What books did people in the middle ages read?

Answer 1

[Response 1] In Italy I'm pretty sure plays were popular

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[Response 2] Although the Middle Ages (especially the Late Middle Ages) were often a time of instability and turmoil, many literary works from the period have been called 'great' by literary scholars. These include 'Beowulf,' possibly the oldest major work of Old English; the Song of Roland, the oldest extant work of French literature; the medieval German romance 'Parzival'; the works of Dante, who invented the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme and daringly used vernacular in his 'Divine Comedy'; Petrarch's 'Il canzoniere'; Boccaccio's 'Decameron; 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'; and several others.

The Middle Ages also saw what is most likely the first English book written by a woman: 'Revelations of Divine Love,' by Julian of Norwich.

Answer 2

1st AnswerPeople didn't read books in the Middle Ages because they didn't know how to read or write. The only educated people were the monks who did copy and write books about The Bible and bible stories. It wasn't until the printing press was invented that people began to read and that was much later in history. 2nd AnswerThe following were books written in English, in the Middle Ages, before printing was invented, and presumably English people read them:

• Beowulf, anonymous
• The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Le Morte d'Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory
• Piers Plowman, by William Langland
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anonymous
• Troilus and Criseyde, by Geoffrey Chaucer

Others in, other languages, include

• The Alexiad, by Anna Comnena, in Greek
• The Divine Comedy, by Dante, in Italian
• The Elder Edda, various anonymous Icelandic authors, in Icelandic
• The Lais of Marie de France, by Marie de France, in French
• The Mabinogion, various Welsh authors, in Welsh
• Niebelungenlied, anonymous German
• Poem of the Cid, anonymous Spanish
• Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenback, in German
• The Song of Roland, anonymous French

There were many others, even including a few written in Latin, mostly on religious topics, but I left the Latin books out of this list because they looked boring, and I suspect ordinary people were unlikely to read them. After all, why read Latin, when you can read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

Please see the link below to a more comprehensive list of Medieval literature.