The Textuality of Old English Poetry

The Textuality of Old English Poetry

Author: Carol Braun Pasternack

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-07-20

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780521465496

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study constructs a reading of Old English poetry which takes up issues in poststructuralist theory, including intertextuality, work versus text and the author. The modern reader knows this literature as a discrete number of poems, set up and printed in units punctuated as modern sentences and with titles inserted by modern editors. Carol Braun Pasternack offers an alternative approach which takes into account the format of the verse as it exists in the manuscripts, using the term 'inscribed' to define texts which are situated between oral inheritance and print. In a detailed examination of texts throughout the canon she explores the ways in which readers construct poems in the process of reading and in addition she extends her analysis to the question of authorship, arguing that the texts do not imply an author but rather imply tradition as the source of their authority.


Book Synopsis The Textuality of Old English Poetry by : Carol Braun Pasternack

Download or read book The Textuality of Old English Poetry written by Carol Braun Pasternack and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-07-20 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study constructs a reading of Old English poetry which takes up issues in poststructuralist theory, including intertextuality, work versus text and the author. The modern reader knows this literature as a discrete number of poems, set up and printed in units punctuated as modern sentences and with titles inserted by modern editors. Carol Braun Pasternack offers an alternative approach which takes into account the format of the verse as it exists in the manuscripts, using the term 'inscribed' to define texts which are situated between oral inheritance and print. In a detailed examination of texts throughout the canon she explores the ways in which readers construct poems in the process of reading and in addition she extends her analysis to the question of authorship, arguing that the texts do not imply an author but rather imply tradition as the source of their authority.

Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry

Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry

Author: Antonina Harbus

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1843843250

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Offers an entirely new way of interpreting and examining Anglo-Saxon texts, via theories derived from cognitive studies. A major, thoughtful study, applying new and serious interpretative and critical perspectives to a central range of Old English poetry. Professor John Hines, Cardiff University Cognitive approaches to literature offernew and exciting ways of interpreting literature and mentalities, by bringing ideas and methodologies from Cognitive Science into the analysis of literature and culture. While these approaches are of particular value in relation to understanding the texts of remote societies, they have to date made very little impact on Anglo-Saxon Studies. This book therefore acts as a pioneer, mapping out the new field, explaining its relevance to Old English Literary Studies, and demonstrating in practice its application to a range of key vernacular poetic texts, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, and poems from the Exeter Book. Adapting key ideas from three related fields - Cognitive Literary/Cultural Studies, Cognitive Poetics, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory - in conjunction with more familiar models, derived from Literary Analysis, Stylistics, and Historical Linguistics, allows several new ways of thinking about Old English literature to emerge. It permits a systematic means of examining and accounting for the conceptual structures that underpin Anglo-Saxon poetics, as well as fuller explorations, at the level of mental processing, of the workings of literary language in context. The result is a set of approaches to interpreting Anglo-Saxon textuality, through detailed studies of the concepts, mental schemas, and associative logic implied in and triggeredby the evocative language and meaning structures of surviving works. ANTONINA HARBUS is Professor in the Department of English at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.


Book Synopsis Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry by : Antonina Harbus

Download or read book Cognitive Approaches to Old English Poetry written by Antonina Harbus and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2012 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an entirely new way of interpreting and examining Anglo-Saxon texts, via theories derived from cognitive studies. A major, thoughtful study, applying new and serious interpretative and critical perspectives to a central range of Old English poetry. Professor John Hines, Cardiff University Cognitive approaches to literature offernew and exciting ways of interpreting literature and mentalities, by bringing ideas and methodologies from Cognitive Science into the analysis of literature and culture. While these approaches are of particular value in relation to understanding the texts of remote societies, they have to date made very little impact on Anglo-Saxon Studies. This book therefore acts as a pioneer, mapping out the new field, explaining its relevance to Old English Literary Studies, and demonstrating in practice its application to a range of key vernacular poetic texts, including Beowulf, The Wanderer, and poems from the Exeter Book. Adapting key ideas from three related fields - Cognitive Literary/Cultural Studies, Cognitive Poetics, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory - in conjunction with more familiar models, derived from Literary Analysis, Stylistics, and Historical Linguistics, allows several new ways of thinking about Old English literature to emerge. It permits a systematic means of examining and accounting for the conceptual structures that underpin Anglo-Saxon poetics, as well as fuller explorations, at the level of mental processing, of the workings of literary language in context. The result is a set of approaches to interpreting Anglo-Saxon textuality, through detailed studies of the concepts, mental schemas, and associative logic implied in and triggeredby the evocative language and meaning structures of surviving works. ANTONINA HARBUS is Professor in the Department of English at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

The Transmission of Old English Poetry

The Transmission of Old English Poetry

Author: Peter R. Orton

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

No detailed study of Old English poems surviving in multiple (two or more) contemporary manuscripts has yet been published, in spite of a recognition as early as 1946 (by Kenneth Sisam) of the potential value of a monograph comparing the various versions of these poems. This book fills that gap. Of some 185 extant Old English poems or fragments, twenty are preserved, either wholly or in part, in multiple manuscript versions, involving a total overlap of about 679 verse-lines (2.2% of the total surviving poetic corpus of 30,535 lines). The various versions of each poem are here compared in close detail with a view to discovering as much as possible about the influences to which Old English poetry was exposed in the course of its transmission. Among questions addressed here are the authority of late texts of Old English poems; the accuracy of copyists and the extent of their understanding of the texts they reproduced; the degree of freedom with which they treated their exemplar texts; the significance of the deliberate modifications that they imposed; and the question of oral versus literary transmission. Prof. Tom Shippey (St Louis Univ.) writes: 'Peter Orton's study is an impressive work. It examines and refutes two views about OE poetry which have become accepted, or canonical. The first is Kenneth Sisam's statement from 1953 that a few cases where OE poems exist in two manuscripts show a laxity of phrasing and a percentage of variation which suggests oral transmission rather than literate; the second, Katherine O'Keeffe's more modern and more nuanced argument, from 1991, that such poems are the product of formulaic reading and demonstrate a state of residual orality. Orton convincingly demonstrates that the variants represent (more or less) judicious editing. A further corollary is that current editorial practice of accepting manuscript readings is a gullible one - with two versions to compare.


Book Synopsis The Transmission of Old English Poetry by : Peter R. Orton

Download or read book The Transmission of Old English Poetry written by Peter R. Orton and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed study of Old English poems surviving in multiple (two or more) contemporary manuscripts has yet been published, in spite of a recognition as early as 1946 (by Kenneth Sisam) of the potential value of a monograph comparing the various versions of these poems. This book fills that gap. Of some 185 extant Old English poems or fragments, twenty are preserved, either wholly or in part, in multiple manuscript versions, involving a total overlap of about 679 verse-lines (2.2% of the total surviving poetic corpus of 30,535 lines). The various versions of each poem are here compared in close detail with a view to discovering as much as possible about the influences to which Old English poetry was exposed in the course of its transmission. Among questions addressed here are the authority of late texts of Old English poems; the accuracy of copyists and the extent of their understanding of the texts they reproduced; the degree of freedom with which they treated their exemplar texts; the significance of the deliberate modifications that they imposed; and the question of oral versus literary transmission. Prof. Tom Shippey (St Louis Univ.) writes: 'Peter Orton's study is an impressive work. It examines and refutes two views about OE poetry which have become accepted, or canonical. The first is Kenneth Sisam's statement from 1953 that a few cases where OE poems exist in two manuscripts show a laxity of phrasing and a percentage of variation which suggests oral transmission rather than literate; the second, Katherine O'Keeffe's more modern and more nuanced argument, from 1991, that such poems are the product of formulaic reading and demonstrate a state of residual orality. Orton convincingly demonstrates that the variants represent (more or less) judicious editing. A further corollary is that current editorial practice of accepting manuscript readings is a gullible one - with two versions to compare.

The Composition of Old English Poetry

The Composition of Old English Poetry

Author: H. Momma

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-03-28

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780521554817

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This 'prosodical' syntax is intended to replace the famous syntactic laws of Hans Kuhn through its greater accuracy and wider range of application.


Book Synopsis The Composition of Old English Poetry by : H. Momma

Download or read book The Composition of Old English Poetry written by H. Momma and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-28 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 'prosodical' syntax is intended to replace the famous syntactic laws of Hans Kuhn through its greater accuracy and wider range of application.

The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry

The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry

Author: Lois Bragg

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780838634035

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This work is a treatment of over thirty Old English lyrics including prayers, riddles, charms, the epilogues to Cynewulf's four signed poems, lyric interludes from Beowulf, and poems from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.


Book Synopsis The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry by : Lois Bragg

Download or read book The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry written by Lois Bragg and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a treatment of over thirty Old English lyrics including prayers, riddles, charms, the epilogues to Cynewulf's four signed poems, lyric interludes from Beowulf, and poems from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Old English Literature

Old English Literature

Author: John D. Niles

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-02-18

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1118598830

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This review of the critical reception of Old English literature from 1900 to the present moves beyond a focus on individual literary texts so as to survey the different schools, methods, and assumptions that have shaped the discipline. Examines the notable works and authors from the period, including Beowulf, the Venerable Bede, heroic poems, and devotional literature Reinforces key perspectives with excerpts from ten critical studies Addresses questions of medieval literacy, textuality, and orality, as well as style, gender, genre, and theme Embraces the interdisciplinary nature of the field with reference to historical studies, religious studies, anthropology, art history, and more


Book Synopsis Old English Literature by : John D. Niles

Download or read book Old English Literature written by John D. Niles and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-02-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This review of the critical reception of Old English literature from 1900 to the present moves beyond a focus on individual literary texts so as to survey the different schools, methods, and assumptions that have shaped the discipline. Examines the notable works and authors from the period, including Beowulf, the Venerable Bede, heroic poems, and devotional literature Reinforces key perspectives with excerpts from ten critical studies Addresses questions of medieval literacy, textuality, and orality, as well as style, gender, genre, and theme Embraces the interdisciplinary nature of the field with reference to historical studies, religious studies, anthropology, art history, and more

The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry

The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry

Author: Antonina Harbus

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9004488138

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ideas about the human mind are culturally specific and over time vary in form and prominence. The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry presents the first extensive exploration of Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the mind and how these views informed Old English poetry. It identifies in this poetry a particular cultural focus on the mental world and formulates a multivalent model of the mind behind it, as the seat of emotions, the site of temptation, the container of knowledge, and a heroic weapon. The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry treats a wide range of Old English literary genres (in the context of their Latin sources and analogues where applicable) in order to discover how ideas about the mind shape the narrative, didactic, and linguistic design of poetic discourse. Particular attention is paid to the rich and slippery vernacular vocabulary for the mind which suggests a special interest in the subject in Old English poetry. The book argues that Anglo-Saxon poets were acutely conscious of mental functions and perceived the psychological basis not only of the cognitive world, but also of the emotions and of the spiritual life.


Book Synopsis The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry by : Antonina Harbus

Download or read book The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry written by Antonina Harbus and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideas about the human mind are culturally specific and over time vary in form and prominence. The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry presents the first extensive exploration of Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the mind and how these views informed Old English poetry. It identifies in this poetry a particular cultural focus on the mental world and formulates a multivalent model of the mind behind it, as the seat of emotions, the site of temptation, the container of knowledge, and a heroic weapon. The Life of the Mind in Old English Poetry treats a wide range of Old English literary genres (in the context of their Latin sources and analogues where applicable) in order to discover how ideas about the mind shape the narrative, didactic, and linguistic design of poetic discourse. Particular attention is paid to the rich and slippery vernacular vocabulary for the mind which suggests a special interest in the subject in Old English poetry. The book argues that Anglo-Saxon poets were acutely conscious of mental functions and perceived the psychological basis not only of the cognitive world, but also of the emotions and of the spiritual life.

Direct Speech in Beowulf and Other Old English Narrative Poems

Direct Speech in Beowulf and Other Old English Narrative Poems

Author: Elise Louviot

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1843844346

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A new examination of the little-studied phenomena of Direct Speech in Old English poetry.


Book Synopsis Direct Speech in Beowulf and Other Old English Narrative Poems by : Elise Louviot

Download or read book Direct Speech in Beowulf and Other Old English Narrative Poems written by Elise Louviot and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new examination of the little-studied phenomena of Direct Speech in Old English poetry.

Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry

Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry

Author: Thomas Birkett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1317070984

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.


Book Synopsis Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry by : Thomas Birkett

Download or read book Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry written by Thomas Birkett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.

Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry

Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry

Author: Jennifer Neville

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-03-13

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 113942596X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines descriptions of the natural world in a wide range of Old English poetry. Jennifer Neville describes the physical conditions experienced by the Anglo-Saxons - the animals, diseases, landscapes, seas and weather with which they had to contend. She argues that poetic descriptions of these elements were not a reflection of the existing physical conditions but a literary device used by Anglo-Saxons to define more important issues: the state of humanity, the creation and maintenance of society, the power of individuals, the relationship between God and creation and the power of writing to control information. Examples of contemporary literature in other languages are used to provide a sense of Old English poetry's particular approach, which incorporated elements from Germanic, Christian and classical sources. The result of this approach was not a consistent cosmological scheme but a rather contradictory vision which reveals much about how the Anglo-Saxons viewed themselves.


Book Synopsis Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry by : Jennifer Neville

Download or read book Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry written by Jennifer Neville and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines descriptions of the natural world in a wide range of Old English poetry. Jennifer Neville describes the physical conditions experienced by the Anglo-Saxons - the animals, diseases, landscapes, seas and weather with which they had to contend. She argues that poetic descriptions of these elements were not a reflection of the existing physical conditions but a literary device used by Anglo-Saxons to define more important issues: the state of humanity, the creation and maintenance of society, the power of individuals, the relationship between God and creation and the power of writing to control information. Examples of contemporary literature in other languages are used to provide a sense of Old English poetry's particular approach, which incorporated elements from Germanic, Christian and classical sources. The result of this approach was not a consistent cosmological scheme but a rather contradictory vision which reveals much about how the Anglo-Saxons viewed themselves.