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Dr Garde questions modern interpretations of the nature and purpose of Old English religious poetry.
From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, from the heart-rending lament of a lone castaway to the embodied speech of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, from the anxiety of Eve, who carries "a sumptuous secret in her hands / And a tempting truth hidden in her heart," to the trust of Noah who builds "a sea-floater, a wave-walking / Ocean-home with rooms for all creatures," the world of the Anglo-Saxon poets is a place of harshness, beauty, and wonder. Now for the first time, the entire Old English poetic corpus—including poems and fragments discovered only within the past fifty years—is rendered into modern strong-stress, alliterative verse in a masterful translation by Craig Williamson. Accompanied by an introduction by noted medievalist Tom Shippey on the literary scope and vision of these timeless poems and Williamson's own introductions to the individual works and his essay on translating Old English poetry, the texts transport us back to the medieval scriptorium or ancient mead-hall, to share a herdsman's recounting of the story of the world's creation or a people's sorrow at the death of a beloved king, to be present at the clash of battle or to puzzle over the sacred and profane answers to riddles posed over a thousand years ago. This is poetry as stunning in its vitality as it is true to its sources. Were Williamson's idiom not so modern, we might think that the Anglo-Saxon poets had taken up the lyre again and begun to sing once more.
Anglo-Saxons valued education yet understood how precarious it could be, alternately bolstered and undermined by fear, desire, and memory. They praised their teachers in official writing, but composed and translated scenes of instruction that revealed the emotional and cognitive complexity of learning. Irina Dumitrescu explores how early medieval writers used fictional representations of education to explore the relationship between teacher and student. These texts hint at the challenges of teaching and learning: curiosity, pride, forgetfulness, inattention, and despair. Still, these difficulties are understood to be part of the dynamic process of pedagogy, not simply a sign of its failure. The book demonstrates the enduring concern of Anglo-Saxon authors with learning throughout Old English and Latin poems, hagiographies, histories, and schoolbooks.
"Examines the Old English riddles found in the tenth-century Exeter Book manuscript, with particular attention to their relationship to larger traditions of literary and traditional riddling"--Provided by publisher.
Most studies of Jews in medieval England begin with the year 1066, when Jews first arrived on English soil. Yet the absence of Jews in England before the conquest did not prevent early English authors from writing obsessively about them. Using material from the writings of the Church Fathers, contemporary continental sources, widespread cultural stereotypes, and their own imaginations, their depictions of Jews reflected their own politico-theological experiences. The thirteen essays in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture examine visual and textual representations of Jews, the translation and interpretation of Scripture, the use of Hebrew words and etymologies, and the treatment of Jewish spaces and landmarks. By studying the “imaginary Jews” of Anglo-Saxon England, they offer new perspectives on the treatment of race, religion, and ethnicity in pre- and post-conquest literature and culture.
"The art of posing riddles is possibly as old as mankind and spans two apparent extremes which, nevertheless, converge in the riddlic form: that of wisdom and that of play. With this perspective in mind, the author examines the poetic enigmas present in the culture of Anglo-Saxon England, exploring both the Anglo-Latin riddles of Aldhelm and those recorded in the Exeter Book. His study investigates the Old English riddlic texts from a variety of angles, arguing for the possibility of establishing patterns of Anglo-Saxon riddlic composition as such. The author intends to prove that both the Exeter collection and the Aenigmata of Aldhelm are constructed on the grounds of an identifiable structure of interrelations and interdependencies. Additionally, he argues that the riddlic mode of literary representation is also visible in other Anglo-Saxon poetic compositions. The analysis of such an assumption leads to the conclusion that the predilection for the riddle form in Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Saxon poetry results from an Old English vision of the Christian world".--BOOKJACKET.
In Myths, Legends, and Heroes, editor Daniel Anzelark has brought together scholars of Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English literature to explore the translation and transmission of Norse myth, the use of literature in society and authorial self-reflection, the place of myth in the expression of family relationships, and recurrent motifs in Northern literature. The essays in Myths, Legends, and Heroes include an examination of the theme of sibling rivalry, an analysis of Christ's unusual ride into hell as found in both Old Norse and Old English, a discussion of Beowulf's swimming prowess and an analysis of the poetry in Snorri Sturluson's Edda. A tribute to Durham University professor John McKinnell's distinguished contributions to the field, this volume offers new insights in light of linguistic and archaeological evidence and a broad range of study with regard to both chronology and methodology.
This volume explores the conflicting representations of ancient Rome—one of the most important European cities in the medieval imagination—in late Middle English poetry. Once the capital of a great pagan empire whose ruined monuments still inspired awe in the Middle Ages, Rome, the seat of the pope, became a site of Christian pilgrimage owing to the fame of its early martyrs, whose relics sanctified the city and whose help was sought by pilgrims to their shrines. C. David Benson analyzes the variety of ways that Rome and its citizens, both pre-Christian and Christian, are presented in a range of Middle English poems, from lesser-known, anonymous works to the poetry of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, and Lydgate. Benson discusses how these poets conceive of ancient Rome and its citizens—especially the women of Rome—as well as why this matters to their works. An insightful and innovative study, Imagined Romes addresses a crucial lacuna in the scholarship of Rome in the medieval imaginary and provides fresh perspectives on the work of four of the most prominent Middle English poets.