The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf

The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf PDF Author: Francis Leneghan
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
ISBN: 9781843846291
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
A strikingly original approach to Beowulf, linking its structure to the dynastic life-cycle.

The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf

The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf PDF Author: Francis Leneghan
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
ISBN: 9781843846291
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
A strikingly original approach to Beowulf, linking its structure to the dynastic life-cycle.

The Dating of Beowulf

The Dating of Beowulf PDF Author: Leonard Neidorf
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843843870
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Examinations of the date of Beowulf have tremendous significance for Anglo-Saxon culture in general.

Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf

Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf PDF Author: Peter Stuart Baker
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
ISBN: 1843843463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Argues for a new reading of Beowulf in its contemporary context, where honour and violence are intimately linked. This book examines violence in its social setting, and especially as an essential element in the heroic system of exchange (sometimes called the Economy of Honour). It situates Beowulf in a northern European culture where violence was not stigmatized as evidence of a breakdown in social order but rather was seen as a reasonable way to get things done; where kings and their retainers saw themselves above all as warriors whose chief occupation was thepursuit of honour; and where most successful kings were those perceived as most predatory. Though kings and their subjects yearned for peace, the political and religious institutions of the time did little to restrain their violent impulses. Drawing on works from Britain, Scandinavia, and Ireland, which show how the practice of violence was governed by rules and customs which were observed, with variations, over a wide area, this book makes use of historicist and anthropological approaches to its subject. It takes a neutral attitude towards the phenomena it examines, but at the same time describes them fortnightly, avoiding euphemism and excuse-making on the one hand and condemnation on the other. In this it attempts to avoid the errors of critics who have sometimes been led astray by modern assumptions about the morality of violence. PETER S. BAKER is Professor of English at the Universityof Virginia.

The Psalms and Medieval English Literature

The Psalms and Medieval English Literature PDF Author: Tamara Atkin
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844354
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
An examination of how The Book of Psalms shaped medieval thought and helped develop the medieval English literary canon. The Book of Psalms had a profound impact on English literature from the Anglo-Saxon to the late medieval period. This collection examines the various ways in which they shaped medieval English thought and contributed to the emergence of an English literary canon. It brings into dialogue experts on both Old and Middle English literature, thus breaking down the traditional disciplinary binaries of both pre- and post-Conquest English and late medieval and Early Modern, as well as emphasizing the complex and fascinating relationship between Latin and the vernacular languages of England. Its three main themes, translation, adaptation and voice, enable a rich variety of perspectives on the Psalms and medieval English literature to emerge. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London; FRANCIS LENEGHAN is Associate Professor of OldEnglish at The University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford Contributors: Daniel Anlezark, Mark Faulkner, Vincent Gillespie, Michael P. Kuczynski, David Lawton, Francis Leneghan, Jane Roberts, Mike Rodman Jones, Elizabeth Solopova, Lynn Staley, Annie Sutherland, Jane Toswell, Katherine Zieman.

Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien

Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien PDF Author: Michael Fox
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030481344
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Following the Formula in Beowulf, Örvar-Odds saga, and Tolkien proposes that Beowulf was composed according to a formula. Michael Fox imagines the process that generated the poem and provides a model for reading it, extending this model to investigate formula in a half-line, a fitt, a digression, and a story-pattern or folktale, including the Old-Norse Icelandic Örvar-Odds saga. Fox also explores how J. R. R. Tolkien used the same formula to write Sellic Spell and The Hobbit. This investigation uncovers relationships between oral and literate composition, between mechanistic composition and author, and between listening and reading audiences, arguing for a contemporary relevance for Beowulf in thinking about the creative process.

Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law

Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law PDF Author: Arvind Thomas
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 148750246X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
It is a medieval truism that the poet meddles with words, the lawyer with the world. But are the poet's words and the lawyer's world really so far apart? To what extent does the art of making poems share in the craft of making laws, and vice versa? Framed by such questions, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages examines the mutually productive interaction between literary and legal "makyngs" in England's great Middle English poem by William Langland. Focusing on Piers Plowman's preoccupation with wrongdoing in the B and C versions, Arvind Thomas examines the versions' representations of trials, confessions, restitutions, penalties, and pardons. Thomas explores how the "literary" informs and transforms the "legal" until they finally cannot be separated. Thomas shows how the poem's narrative voice, metaphor, syntax and style not only reflect but also act upon properties of canon law, such as penitential procedures and authoritative maxims. Langland's mobilization of juridical concepts, Thomas insists, not only engenders a poetics informed by canonist thought but also expresses an alternative vision of canon law from that proposed by medieval jurists and today's medievalists.

Old English Philology

Old English Philology PDF Author: Leonard Neidorf
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844389
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Essays bringing out the crucial importance of philology for understanding Old English texts.

The Art and Thought of the "Beowulf" Poet

The Art and Thought of the Author: Leonard Neidorf
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501766910
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
In The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet, Leonard Neidorf explores the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. The Beowulf poet inherited an amoral heroic tradition, which focused principally on heroes compelled by circumstances to commit horrendous deeds: fathers kill sons, brothers kill brothers, and wives kill husbands. Medieval Germanic poets relished the depiction of a hero's unyielding response to a cruel fate, but the Beowulf poet refused to construct an epic around this traditional plot. Focusing instead on a courteous and pious protagonist's fight against monsters, the poet creates a work that is deeply untraditional in both its plot and its values. In Beowulf, the kin-slayers and oath-breakers of antecedent tradition are confined to the background, while the poet fills the foreground with unconventional characters, who abstain from transgression, display courtly etiquette, and express monotheistic convictions. Comparing Beowulf with its medieval German and Scandinavian analogues, The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet argues that the poem's uniqueness reflects one poet's coherent plan for the moral renovation of an amoral heroic tradition. In Beowulf, Neidorf discerns the presence of a singular mind at work in the combination and modification of heroic, folkloric, hagiographical, and historical materials. Rather than perceive Beowulf as an impersonally generated object, Neidorf argues that it should be read as the considered result of one poet's ambition to produce a morally edifying, theologically palatable, and historically plausible epic out of material that could not independently constitute such a poem.

Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture

Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture PDF Author: Emily Kesling
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Winner of the Best First Monograph from the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) 2021. An examination of the Old English medical collections, arguing that these texts are products of a learned intellectual culture.

Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England

Bishop Æthelwold, His Followers, and Saints' Cults in Early Medieval England PDF Author: Alison Hudson
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783276851
Category : Bishops
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
An exploration of how Æthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform.