Download or read book The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet written by Leonard Neidorf and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet, Leonard Neidorf explores the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. The Beowulf poet inherited an amoral heroic tradition, which focused principally on heroes compelled by circumstances to commit horrendous deeds: fathers kill sons, brothers kill brothers, and wives kill husbands. Medieval Germanic poets relished the depiction of a hero's unyielding response to a cruel fate, but the Beowulf poet refused to construct an epic around this traditional plot. Focusing instead on a courteous and pious protagonist's fight against monsters, the poet creates a work that is deeply untraditional in both its plot and its values. In Beowulf, the kin-slayers and oath-breakers of antecedent tradition are confined to the background, while the poet fills the foreground with unconventional characters, who abstain from transgression, display courtly etiquette, and express monotheistic convictions. Comparing Beowulf with its medieval German and Scandinavian analogues, The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet argues that the poem's uniqueness reflects one poet's coherent plan for the moral renovation of an amoral heroic tradition. In Beowulf, Neidorf discerns the presence of a singular mind at work in the combination and modification of heroic, folkloric, hagiographical, and historical materials. Rather than perceive Beowulf as an impersonally generated object, Neidorf argues that it should be read as the considered result of one poet's ambition to produce a morally edifying, theologically palatable, and historically plausible epic out of material that could not independently constitute such a poem.
Download or read book The Art of Beowulf written by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1959 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the twenty years that have passed since the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's famous lecture, "Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics," interest in Beowulf as a work of art has increased gratifyingly, and many fine papers have made distinguished contributions to our understanding of the poem as poetry and as heroic narrative. Much more, however, remains to be done. We have still no systematic and sensitive appraisal of the poem later than Walter Morris Hart's Ballad and Epic, no thorough examination of the poet's gifts and powers, of the effects for which he strove and the means he used to achieve them. More than enough remains to occupy a generation of scholars. It is my hope that this book may serve as a kind of prolegomenon to such study. It makes no claim to completeness or finality; it contributes only the convictions and impressions which have been borne in upon me in the course of forty years of study of the poem. - Preface.
Download or read book Beowulf Translation and Commentary written by Tom Shippey and published by . This book was released on 2023-08-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero's fight against monsters and sets it against a complex background of political intrigue and tribal warfare. Situated in sixth-century Scandinavia, the poem brings to life a magnificent world that fuses history with fantasy. Tom Shippey's new translation of Beowulf, reflecting a lifetime of engagement with the poem, makes its story clearer and more compelling than it has ever been. The original Old English text of Beowulf is included along with an extensive and innovative commentary, which guides the reader passage-by-passage through the poem and its criticism. In addition to the text, translation, and commentary, this volume contains an extensive bibliography, a translator's preface, and an appended essay by Tom Shippey on "Tolkien and Beowulf-A Lifelong Involvement."
Download or read book Beowulf Translation and Commentary Expanded Edition written by Leonard Neidorf and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero's fight against monsters and sets it against a complex background of political intrigue and tribal warfare. Situated in sixth-century Scandinavia, the poem brings to life a magnificent world that fuses history with fantasy. Tom Shippey's new translation of Beowulf, reflecting a lifetime of engagement with the poem, makes its story clearer and more compelling than it has ever been. The original Old English text of Beowulf is included along with an extensive and innovative commentary, which guides the reader passage-by-passage through the poem and its criticism. In addition to the text, translation, and commentary, this volume contains an extensive bibliography, a translator's preface, and an appended essay by Tom Shippey on "Tolkien and Beowulf-A Lifelong Involvement." The 2nd edition (revised and expanded) adds new texts and translations (by Tom Shippey) of Waldere, the Hildebrandslied, and the Fight at Finnsburg.
Download or read book Interpretations of Beowulf written by Robert D. Fulk and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interpretations of Beowulf brings together over six decades of literary scholarship. Illustrating a variety of interpretative schools, the essays not only deal with most of the major issues of Beowulf criticism, including structure, style, genre, and theme, but also offer the sort of explanations of particular passages that are invaluable to a careful reading of a poem. This up-to-date collection of significant critical approaches fills a long-standing need for a companion volume for the study of the poem. Larger patterns in the history of Beowulf criticism are also traceable in the chronological order of the collection. The contributors are Theodore M. Andersson, Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, Jane Chance, Laurence N. de Looze, Margaret E. Goldsmith, Stanley B. Greenfield, Joseph Harris, Edward B. Irving, Jr., John Leyerle, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., M. B. McNamee, S. J., Bertha S. Phillpotts, John C. Pope, Richard N. Ringler, Geoffrey R. Russom, T. A. Shippey, and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Download or read book The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf written by Margaret E. Goldsmith and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-13 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies Dr Goldsmith presents a fully elaborated and documented interpretation of Beowulf based on the original theories which she has put forward in recent years and which have aroused considerable interest and controversy in scholarly circles. Her view of the poem as the product of a marriage of cultural traditions, a historical epic with allegorical significance, is developed in the context of a close analysis of the doctrinal and literary environment prevailing during the period A.D. 650-800, within which composition is placed. Dr Goldsmith seeks to show that the poem has a unified and coherent structure and in the process resolves many textual and interpretative problems of long standing. Beowulf is clearly seen as a serious work of art standing at the head of the vernacular tradition of allegorical poetry.
Download or read book The Art of Beowulf written by Arthur G. Brodeur and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought written by John Block Friedman and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Middle Ages, travelers in Africa and Asia reported that monstrous races thrived beyond the boundaries of the known world. This work offers an introspective look at these races and their interaction with Western art, literature and philosophy.
Download or read book Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry written by Joseph St. John and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Beowulf and the Illusion of History written by John F. Vickrey and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Beowulf scholars have held either that the poems' minor episodes are more or less based on incidents in Scandinavian history or at least that they entail nothing of the fabulous or monstrous. Beowulf and the Illusion of History contends that, like the poem's Grendelkin episodes, certain minor episodes involve monsters and contain motifs of the "Bear's Son" folktale. In the Finn Episode the monsters are to be taken as physically present in the story as we have it, while in the mention of the hero's fight with Daeghrefn and perhaps in the accounts of the fight with Ongenbeow, the principal foes, though originally monsters, appear now more like ordinary humans. The inference permits the elucidation of passages hitherto obscure and indicates that the capability of the Beowulf poet as a "maker" is greater than has been thought. John F. Vickrey, is Professor of English, Emeritus, at Lehigh University.
Download or read book Beowulf written by John D Niles and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enhancing Heaneys masterful bestselling translation of this classic Old English poem, Niless illustrations help modern-day readers visualize the story by bringing it to life.
Download or read book The Beowulf Poet written by Donald K. Fry and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beowulf' is the best surviving poem written in English before Chaucer," states Donald K. Fry. It is not a primitive poem or a product of the "dark ages," but a well-structured and unified poem which exemplifies the essentially pessimistic outlook and the indomitable will of the Northern tribes of England in the early Middle Ages. Beginning with J. R. R. Tolkien's description of "Beowulf"'s structure as "a balance, an opposition of ends and beginnings," Fry presents authoritative essays that range from explanations of dramatic technique and symbolism to religious themes and characterization. As the contributors to this book prove, the anonymous master craftsman of "Beowulf" produced a vigorous, stately, and beautiful poem which shows how a hero, embodying the ideals of a heroic society, must act in a world of ever increasing evil and impending doom.
Download or read book The Transmission of Beowulf written by Leonard Neidorf and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, is a foundational work of Western literature that originated in mysterious circumstances. In The Transmission of Beowulf, Leonard Neidorf addresses philological questions that are fundamental to the study of the poem. Is Beowulf the product of unitary or composite authorship? How substantially did scribes alter the text during its transmission, and how much time elapsed between composition and preservation? Neidorf answers these questions by distinguishing linguistic and metrical regularities, which originate with the Beowulf poet, from patterns of textual corruption, which descend from copyists involved in the poem’s transmission. He argues, on the basis of archaic features that pervade Beowulf and set it apart from other Old English poems, that the text preserved in the sole extant manuscript (ca. 1000) is essentially the work of one poet who composed it circa 700. Of course, during the poem’s written transmission, several hundred scribal errors crept into its text. These errors are interpreted in the central chapters of the book as valuable evidence for language history, cultural change, and scribal practice. Neidorf’s analysis reveals that the scribes earnestly attempted to standardize and modernize the text’s orthography, but their unfamiliarity with obsolete words and ancient heroes resulted in frequent errors. The Beowulf manuscript thus emerges from his study as an indispensible witness to processes of linguistic and cultural change that took place in England between the eighth and eleventh centuries. An appendix addresses J. R. R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, which was published in 2014. Neidorf assesses Tolkien’s general views on the transmission of Beowulf and evaluates his position on various textual issues.
Download or read book Beowulf written by and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finest heroic poem in Old English celebrates the exploits of Beowulf, a young nobleman of southern Sweden. Combines myth, Christian and pagan elements, and history into a powerful narrative. Genealogies.
Download or read book Old English Philology written by Leonard Neidorf and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays bringing out the crucial importance of philology for understanding Old English texts.
Download or read book Beowulf written by Harold Bloom and published by Chelsea House Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents eleven critical essays that analyze the structure, myth, and history of the Old English epic poem depicting the heroic deeds of Beowulf, a member of a Germanic tribe who travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel.
Download or read book The Dating of Beowulf written by Leonard Neidorf and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examinations of the date of Beowulf have tremendous significance for Anglo-Saxon culture in general.
