Narrative Pulse Of Beowulf

Author : John M Hill
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 137 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2009-10-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781442691940

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Narrative Pulse of Beowulf by John M Hill Pdf

One of the most consistent critiques levelled against Beowulf is that it lacks a steady narrative advance and that its numerous digressions tend to complicate if not halt the poem's movement. As those passages often look backward or far ahead in narrative time, they seem to transform the poem into a meditative pastiche. The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf counters this assertion, examining Beowulf as a social drama with a strong, forward-moving narrative momentum. John M. Hill discerns a distinctive 'narrative pulse' arising out of the poem's many scenes of arrival and departure. He argues that such scenes, far from being fixed or 'type' scenes, are socially dramatic and a key to understanding the structural density of the poem. Bolstering his analysis with a strong understanding of the epic, Hill looks at Beowulf in relation to other stories such as The Odyssey and The Iliad, epics that, though they may appear to have a certain narrative elasticity, use scenes of arrival and departure to create a cohesive social world in which stories unfold. As a new and comprehensive study of one of the most important Old English texts, The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf sheds new light on this famous poem and the epic tradition itself.

Author : John M. Hill
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780802099440

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On the Aesthetics of Beowulf and Other Old English Poems by John M. Hill Pdf

What makes one Anglo-Saxon poem better than another? Why does Beowulf still have the power to move us after so many centuries? What might have been aesthetically pleasing to Old English readers and writers of poetry? While there is an apparent consensus by scholars on a core of poems considered to be exceptional literary achievements - Beowulf, Judith, the Vercelli book - there has been little systematic investigation of the basis for these appraisals. With new essays on rhetoric, wordplay, meter, structure, irony, form, psychology, ethos, and reader response, the contributors to this collection aim to find objective aesthetic qualities in Anglo-Saxon poetry. Posing questions of quality and beauty as discoverable in artefacts, On the Aesthetics of Beowulf and Other Old English Poems significantly advances our understanding not only of aesthetics and Old English poetry, but also of Old English attitudes towards literature as an art form.

Author : Scott Gwara
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2009-01-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9789047425021

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Heroic Identity in the World of Beowulf by Scott Gwara Pdf

In exploring the identities of foreign fighters seeking glory abroad, this revisionist book challenges the traditional view of Beowulf as a "hero." Beowulf emphasizes the obligations attending excellence and the temptation of power, both personal and civic.

Author : Edward L. Risden
Publisher : Witan Publishing
Page : 110 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2013-01-26
Category : History
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Beowulf: A Verse Translation for Students by Edward L. Risden Pdf

Author : Peter Stuart Baker
Publisher : D. S. Brewer
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 9781843843467

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Honour, Exchange and Violence in Beowulf by Peter Stuart Baker Pdf

Argues for a new reading of Beowulf in its contemporary context, where honour and violence are intimately linked. This book examines violence in its social setting, and especially as an essential element in the heroic system of exchange (sometimes called the Economy of Honour). It situates Beowulf in a northern European culture where violence was not stigmatized as evidence of a breakdown in social order but rather was seen as a reasonable way to get things done; where kings and their retainers saw themselves above all as warriors whose chief occupation was thepursuit of honour; and where most successful kings were those perceived as most predatory. Though kings and their subjects yearned for peace, the political and religious institutions of the time did little to restrain their violent impulses. Drawing on works from Britain, Scandinavia, and Ireland, which show how the practice of violence was governed by rules and customs which were observed, with variations, over a wide area, this book makes use of historicist and anthropological approaches to its subject. It takes a neutral attitude towards the phenomena it examines, but at the same time describes them fortnightly, avoiding euphemism and excuse-making on the one hand and condemnation on the other. In this it attempts to avoid the errors of critics who have sometimes been led astray by modern assumptions about the morality of violence. PETER S. BAKER is Professor of English at the Universityof Virginia.

Author : Mark C. Amodio
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 438 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-04
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780631226987

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The Anglo Saxon Literature Handbook by Mark C. Amodio Pdf

The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook presents an accessible introduction to the surviving works of prose and poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England, from AD 410-1066. Makes Anglo-Saxon literature accessible to modern readers Helps readers to overcome the linguistic, aesthetic and cultural barriers to understanding and appreciating Anglo-Saxon verse and prose Introduces readers to the language, politics, and religion of the Anglo-Saxon literary world Presents original readings of such works as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Author : E.L. Risden
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2016-07-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780786477784

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Narrative Subversion in Medieval Literature by E.L. Risden Pdf

A story that follows a simple trajectory is seldom worth telling. But the unexpected overturning of narrative progress creates complexity and interest, directing the reader's attention to the most powerful elements of a story. Exile, for example, upsets a protagonist's hopes for a happy earthly life, emphasizing spiritual perception instead. Waking life interrupts dreams, just as dreams may redirect how one lives. Focusing on medieval literature, this study explores how narrative subversion works in such well known stories as Beowulf, Piers Plowman, Le Morte D'Arthur, The Canterbury Tales, Troylus and Criseyde, "Voluspa" and other Old Norse sagas, Grail quest romances, and many others.

Author : Karen A. Winstead
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2018-04-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780192550927

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The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1. The Middle Ages by Karen A. Winstead Pdf

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages explores the richness and variety of life-writing from late Antiquity to the threshold of the Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, writers from Bede to Chaucer were thinking about life and experimenting with ways to translate lives, their own and others', into literature. Their subjects included career religious, saints, celebrities, visionaries, pilgrims, princes, philosophers, poets, and even a few 'ordinary people.' They relay life stories not only in chronological narratives, but also in debates, dialogues, visions, and letters. Many medieval biographers relied on the reader's trust in their authority, but some espoused standards of evidence that seem distinctly modern, drawing on reliable written sources, interviewing eyewitnesses, and cross-checking their facts wherever possible. Others still professed allegiance to evidence but nonetheless freely embellished and invented not only events and dialogue but the sources to support them. The first book devoted to life-writing in medieval England, The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1: The Middle Ages covers major life stories in Old and Middle English, Latin, and French, along with such Continental classics as the letters of Abelard and Heloise and the autobiographical Vision of Christine de Pizan. In addition to the life stories of historical figures, it treats accounts of fictional heroes, from Beowulf to King Arthur to Queen Katherine of Alexandria, which show medieval authors experimenting with, adapting, and expanding the conventions of life writing. Though Medieval life writings can be challenging to read, we encounter in them the antecedents of many of our own diverse biographical forms-tabloid lives, literary lives, brief lives, revisionist lives; lives of political figures, memoirs, fictional lives, and psychologically-oriented accounts that register the inner lives of their subjects.

Author : Alice Jorgensen,Frances McCormack,Jonathan Wilcox
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-04-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317180883

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Anglo-Saxon Emotions by Alice Jorgensen,Frances McCormack,Jonathan Wilcox Pdf

Research into the emotions is beginning to gain momentum in Anglo-Saxon studies. In order to integrate early medieval Britain into the wider scholarly research into the history of emotions (a major theme in other fields and a key field in interdisciplinary studies), this volume brings together established scholars, who have already made significant contributions to the study of Anglo-Saxon mental and emotional life, with younger scholars. The volume presents a tight focus - on emotion (rather than psychological life more generally), on Anglo-Saxon England and on language and literature - with contrasting approaches that will open up debate. The volume considers a range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, examines the interplay of emotion and textuality, explores how emotion is conveyed through gesture, interrogates emotions in religious devotional literature, and considers the place of emotion in heroic culture. Each chapter asks questions about what is culturally distinctive about emotion in Anglo-Saxon England and what interpretative moves have to be made to read emotion in Old English texts, as well as considering how ideas about and representations of emotion might relate to lived experience. Taken together the essays in this collection indicate the current state of the field and preview important work to come. By exploring methodologies and materials for the study of Anglo-Saxon emotions, particularly focusing on Old English language and literature, it will both stimulate further study within the discipline and make a distinctive contribution to the wider interdisciplinary conversation about emotions.

Author : Edward Slingerland,Mark Collard
Publisher : OUP USA
Page : 467 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199794393

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Creating Consilience by Edward Slingerland,Mark Collard Pdf

Calls for a "consilient" or "vertically integrated" approach to the study of human mind and culture have, for the most part, been received by scholars in the humanities with either indifference or hostility. One reason for this is that consilience has often been framed as bringing the study of humanistic issues into line with the study of non-human phenomena, rather than as something to which humanists and scientists contribute equally. The other major reason that consilience has yet to catch on in the humanities is a dearth of compelling examples of the benefits of adopting a consilient approach. Creating Consilience is the product of a workshop that brought together internationally-renowned scholars from a variety of fields to address both of these issues. It includes representative pieces from workshop speakers and participants that examine how adopting such a consilient stance -- informed by cognitive science and grounded in evolutionary theory -- would concretely impact specific topics in the humanities, examining each topic in a manner that not only cuts across the humanities-natural science divide, but also across individual humanistic disciplines. By taking seriously the fact that science-humanities integration is a two-way exchange, this volume takes a new approach to bridging the cultures of science and the humanities. The editors and contributors formulate how to develop a new shared framework of consilience beyond mere interdisciplinarity, in a way that both sides can accept.

Author : Paul Maurice Clogan
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2011-01-16
Category : History
ISBN : 9781442208131

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Medievalia et Humanistica, No. 36 by Paul Maurice Clogan Pdf

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardcover volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, science, law, economics, and philosophy. Volume 36—Reviews—emphasizes new research in the field, with a particular focus on work from emerging scholars. Thus, this volume includes twenty-four reviews and three review articles of recent scholarly publications, along with five original articles. The first article “The Ultimate Transgression of the Courtly World” by Albrecht Classen analyzes German texts and melodies to reveal the social strife between the lower and upper classes. John Garrison’s essay “One Mind, One Heart, One Purse,” referencing the text Troilus and Criseyde, suggests that a medieval treatise on friendship is appropriate and engaging. Offering a solution to one of history’s most vexing problems is John Bugbee’s essay “Solving Dorigen Trilemma” by examining the tension between oath and law in the Franklin’s and Physician’s Tales. Karen Green’s essay “What Were the Ladies in the City Reading? The Libraries of Christine de Pizaan’s Contemporaries” provides a clearer insight into the intellect of Christine and her colleagues. Along with these articles, twenty-four reviews, from the United States and all over the world, are included, truly making Medievalia et Humanistica an international publication. To reflect the submissions and audience for Medievalia et Humanistica, the editorial and review boards have been expended to include ten members from the United States and ten international

Author : Nickolas Haydock,E.L. Risden
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2013-09-21
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476606170

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Beowulf on Film by Nickolas Haydock,E.L. Risden Pdf

Why did the most read work in English literature go without cinematic adaptation for so long? And why did five major film treatments appear between 1999 and 2008? This book explores the growing number of films based on the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and furthers the ongoing consideration of filmic medievalism. Will the powerful influence of cinema affect the future reception of this great cultural, linguistic and inherently visual work? The films inevitably sway away from not only the story but also from the themes and concerns of the original to those more interesting to the filmmakers--or responsive to the zeitgeist. They measure the pulse of our inherited notions of heroism and teach us more about our own times than about the epic from which they derive.

Author : Albrecht Classen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 642 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2022-08-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9783110776874

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Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period by Albrecht Classen Pdf

Die neue englischsprachige Reihe zur Mediävistik strebt eine methodisch reflektierte, anspruchsvolle Verbindung von Text- und Kulturwissenschaft an. Sie widmet sich den kulturellen Grundthemen der mittelalterlichen Welt aus der Perspektive der Literatur- und Geschichtswissenschaft. ‚Grundthemen' sind die kulturprägenden Denkbilder, Weltanschauungen, Sozialstrukturen und Alltagsbedingungen des mittelalterlichen Lebens, also z. B. Kindheit und Alter, Sexualität, Religion, Medizin, Rituale, Arbeit, Armut und Reichtum, Aberglauben, Erde und Kosmos, Stadt und Land, Krieg, Emotionen, Kommunikation, Reisen usw. Die Reihe greift wichtige aktuelle Fachdiskussionen auf und stellt ein Forum der interdisziplinären Mittelalter-Forschung dar. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture steht Sammelbänden ebenso offen wie Monographien. Intention ist immer, kompendienhafte Werke zu zentralen Fragen der mittelalterlichen Kulturgeschichte vorzulegen, die einen soliden Überblick über einen geschlossenen Themenkreis aus der Perspektive verschiedener Fachdisziplinen vermitteln. Im Ganzen bietet die Reihe so eine Enzyklopädie der mittelalterlichen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte und ihrer Hauptthemen. Es werden ca. zwei Bände pro Jahr erscheinen.

Author : Malcolm Godden,Simon Keynes
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 361 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2010-11-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521194068

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Anglo-Saxon England: Volume 38 by Malcolm Godden,Simon Keynes Pdf

Anglo-Saxon England was the first publication to consistently embrace all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 38 include: The Passio Andreae and The Dream of the Rood by Thomas D. Hill, Beowulf off the Map by Alfred Hiatt, Numerical Composition and Beowulf: A Re-consideration by Yvette Kisor, 'The Landed Endowment of the Anglo-Saxon Minster at Hanbury (Worcs.) by Steven Bassett, Scapegoating the Secular Clergy: The Hermeneutic Style as a Form of Monastic Self-Definition by Rebecca Stephenson, Understanding Numbers in MS London, British Library Harley by Daniel Anlezark, Tudor Antiquaries and the Vita 'dwardi Regis by Henry Summerso and Earl Godwine's Ship by Simon Keynes and Rosalind Love. A comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume, listing publications on Anglo-Saxon England during 2008.

Author : Albrecht Classen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 551 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2016-04-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783110434873

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Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times by Albrecht Classen Pdf

Death is not only the final moment of life, it also casts a huge shadow on human society at large. People throughout time have had to cope with death as an existential experience, and this also, of course, in the premodern world. The contributors to the present volume examine the material and spiritual conditions of the culture of death, studying specific buildings and spaces, literary works and art objects, theatrical performances, and medical tracts from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. Death has always evoked fear, terror, and awe, it has puzzled and troubled people, forcing theologians and philosophers to respond and provide answers for questions that seem to evade real explanations. The more we learn about the culture of death, the more we can comprehend the culture of life. As this volume demonstrates, the approaches to death varied widely, also in the Middle Ages and the early modern age. This volume hence adds a significant number of new facets to the critical examination of this ever-present phenomenon of death, exploring poetic responses to the Black Death, types of execution of a female murderess, death as the springboard for major political changes, and death reflected in morality plays and art.