Furthermore, while experimental literature was traditionally handwritten, the digital age has seen an exponential use of writing experimental works with word processors.
The Visio Tnugdali is a 12th-century religious text reporting the otherworldly vision of the Irish knight Tnugdalus. It was "one of the most popular and elaborate texts in the medieval genre of visionary infernal literature" and had been translated from the original Latin forty-three times into fifteen languages by the 15th century, including Icelandic and Belarusian. The work remained most popular in Germany, with ten different translations into German, and four into Dutch. With a recent resurgence of scholarly interest in Purgatory following works by Jacques Le Goff, Stephen Greenblatt and others, the vision has attracted increased academic attention.
The Sólarljóð is an Old Norse poem, written in Iceland ca 1200. It is written in the traditional metric style of the Poetic Edda, but with content from Christian visionary poems.
The Getty Tondal, also known as Les visions du chevalier Tondal is an illuminated manuscript from 1475, now in the Getty Museum. It is a French version and is the only surviving fully illuminated manuscript of the Visio Tnugdali. It has 20 miniatures by Simon Marmion and elaborate borders with "CM" for the initials of Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy and her husband Charles the Bold. The text was scribed by David Aubert in Ghent, while the miniatures were done in Valenciennes, where Marmion was based. Only the fifteen pages with two-column miniatures and five pages with single column miniatures have borders. There are only 45 folios, meaning that most have miniatures. The manuscript is fully available online.
Medieval debate poetry was a genre of poems popular in England and France during the late medieval period. The same type of debate poems broadly existed in the ancient and medieval Near Eastern literatures.
"Draumkvedet" is a Norwegian visionary poem, probably dated from the late medieval age. It is one of the best known medieval ballads in Norway. The first written versions are from Lårdal and Kviteseid in Telemark in the 1840s.
The Latin poem conventionally titled Visio Karoli Magni, and in the manuscripts Visio Domini Karoli Regis Francorvm, was written by an anonymous East Frank around 865. Sometimes classified as visionary literature, the Visio is not a typical example the genre, since the "vision" it presents is merely a dream.
The Vision of Adamnán or Adamnán's Vision, also spelled Adomnán, in Irish Fís Adamnáin, is a work of visionary literature written in Middle Irish in two parts, the first dating to the 11th century and the second the early 10th. It has sometimes been dated as early as the 8th or 9th century. Its authorship is unknown. The third-person narrative describes a vision of heaven and hell attributed to Adamnán, abbot of Hy and Iona and primary biographer of Saint Columba.
Wetti of Reichenau was a Benedictine monk, scholar and educator at the monastery at Reichenau in modern-day Germany. He was one of the leading educators of his time, and an influential scholar among monks and laity throughout not only the Carolingian empire but also the Western European monastic community. His best known surviving work is his biography of Saint Gallus, the founder of Reichenau's sister monastery, St Gall.
