The Sea and Medieval English Literature

The Sea and Medieval English Literature
Author: Sebastian I. Sobecki
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781843841371

A fresh and invigorating survey of the sea as it appears in medieval English literature, from romance to chronicle, hagiography to autobiography. As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.

The Metre of Beowulf

The Metre of Beowulf
Author: Michael Getty
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110905418

This book presents a novel treatment of the metre of Beowulf, an Old English epic poem of uncertain date and origin which is nonetheless considered one of the gems of Germanic Alliterative Verse. Building on recent advances in generative linguistics, the analysis presented in this book offers compelling explanations for a wide range of metrical phenomena that have been observed but only poorly understood for over a century.

The Shapes of Early English Poetry

The Shapes of Early English Poetry
Author: Eric Weiskott
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2019-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110626608

This volume contributes to the study of early English poetics. In these essays, several related approaches and fields of study radiate outward from poetics, including stylistics, literary history, word studies, gender studies, metrics, and textual criticism. By combining and redirecting these traditional scholarly methods, as well as exploring newer ones such as object-oriented ontology and sound studies, these essays demonstrate how poetry responds to its intellectual, literary, and material contexts. The contributors propose to connect the small (syllables, words, and phrases) to the large (histories, emotions, faiths, secrets). In doing so, they attempt to work magic on the texts they consider: turning an ordinary word into something strange and new, or demonstrating texture, difference, and horizontality where previous eyes had perceived only smoothness, sameness, and verticality.

Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse

Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse
Author: Thomas A. Bredehoft
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2009-11-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 144269842X

Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse re-examines the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition from the eighth to the eleventh centuries and reconsiders the significance of formulaic parallels and the nature of poetic authorship in Old English. Offering a new vision of much of Old English literary history, Thomas A. Bredehoft traces a tradition of 'literate-formulaic' composition in the period and contends that many phrases conventionally considered oral formulas are in fact borrowings or quotations. His identification of previously unrecognized Old English poems and his innovative arguments about the dates, places of composition, influences, and even possible authors for a variety of tenth- and eleventh-century poems illustrate that the failure of scholars to recognize the late Old English verse tradition has seriously hampered our literary understanding of the period. Provocative and bold, Authors, Audiences and Old English Verse has the potential to transform modern understandings of the classical Old English poetic tradition.

A Critical Companion to Beowulf

A Critical Companion to Beowulf
Author: Andy Orchard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781843840299

This is a complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. In this book, the specific roles of selcted individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed.

Anglo-Saxon England: Volume 25

Anglo-Saxon England: Volume 25
Author: Michael Lapidge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 1997-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521571470

This volume brings to light material evidence to further our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England.

A Beowulf Handbook

A Beowulf Handbook
Author: Robert E. Bjork
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780803212374

The most revered work composed in Old English, Beowulf is one of the landmarks of European literature. This handbook supplies a wealth of insights into all major aspects of this wondrous poem and its scholarly tradition. Each chapter provides a history of the scholarly interest in a particular topic, a synthesis of present knowledge and opinion, and an analysis of scholarly work that remains to be done. Written to accommodate the needs of a broad audience, A Beowulf Handbook will be of value to nonspecialists who wish simply to read and enjoy Beowulf and to scholars at work on their own research. In its clear and comprehensive treatment of the poem and its scholarship, this book will prove an indispensable guide to readers and specialists for many years to come.

The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England

The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Mary Clayton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521531153

This book provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cult in England from c. 700 to the Conquest. Dr Clayton describes and illustrates with a plate section the development of Marian devotion, discussing Anglo-Saxon feasts of the Virgin, liturgical texts, prayers, art, poetry and prose.