The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf

The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf PDF Author: Calvin B. Kendall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521393256
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book argues that the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped by the poetic language which the poet inherited.

The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf

The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf PDF Author: Calvin B. Kendall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521393256
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book argues that the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped by the poetic language which the poet inherited.

The Origins of Beowulf

The Origins of Beowulf PDF Author: Richard North
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191525731
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This book suggests that the Old English epic Beowulf was composed in the winter of 826-7 as a requiem for King Beornwulf of Mercia on behalf of Wiglaf, the ealdorman who succeeded him. The place of composition is given as the minster of Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire (now Derbyshire) and the poet is named as the abbot, Eanmund. As well as pinpointing the poem's place and date of composition, Richard North raises some old questions relating to the poet's influences from Vergil and from living Danes. Norse analogues are discussed in order to identify how the poet changed his heroic sources while four episodes from Beowulf are shown to be reworked from passages in Vergil's Aeneid. One chapter assesses how the poem's Latin sources might correspond with what is known of Breedon's now-lost library while another seeks to explain Danish mythology in Beowulf by arguing that Breedon hosted a meeting with Danish Vikings in 809. This fascinating and challenging new study combines careful detective work with meticulous literary analysis to form a case that no future investigation will be able to ignore.

Beowulf

Beowulf PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description


Studies in English Language and Literature

Studies in English Language and Literature PDF Author: M. J. Toswell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134773390
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
This collection of twenty-nine papers is in honour of E. G. Stanley, Rawlinson and Bosworth Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Written by scholars he has supervised, examined or otherwise served as mentor for within the last twenty years, the contributors illustrate the advantages of following John Donne's axiom to 'doubt wisely'. Professor Stanley's own published work has shown the utility of wise scepticism as a critical stance; these papers presented to him apply similar approaches to a wide variety of texts, most of them in the field of Old or Middle English literature. The primary focus of the collection is on the close reading of words in their immediate context, which commonly entails a reconsideration of accepted assumptions. Consequently, new links are created here among the disciplines in medieval studies, based on various combinations of these scholarly applications. Contributors provide new analyses of such difficult but rewarding fields as Old English metre and syntax, Beowulf, the origins and development of standard English, the definitions of Old English words and their connotations, the styles and themes of Old English poems, Middle English poetry and prose, the post-medieval reception of medieval works and the styles, themes and sources of Old English poetry and prose. M.J. Toswell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.E.M. Tyler is Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York.

How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems

How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems PDF Author: Daniel Donoghue
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812294882
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The scribes of early medieval England wrote out their vernacular poems using a format that looks primitive to our eyes because it lacks the familiar visual cues of verse lineation, marks of punctuation, and capital letters. The paradox is that scribes had those tools at their disposal, which they deployed in other kinds of writing, but when it came to their vernacular poems they turned to a sparser presentation. How could they afford to be so indifferent? The answer lies in the expertise that Anglo-Saxon readers brought to the task. From a lifelong immersion in a tradition of oral poetics they acquired a sophisticated yet intuitive understanding of verse conventions, such that when their eyes scanned the lines written out margin-to-margin, they could pinpoint with ease such features as alliteration, metrical units, and clause boundaries, because those features are interwoven in the poetic text itself. Such holistic reading practices find a surprising source of support in present-day eye-movement studies, which track the complex choreography between eye and brain and show, for example, how the minimal punctuation in manuscripts snaps into focus when viewed as part of a comprehensive system. How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems uncovers a sophisticated collaboration between scribes and the earliest readers of poems like Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Dream of the Rood. In addressing a basic question that no previous study has adequately answered, it pursues an ambitious synthesis of a number of fields usually kept separate: oral theory, paleography, syntax, and prosody. To these philological topics Daniel Donoghue adds insights from the growing field of cognitive psychology. According to Donoghue, the earliest readers of Old English poems deployed a unique set of skills that enabled them to navigate a daunting task with apparent ease. For them reading was both a matter of technical proficiency and a social practice.

Classic and Contemporary

Classic and Contemporary PDF Author: Irmengard Rauch
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311088674X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

The Shapes of Early English Poetry

The Shapes of Early English Poetry PDF Author: Eric Weiskott
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110626608
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
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.

Early English Metre

Early English Metre PDF Author: Thomas A. Bredehoft
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 080203831X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Thomas A. Bredehoft's Early English Metre is a reassessment of the metrical rules for English poetry from Beowulf to Layamon. Bredehoft offers a new account of many of the most puzzling features of Old English poetry - anacrusis, alliteration patterns, rhyme, and hypermetric verses - and further offers a clear account of late Old English verse as it descended from the classical verse as observed in Beowulf. He makes the surprising and controversial discovery that Ælfric's alliterative works are formally indistinguishable from late verse. Discussing the early Middle English verse-forms of Layamon's Brut, Bredehoft not only demonstrates that they can be understood as developing from late Old English, but that Layamon seems to have known, and quoted from, the poems of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Early English Metre presents a new perspective on early English verse and a new perspective on much of early English literary history. It is an essential addition to the literature on Old and Middle English and will be widely discussed amongst scholars in the field.

On Germanic Linguistics

On Germanic Linguistics PDF Author: Irmengard Rauch
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110856441
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax

Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax PDF Author: Mary Eva Blockley
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252026065
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"Distinguished by a remarkable combination of erudition and lucidity, Aspects of Old English Poetic Syntax provides new insight into the rules that govern syntactic relationships and indicates how these rules differ for prose and verse. Blockley considers the functions of four of the most common and most syntactically important words in Old English, as well as such features of clauses as verb-initial order, negative contraction, and unexpressed but understood subjects. Picking up where Bruce Mitchell's classic Old English Syntax left off, Blockley shows how such common words and structures mark the relationships between phrases and clauses.".