Textbooks for “English Mediaeval Studies” and “Realism in English Literature”
When English Medieval Studies at the University of Tubingen’s English Department underwent re-organisation in the late 1970s, a textbook was needed for the new modules in Old and Middle English. Since a single volume covering both areas was not available then, the first edition of Alt- und mittelenglische Literatur: Eine Einführung, compiled by Joerg Fichte, was published by Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen, in 1980. This edition was produced using a typewriter for the texts and a composer for both the grammar(s) and the glossaries. A reprint was published a few years later.
The completely revised and augmented second edition, prepared by Joerg Fichte and Fritz Kemmler, was published in 1994. Planning the revised edition included taking the decision that the book should be produced on the basis of the new technologies which had become available for desktop publishing. Tübingen was the ideal place for producing such an edition: the software package TUSTEP (TUebingen System of TExt processing Programs), developed at the Computing Centre of the University of Tübingen (ZDV), was readily available and the offices were indeed at that time located just across the street. TUSTEP provided an ideal platform for the preparation of a second edition: using the superb editor, both grammar and texts were typed in and programme scripts, based on the several modules provided by TUSTEP, were devised for the process of electronic type-setting. Additional scripts were devised for an alphabetical word-index for the Old and Middle English texts and for type-setting the glossaries and bibliography.
The programme scripts devised for the second edition were slightly modified for the third (2005), fourth (2008), and fifth (2012) editions. The fourth edition, written by Fritz Kemmler and Courtnay Konshuh, was published under the title Medieval English: Literature and Language (2008) and contains a completely revised grammar section,
introductions and notes to the texts, and glossaries exclusively in Modern English. The fifth edition, written by Fritz Kemmler and Iryna Rieker, offers additional texts from the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, two 'naughty' Middle English poems and 'The Reeve's Tale' from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Sample pages from the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions can be accessed via the links below.
Second edition of Alt- und mittelenglische Literatur: Eine Einführung
Third edition of Alt- und mittelenglische Literatur: Eine Einführung
Fourth edition: Medieval English: Literature and Language
New (fifth) edition: Medieval English: Literature and Language
After the publication of the second edition of the Tübingen textbook for English Medieval Studies, Walter F. Greiner and Fritz Kemmler decided that a second edition of their anthology Realismustheorien in England should also be published on the basis of TUSTEP. Sample pages from the second edition can be accessed via the link below.
