Heathen Gods In Old English Literature

Author : Richard North
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 1997-12-11
Category : History
ISBN : 0521551838

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Heathen Gods in Old English Literature by Richard North Pdf

Heathen gods are hard to find in Old English literature. Most Anglo-Saxon writers had no interest in them, and scholars today prefer to concentrate on the Christian civilization for which the Anglo-Saxons were so famous. Richard North offers an interesting view of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism and mythology in the pre-Viking and Viking age. He discusses the pre-Christian gods of Bede's history of the Anglo-Saxon conversion with reference to an orgiastic figure known as Ingui, whom Bede called 'god of this age'. Using expert knowledge of comparative literary material from Old Norse-Icelandic and other Old Germanic languages, North reconstructs the slender Old English evidence in a highly imaginative treatment of poems such as Deor and The Dream of the Rood. Other gods such as Woden are considered with reference to Odin and his family in Old Norse-Icelandic mythology. In conclusion, it is argued that the cult of Ingui was defeated only when the ideology of the god Woden was sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon church. The book will interest students interested in Old English, Old Norse-Icelandic and Germanic literatures, Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology.

Author : Marion Gibson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 9780415674188

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Imagining the Pagan Past by Marion Gibson Pdf

Imagining the Pagan Past explores stories of Britain's pagan history. These tales have been characterised by gods and fairies, folklore and magic. They have had an uncomfortable relationship with the scholarly world; often being seen as historically dubious, self-indulgent romance and, worse, encouraging tribal and nationalistic feelings or challenging church and state. This book shows how important these stories are to the history of British culture, taking the reader on a lively tour from prehistory to the present. From the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Marion Gibson explores the ways in which British pagan gods and goddesses have been represented in poetry, novels, plays, chronicles, scientific and scholarly writing. From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney and H.G. Wells to Naomi Mitchison it explores Romano-British, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon deities and fictions. The result is a comprehensive picture of the ways in which writers have peopled the British pagan pantheons throughout history. Imagining the Pagan Past will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of paganism.

Author : Brian Murdoch,Malcolm Kevin Read
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 157113199X

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Early Germanic Literature and Culture by Brian Murdoch,Malcolm Kevin Read Pdf

A collection of fresh essays examining the wide scope and significance of early Germanic culture and literature. The first volume of this set views the development of writing in German with respect to broad aspects of the early Germanic past, drawing on a range of disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, and philology in addition toliterary history. The first part considers the whole concept of Germanic antiquity and the way in which it has been approached, examines classical writings about Germanic origins and the earliest Germanic tribes, and looks at thetwo great influences on the early Germanic world: the confrontation with the Roman Empire and the displacement of Germanic religion by Christianity. A chapter on orality -- the earliest stage of all literature -- provides a bridgeto the earliest Germanic writings. The second part of the book is devoted to written Germanic -- rather than German -- materials, with a series of chapters looking first at the Runic inscriptions, then at Gothic, the first Germanic language to find its way onto parchment (in Ulfilas's Bible translation). The topic turns finally to what we now understand as literature, with general surveys of the three great areas of early Germanic literature: Old Norse, Old English, and Old High and Low German. A final chapter is devoted to the Old Saxon Heliand. Contributors: T. M. Andersson, Heinrich Beck, Graeme Dunphy, Klaus Düwel, G. Ronald Murphy, Adrian Murdoch, Brian Murdoch, Rudolf Simek, Herwig Wolfram. Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read both teach in the German Department of the University of Stirling in Scotland.

Author : John D. Niles
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781118598849

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Old English Literature by John D. Niles Pdf

This review of the critical reception of Old English literature from 1900 to the present moves beyond a focus on individual literary texts so as to survey the different schools, methods, and assumptions that have shaped the discipline. Examines the notable works and authors from the period, including Beowulf, the Venerable Bede, heroic poems, and devotional literature Reinforces key perspectives with excerpts from ten critical studies Addresses questions of medieval literacy, textuality, and orality, as well as style, gender, genre, and theme Embraces the interdisciplinary nature of the field with reference to historical studies, religious studies, anthropology, art history, and more

Author : Richard North,Joe Allard,Patricia Gillies
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 1415 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000154085

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Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures by Richard North,Joe Allard,Patricia Gillies Pdf

The Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures provides a scholarly and accessible introduction to the literature which was the inspiration for many of the heroes of modern popular culture, from The Lord of the Rings to The Chronicles of Narnia, and which set the foundations of the English language and its literature as we know it today. Edited, translated and annotated by the editors of Beowulf and Other Stories, the anthology introduces readers to the rich and varied literature of Britain, Scandinavia and France of the period in and around the Viking Age. Ranging from the Old English epic Beowulf through to the Anglo-Norman texts which heralded the transition Middle English, thematically organised chapters present elegies, eulogies, laments and followed by material on the Viking Wars in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Vikings gods and Icelandic sagas, and a final chapter on early chivalry introduces the new themes and forms which led to Middle English literature, including Arthurian Romances and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Laying out in parallel text format selections from the most important Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman works, this anthology presents translated and annotated texts with useful bibliographic references, prefaced by a headnote providing useful background and explanation.

Author : Swain Wodening
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2010-02-09
Category : Anglo-Saxons
ISBN : 1450548407

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Hammer of the Gods by Swain Wodening Pdf

Hammer of the Gods covers the beliefs, rites, and practices of modern day Anglo-Saxon Heathenry, a pagan religion derived from years of research into the beliefs of the ancient Anglo-Saxons and Norse

Author : Ananya Jahanara Kabir
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2001-12-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139432443

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Paradise, Death and Doomsday in Anglo-Saxon Literature by Ananya Jahanara Kabir Pdf

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.

Author : Stephen Harris
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2004-06-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781135924379

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Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature by Stephen Harris Pdf

What makes English literature English ? This question inspires Stephen Harris's wide-ranging study of Old English literature. From Bede in the eighth century to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth, Harris explores the intersections of race and literature before the rise of imagined communities. Harris examines possible configurations of communities, illustrating dominant literary metaphors of race from Old English to its nineteenth-century critical reception. Literary voices in the England of Bede understood the limits of community primarily as racial or tribal, in keeping with the perceived divine division of peoples after their languages, and the extension of Christianity to Bede's Germanic neighbours was effected in part through metaphors of family and race. Harris demonstrates how King Alfred adapted Bede in the ninth century; how both exerted an effect on Archbishop Wulfstan in the eleventh; and how Old English poetry speaks to images of race.

Author : Paul Cavill
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0859915417

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Maxims in Old English Poetry by Paul Cavill Pdf

A study of maxims - what they are, why and when they are used - based on detailed investigation of issues, texts and formulas.

Author : Richard Marsden
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 615 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2015-04-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781107055308

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The Cambridge Old English Reader by Richard Marsden Pdf

This groundbreaking reader of Old English prose and verse has been extensively revised for the second edition.

Author : Graham Holderness
Publisher : Northcote House Pub Limited
Page : 126 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780746309148

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Anglo-Saxon Verse by Graham Holderness Pdf

Almost everything of interest in Anglo-Saxon history is recorded in the poetry of the period: the historical and political, moral and ethical, theological and ecclesiastical, military and constitutional motives and preoccupations of that past culture are there to be read at the level of individual perception and personal experience. In this study Graham Holderness brings these Old English texts and the culture they embody within the reach of the general reader by providing powerful new translations of heroic, elegiac, religious and love verses, translations which span the corpus from Beowulf to The Wife's Lament and bridge the gap between the unfamiliar language of their original composition and the modern English in which they are subsequently discussed and lucidly explained. As a general introduction to the subject this book opens up the language, literature and life of Anglo-Saxon England to the non-specialist, ending with a line by line, sample translation and detailed annotation as an impetus t

Author : Brian Branston
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1974
Category : Religion
ISBN : UVA:X000612583

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The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston Pdf

Author : Mary Swan,Elaine M. Treharne
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2000-08-15
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 0521623723

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Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century by Mary Swan,Elaine M. Treharne Pdf

Ten essays on the study of Old English texts in the twelfth century, first published in 2000.

Author : Joseph St. John
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2024-07-31
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781040077665

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Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry by Joseph St. John Pdf

Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry explores the adaptation of antediluvian Genesis and related myth in the Old Testament poems Genesis A and Genesis B, as well as in Beowulf, a secular heroic narrative. The book explores how the Genesis poems resort to the Christian exegetical tradition and draw on secular social norms to deliver their biblically derived and related narratives in a manner relevant to their Christian Anglo-Saxon audiences. In this book it is suggested that these elements work in unison, and that the two Genesis poems function coherently in the context of the Junius 11 manuscript. Moreover, the book explores recourse to Genesis-derived myth in Beowulf, and points to important similarities between this text and the Genesis poems. It is therefore shown that while Beowulf differs from the Genesis poems in several respects, it belongs in a corpus where religious verse enjoys prominence.

Author : Jennifer Neville
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1999-03-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139425964

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Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry by Jennifer Neville Pdf

This book examines descriptions of the natural world in a wide range of Old English poetry. Jennifer Neville describes the physical conditions experienced by the Anglo-Saxons - the animals, diseases, landscapes, seas and weather with which they had to contend. She argues that poetic descriptions of these elements were not a reflection of the existing physical conditions but a literary device used by Anglo-Saxons to define more important issues: the state of humanity, the creation and maintenance of society, the power of individuals, the relationship between God and creation and the power of writing to control information. Examples of contemporary literature in other languages are used to provide a sense of Old English poetry's particular approach, which incorporated elements from Germanic, Christian and classical sources. The result of this approach was not a consistent cosmological scheme but a rather contradictory vision which reveals much about how the Anglo-Saxons viewed themselves.