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This prose translation of the medieval French verse narrative Ami and Amile recounts the legendary friendship of two valiant knights who are as indistinguishable as twin brothers. Ami and Amile serve Charlemagne together, face together the hatred of an archetypal villain, confront the daunting challenges of women and love, and accept extraordinary sacrifices for each other's sake. Miracles mark the end of their lives, and their shared tomb becomes a pilgrims' shrine. The compelling translation by Samuel N. Rosenberg and Samuel Danon is accompanied by an introduction on the background, genre, and general sense of the tale. The volume also includes an afterword by David Konstan, which examines the medieval work's concept of friendship within a perspective extending back to classical antiquity. This translation will reveal Ami and Amile as a major work of the French Middle Ages. In elegant and forceful prose, it weaves together the themes of friendship and love and the status of women, of sin and punishment, the moral problem of doing wrong for the right reason, and the mythic affliction of leprosy. The work will foster lively literary and philosophical discussion. Ami and Amile is of interest to a wide range of readers, including students of history, comparative literature, and gender studies. Medievalists will find it a welcome addition to their libraries and a captivating experience for their students. The volume is published in the series Stylus: Studies in Medieval Culture, edited by Eugene Vance, University of Washington. Samuel N. Rosenberg is Professor of French and Italian at Indiana University; Samuel Danon is Professor of French at Reed College.

An anonymous minstrel in thirteenth-century France composed this gripping account of historical events in his time. Crusaders and Muslim forces battle for control of the Holy Land, while power struggles rage between and among religious authorities and their conflicting secular counterparts, pope and German emperor, the kings of England and the kings of France. Meanwhile, the kings cannot count on their independent-minded barons to support or even tolerate the royal ambitions. Although politics (and the collapse of a royal marriage) frame the narrative, the logistics of war are also in play: competing military machinery and the challenges of transporting troops and matariel. Inevitably, the civilian population suffers. The minstrel was a professional story-teller, and his livelihood likely depended on his ability to captivate an audience. Beyond would-be objective reporting, the minstrel dramatizes events through dialogue, while he delves into the motives and intentions of important figures, and imparts traditional moral guidance. We follow the deeds of many prominent women and witness striking episodes in the lives of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted, Blanche of Castile, Frederick the Great, Saladin, and others. These tales survive in several manuscripts, suggesting that they enjoyed significant success and popularity in their day. Samuel N. Rosenberg produced this first scholarly translation of the Old French tales into English. References that might have been obvious to the minstrel’s original audience are explained for the modern reader in the indispensable annotations of medieval historian Randall Todd Pippenger. The introduction by eminent medievalist William Chester Jordan places the minstrel’s work in historical context and discusses the surviving manuscript sources.

The Indo‑European Dialects is a foundational work of historical linguistics that investigates how the Indo‑European language family diversified into its major regional branches. Originally delivered as lectures and first published in the early twentieth century, the book remains essential reading for understanding how phonological, morphological, and lexical evidence reveals ancient patterns of language contact, migration, and cultural development. Including Indo‑European, Indo‑Iranian, Greek, Italic (including Latin), Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Armenian, Albanian, Anatolian, and Tocharian, Meillet’s comparative approach situates dialect differences within a broader historical framework, making this volume a lasting contribution to Indo‑European studies and to the methods of linguistic reconstruction more generally. 

The author, Antoine Meillet, was one of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century and a central figure in the development of Indo‑European comparative grammar. This edition is expertly translated by Samuel N. Rosenberg, whose careful scholarship preserves Meillet’s analytical precision while making the work accessible to modern English‑language readers. The volume is further enhanced by scholarly notes, bibliographical references, and indexes that increase its usefulness for research and teaching. 

This book will be of interest to linguists, philologists, classicists, and historians of language, as well as graduate and advanced undergraduate students studying historical linguistics. It will also appeal to readers interested in how language evidence informs the study of prehistoric societies and cultural connections across Europe and Asia.