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The Aesthetics of Nostalgia
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.
The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry before Bede
Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry. This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.
How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems
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 eye...
Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time
There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.
Poetry and Drama
Discusses the literary concepts and terms used in poetry and dramatic literature, including the different styles of poetry and drama, and each style's origins.
The Old English Penitentials and Anglo-Saxon Law
This is the first book-length study of the four penitentials composed in Old English. This book argues that they are also important to our understanding of how written law developed in early England. This book considers their backgrounds and shows how they illuminate obscure passages in better-known Old English texts.
Time and the Astrolabe in the Canterbury Tales
Marijane Osborn demonstrates that Chaucer structured the Canterbury Tales after the astrolabe, an Arabic Islamic time-keeping device. Chaucer’s fascination with this device also accounts for the sense of time and astronomy in the Tales.
Land and Book
Land and Book places a variety of texts in a dynamic conversation with the procedures and documents of land tenure, showing how its social practice led to innovation across written genres in both Latin and Old English.
John the Baptist's Prayer, Or, 'The Descent Into Hell' from the Exeter Book
Edition, translation and full critical study of a hitherto marginalised text, bringing it to full attention for the first time. The Old English poem known popularly as the Descent into Hell, found on folios 119v to 121v of the Exeter Book, has to date received little critical attention, perhaps owing to various contextual problems and lacunae on theleaves that contain it. This first full-length study offers a full account of the poem, together with an edition of the text and facing translation. It aims to resolve some of the poem's vexing issues and provides a varietyof possible interpretations of the poem. The in-depth literary analysis seeks to enrich modern scholarly perceptions of the poem, suggest a more appropriate title, and contribute to continued scholarly discussion and analysis of the Exeter Book and its compilation. It provides a guide towards understanding the poem's main theme, presents the text in light of its position in ecclesiastical history, and sheds fresh light into its place and significance within the corpus of Old English poetry. M.R. Rambaran-Olm received her PhD from the University of Glasgow.
Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature
This book reads the surprisingly widespread representations of cannibals and cannibalism in medieval English literature as political metaphors that were central to England's on-going process of articulating cultural and national identity.
