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Author: John F. Vickrey
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 0980149665
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Most Beowulf scholars have held either that the poems' minor episodes are more or less based on incidents in Scandinavian history or at least that they entail nothing of the fabulous or monstrous. Beowulf and the Illusion of History contends that, like the poem's Grendelkin episodes, certain minor episodes involve monsters and contain motifs of the "Bear's Son" folktale. In the Finn Episode the monsters are to be taken as physically present in the story as we have it, while in the mention of the hero's fight with Daeghrefn and perhaps in the accounts of the fight with Ongenbeow, the principal foes, though originally monsters, appear now more like ordinary humans. The inference permits the elucidation of passages hitherto obscure and indicates that the capability of the Beowulf poet as a "maker" is greater than has been thought. John F. Vickrey, is Professor of English, Emeritus, at Lehigh University.
Author: John F. Vickrey
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 0980149665
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 255
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Book Description
Most Beowulf scholars have held either that the poems' minor episodes are more or less based on incidents in Scandinavian history or at least that they entail nothing of the fabulous or monstrous. Beowulf and the Illusion of History contends that, like the poem's Grendelkin episodes, certain minor episodes involve monsters and contain motifs of the "Bear's Son" folktale. In the Finn Episode the monsters are to be taken as physically present in the story as we have it, while in the mention of the hero's fight with Daeghrefn and perhaps in the accounts of the fight with Ongenbeow, the principal foes, though originally monsters, appear now more like ordinary humans. The inference permits the elucidation of passages hitherto obscure and indicates that the capability of the Beowulf poet as a "maker" is greater than has been thought. John F. Vickrey, is Professor of English, Emeritus, at Lehigh University.
Author: William Vaughn Moody, Robert Morss Lovett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 562
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Book Description
Author: Andrew Lang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 718
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Book Description
Author: John F. Vickrey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611461685
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
Readers of Old English would generally agree that the poem Genesis B, a translation into Old English of an Old Saxon (that is, continental) retelling of the story of the Fall, is a vigorous and moving narrative. They would disagree, however, as to the meaning of the poem. Some hold that it reflects an orthodox Christian viewpoint and others claim that it assumes a distinctly unorthodox position in portraying Adam and Eve as not morally culpable in their disobedience but merely tricked into disobedience through the wiles of the Devil's agent. The study Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative, examining these incompatible readings, infers that the poem is essentially orthodox, that it demonstrates sufficiently the moral culpability of Adam and Eve, and that it departs from orthodoxy only insofar as it conveys a strong impression that Adam and Even will undertake what amounts to Christian penance, leading them eventually to Heaven. The poem thereby attains the happy ending typical of early medieval Christian narrative. Hence the titular "Comedic Imperative." The inference of orthodoxy follows as a nigh-inevitable conclusion of the interpretation of several motifs: the poem's culturally imbued martiality, its allegorical bent, and also what A. N. Doane noted as its tropological bent. The argument depends heavily upon philological inquiry and on examination of prevailing beliefs and attitudes of contemporaneous Frankish society, religious and civil, leading to the reinterpretation of crucial passages. Of these, most notably, is the passage in which Adam, in refusing the Tempter's invitation to eat the fruit, observes that the Tempter has given no tacen ‘sign’ as evidence that he truly is God’s emissary. Other passages that have impeded critical perception of the poem's significance are also examined, such as the notorious micel wundor clause (lines 595-98) and the pseudo-gnomic declaration swa hire eaforan sculon after lybban (623-35). In sum, Genesis B sustains the orthodoxy otherwise of the Junius 11 manuscript.
Author:
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486111105
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 70
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Book Description
Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates the exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of southern Sweden. Combines myth, Christian and pagan elements, and history into a powerful narrative. Genealogies.
Author: David Konstan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444315646
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
With contributions from leading scholars, this is a uniquecross-cultural comparison of historical epics across a wide rangeof cultures and time periods, which presents crucial insights intohow history is treated in narrative poetry. The first book to gain new insights into the topic of‘epic and history’ through in-depth cross-culturalcomparisons Covers epic traditions across the globe and across a wide rangeof time periods Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is editedby two internationally regarded scholars An important reference for scholars and students interested inhistory and literature across a broad range of disciplines
Author: Catalin Taranu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000349667
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
In a provocative take on Germanic heroic poetry, Taranu reads texts like Beowulf, Maldon, and the Waltharius as participating in alternative modes of history-writing that functioned in a larger ecology of narrative forms, including Latinate Christian history and the biblical epic. These modes employed the conceit of their participating in a tradition of oral verse for a variety of purposes: from political propaganda to constructing origin myths for early medieval nationhood or heroic masculinity, and sometimes for challenging these paradigms. The more complex of these historical visions actively meditated on their own relationship to truthfulness and fictionality while also performing sophisticated (and often subversive) cultural and socio-emotional work for its audiences. By rethinking canonical categories of historiographical discourse from within medieval textual productions, Vernacular Verse Histories in Early Medieval England and Francia: The Bard and the Rag-Picker aims to recover a part of the wide array of narrative poetic forms through which medieval communities made sense of their past and structured their socio-emotional experience.
Author: Karen A. Winstead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191016934
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages explores the richness and variety of life-writing from late Antiquity to the threshold of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, writers from Bede to Chaucer were thinking about life and experimenting with ways to translate lives, their own and others', into literature. Their subjects included career religious, saints, celebrities, visionaries, pilgrims, princes, philosophers, poets, and even a few 'ordinary people.' They relay life stories not only in chronological narratives, but also in debates, dialogues, visions, and letters. Many medieval biographers relied on the reader's trust in their authority, but some espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible. Others still professed allegiance to evidence but nonetheless freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The first book devoted to life-writing in medieval England, The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages covers major life stories in Old and Middle English, Latin, and French, along with such Continental classics as the letters of Abelard and Heloise and the autobiographical Vision of Christine de Pizan. In addition to the life stories of historical figures, it treats accounts of fictional heroes, from Beowulf to King Arthur to Queen Katherine of Alexandria, which show medieval authors experimenting with, adapting, and expanding the conventions of life writing. Though Medieval life writings can be challenging to read, we encounter in them the antecedents of many of our own diverse biographical forms-tabloid lives, literary lives, brief lives, revisionist lives; lives of political figures, memoirs, fictional lives, and psychologically-oriented accounts that register the inner lives of their subjects.
Author: Andy Orchard
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9781843840299
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
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.
Author: Karen Anne Winstead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198707037
Category : Autobiografische Literatur
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The Oxford History of Life-Writing consolidates recent academic research and debate to provide a multi-volume history of life-writing. Each volume provides a selective survey of the range of life-writing in a given period with particular focus on the most important or influential authors and works within the genre. VOLUME 1: The Middle Ages' explores the richness and variety of life writing in the Middle Ages, ranging from Anglo-Latin lives of missionaries, prelates, and princes to high medieval lives of scholars and visionaries to late medieval lives of authors and laypeople. VOLUME 2: Early modern explores life-writing in England between 1500 and 1700, and argues that this was a period which saw remarkable innovations in biography, autobiography, and diary-keeping that laid the foundations for our modern life-writing.
