Apocryphal Lives Of Adam And Eve

This edition, the fi rst since 1878, offers Middle English texts accompanied by detailed notes contextualizing the poems within an apocryphal tradition and full glossary. The Introduction reviews the development of the Adam and Eve legend in medieval European vernacular.

 

Last edited in 1878, the two poems edited in this volume are medieval English versions of the legendary lives of Adam and Eve, telling of their attempts to regain the Paradise they had just lost and their life after the Fall, and merging with the related legends of the history of the Cross before Christ. The poems are important as part of a very large European tradition of vernacular adaptations of the Adambook, known in its Latin form (the immediate source) as the Vita Adae et Evae, with analogues in many other languages. Once very well known, these stories largely disappeared after the Reformation. The works are of equal interest not only in the general area of medieval English literature, but also in the study of Old Testament apocrypha itself.

 

This new edition offers readable texts of the two poems, accompanied by a detailed set of notes which contextualise the poems within their apocryphal traditions, traditions which have echoes in a wide variety of other medieval works, ranging from continental world-chronicles to the Cornish Ordinalia and to the English mystery-cycles. The Introduction includes a substantial review of the development of the Adam and Eve legend in medieval European vernacular and is a contribution to scholarship in its own right.