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Heroic poetry was central to the construction of Anglo-Saxon values, beliefs, and community identity and its subject matter is often analyzed as a window into Anglo-Saxon life. However, these poems are works of art as well as vehicles for ideology. Aesthetics of Nostalgia reads Anglo-Saxon historical verse in terms of how its aesthetic form interacted with the culture and politics of the period. Examining the distinctive poetic techniques found in vernacular historic poetry, Renée R. Trilling argues that the literary construction of heroic poetry promoted specific kinds of historical understanding in early medieval England, distinct from linear and teleological perceptions of the past. The Aesthetics of Nostalgia surveys Anglo-Saxon literary culture from the age of Bede to the decades following the Norman Conquest in order to explore its cultural impact through both its content and its form.
Old English verse and prose depict the human mind as a corporeal entity located in the chest cavity, susceptible to spatial and thermal changes corresponding to the psychological states: it was thought that emotions such as rage, grief, and yearning could cause the contents of the chest to grow warm, boil, or be constricted by pressure. While readers usually assume the metaphorical nature of such literary images, Leslie Lockett, in Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions, argues that these depictions are literal representations of Anglo-Saxon folk psychology. Lockett analyses both well-studied and little-known texts, including Insular Latin grammars, The Ruin, the Old English Soliloquies, The Rhyming Poem, and the writings of Patrick, Bishop of Dublin. She demonstrates that the Platonist-Christian theory of the incorporeal mind was known to very few Anglo-Saxons throughout most of the period, while the concept of mind-in-the-heart remained widespread. Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions examines the interactions of rival - and incompatible - concepts of the mind in a highly original way.
"A study of reliquaries as a form of representation in medieval art. Explores how reliquaries stage the importance and meaning of relics using a wide range of artistic means from material and ornament to metaphor and symbolism"--Provided by publisher.
The essays in Latin Learning and English Lore cover material from the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon literary record in the late seventh century to the immediately post-Conquest period of the twelfth century.
The Old English literary works traditionally associated with King Alfred are furnished with an array of prologues, epilogues, and other frame texts. These texts give fascinating glimpses into the ideas and contexts underlying the composition and reception of the Alfredian corpus. They draw attention to the ways in which authority and authorship interacted in the period and to contemporary perceptions of poetry and prose. This new edition addresses the contextual, critical, and theoretical issues raised by the frame texts, including their relationship to earlier traditions of prologue and epilogue, their engagement with English as a literary language, and their implications for the authorship debate. The texts are edited here for the first time in a single volume, with a facing-page modern English translation and a wide range of explanatory material.
A new, materialistic reading of the Alfredian corpus, drawing on diverse approaches from thing theory to Augustinian principles of use and enjoyment to uncover how these works explore the material world. The Old English prose translations traditionally attributed to Alfred the Great (versions of Gregory's Regula pastoralis, Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, Augustine's Soliloquia and the first fifty Psalms) urge detachment from the material world; but despite this, its flotsam and jetsam, from costly treasures to everyday objects, abound within them. This book reads these original and inventive translations from a materialist perspective, drawing on approaches as diverse as thing theor...
When Dead Tongues Speak introduces classicists to the research that linguists, psychologists, and language teachers have conducted over the past thirty years and passes along their most important insights. The essays cover a broad range of topics, including cognitive styles, peer teaching and collaboration, learning disabilities, feminist pedagogy, speaking, and writing. Each contributor addresses a different problem in the learning process based on his or her own teaching experience, and each chapter combines a theoretical overview with practical examples of classroom activities. The book was developed for classroom use in Greek and Latin methodology classes in M.A. and M.A.T. programs. It will also appeal to Latin and Greek language instructors who want to get current with the latest scholarship and pedagogical models.
THE TOMB OF BEOWULF Fred C. Robinson is known throughout the world for some of the most original and stimulating work on Old English literature and language published in recent times. This book collects twenty three of his essays, including three substantial new articles on the literary interpretation of Beowulf, the background and value of Ezra Pound’s translation of The Seafarer, and an account of the use of Old English in twentieth-century literary compositions. The essays vary widely in terms of subject and approach. They include literary interpretation and criticism of the best-known Old English poems (The Battle of Maldon and Exodus for example), an account of the historical, religious, and cultural background to the writing of Beowulf, articles on women in Old English literature and on the significance of names and naming. The book as a whole is informed by the author’s preoccupation with meaning, context, and language, and their subtle interactions. Its contents are equally characterized by readability and scholarship, and by learning and wit.
Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and their Representation in the Arts, 1000–2000 focuses on the changing relationships between what gradually emerged as the Arts and Christianity, the latter term covering both a stream of ideas and its institutions. The book as a whole is addressed to a general academic audience concerned with issues of cultural history, while the individual essays are also intended as scholarly contributions within their own fields. A collaborative effort by twenty-five European and American scholars representing disciplines ranging from aesthetics to the history of art and architecture, from literature, music and the theatre to classics, church hi...