Download or read book The Old English Riddles and the Riddlic Elements of Old English Poetry written by Rafat Boryslawski and published by Peter Lang Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The art of posing riddles is possibly as old as mankind and spans two apparent extremes which, nevertheless, converge in the riddlic form: that of wisdom and that of play. With this perspective in mind, the author examines the poetic enigmas present in the culture of Anglo-Saxon England, exploring both the Anglo-Latin riddles of Aldhelm and those recorded in the Exeter Book. His study investigates the Old English riddlic texts from a variety of angles, arguing for the possibility of establishing patterns of Anglo-Saxon riddlic composition as such. The author intends to prove that both the Exeter collection and the Aenigmata of Aldhelm are constructed on the grounds of an identifiable structure of interrelations and interdependencies. Additionally, he argues that the riddlic mode of literary representation is also visible in other Anglo-Saxon poetic compositions. The analysis of such an assumption leads to the conclusion that the predilection for the riddle form in Anglo-Latin and Anglo-Saxon poetry results from an Old English vision of the Christian world".--BOOKJACKET.
Download or read book Unriddling the Exeter Riddles written by Patrick J. Murphy and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011-03-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vibrant and enigmatic Exeter Riddles (ca. 960–980) are among the most compelling texts in the field of medieval studies, in part because they lack textually supplied solutions. Indeed, these ninety-five Old English riddles have become so popular that they have even been featured on posters for the London Underground and have inspired a sculpture in downtown Exeter. Modern scholars have responded enthusiastically to the challenge of solving the Riddles, but have generally examined them individually. Few have considered the collection as a whole or in a broader context. In this book, Patrick Murphy takes an innovative approach, arguing that in order to understand the Riddles more fully, we must step back from the individual puzzles and consider the group in light of the textual and oral traditions from which they emerged. He offers fresh insights into the nature of the Exeter Riddles’ complexity, their intellectual foundations, and their lively use of metaphor.
Download or read book Say what I Am Called written by Dieter Bitterli and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most enigmatic cultural artifacts that survive from the Anglo-Saxon period are the Old English riddle poems that were preserved in the tenth century Exeter Book manuscript. Clever, challenging, and notoriously obscure, the riddles have fascinated readers for centuries and provided crucial insight into the period. In Say What I Am Called, Dieter Bitterli takes a fresh look at the riddles by examining them in the context of earlier Anglo-Latin riddles. Bitterli argues that there is a vigorous common tradition between Anglo-Latin and Old English riddles and details how the contents of the Exeter Book emulate and reassess their Latin predecessors while also expanding their literary and formal conventions. The book also considers the ways in which convention and content relate to writing in a vernacular language. A rich and illuminating work that is as intriguing as the riddles themselves, Say What I Am Called is a rewarding study of some of the most interesting works from the Anglo-Saxon period.
Download or read book A Feast of Creatures written by Craig Williamson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Feast of Creatures, Craig Williamson recasts nearly one hundred Old English riddles of the Exeter Book into a modern verse mode that yokes the cadences of Aelfric with the sprung rhythm of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like the early English riddlers before him, Williamson gives voice to the nightingale, plow, ox, phallic onion, and storm-wind. In lean and taut language he offers us mead disguised as a mighty wrestler, the sword as a celibate thane, the silver wine-cup as a seductress, the horn transformed from head-warrior to ink-belly or battle-singer. In his notes and commentary he gives us possible and probable solutions, sources, and analogues, a shrewd sense of literary play, and traces the literary and cultural contexts in which each riddle may be viewed. In his introduction, Williamson traces for us the history of riddles and riddle scholarship.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature written by Clare A. Lees and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-29 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Informed by multicultural, multidisciplinary perspectives, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature offers a new exploration of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland, from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century. Beginning with an account of writing itself, as well as of scripts and manuscript art, subsequent chapters examine the earliest texts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the tremendous breadth of Anglo-Latin literature. Chapters on English learning and literature in the ninth century and the later formation of English poetry and prose also convey the profound cultural confidence of the period. Providing a discussion of essential texts, including Beowulf and the writings of Bede, this History captures the sheer inventiveness and vitality of early medieval literary culture through topics as diverse as the literature of English law, liturgical and devotional writing, the workings of science and the history of women's writing.
Download or read book The Anglo Saxon Poetic Records written by George Philip Krapp and published by . This book was released on 1931 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the Aesthetics of Beowulf and Other Old English Poems written by John M. Hill and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Saint Aldhelm s Riddles written by Saint Aldhelm and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-11-26 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first and one of the finest Latin poets of Anglo-Saxon England, the seventh-century bishop Saint Aldhelm can justly be called “Britain’s first man of letters.” Among his many influential poetic texts were the hundred riddles that made up his Aenigmata. In Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles, A.M. Juster offers the first verse translation of this text in almost a century, capturing the wit, warmth, and wonder of the first English riddle collection. One of today’s finest formalist poets, A.M. Juster brings the same exquisite care to this volume as to his translations of Horace (“The best edition available of the Satires in English” –Choice), Tibullus (“An excellent new translation” –The Guardian), and Petrarch. Juster’s translation is complemented by a newly edited version of the Latin text and by the first scholarly commentary on the Aenigmata, the result of exhaustive interdisciplinary research into the text’s historical, literary, and philological context. Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles will be essential for scholars and a treasure for lovers of Tolkien, Beowulf, and Harry Potter.
Download or read book Old English Wisdom Poetry written by Russell Gilbert Poole and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1998 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliography and guide to scholarly literature on the genre of Old English wisdom poetry. Wisdom literature played a crucial role in the evolution of traditional societies, contributing to the structure of society and to the acceptance of new ideas within a culture, a function that has become increasingly understood. Old English wisdom literature is the focus of this volume, which offers an bibliography of the scholarly criticism between 1800 and 1990 of a group of largely secular poems comprising the metrical Charms, The Fortunes of Men, The Gifts of Men, Homiletic Fragments I and II, Maxims I and II, The Order of the World, Precepts, the metrical Proverbs, the Riddles of the Exeter Book, the Rune Poem, Solomon and Saturn, and Vainglory. A General Introduction investigates debates between scholars and establishes overall trends; it is followed by the bibliography proper, divided into chapters, each with its own introduction, focusing on a major text or collection of texts, with entries arranged chronologically. Dr RUSSELL POOLEteaches in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand.
Download or read book Maxims in Old English Poetry written by Paul Cavill and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 1999 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of maxims - what they are, why and when they are used - based on detailed investigation of issues, texts and formulas.
Download or read book The Exeter Book written by Israel Gollancz and published by . This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M R James written by Patrick J. Murphy and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montague Rhodes James authored some of the most highly regarded ghost stories of all time—classics such as “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” that have been adapted many times over for radio and television and have never gone out of print. But while James is best known as a fiction writer and storyteller, he was also a provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton College, and a legendary and influential scholar whose pioneering work in the study of biblical texts and medieval manuscripts, art, and architecture is still relevant today. In Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M. R. James, Patrick J. Murphy argues that these twin careers are inextricably linked. James’s research not only informed his fiction but also reflected his anxieties about the nature of academic life and explored the delicate divide between professional, university men and erratic hobbyists or antiquaries. Murphy shows how detailed attention to the scholarly inspirations behind James’s fiction provides considerable insight into a formative moment in medieval studies, as well as into James’s methods as a master stylist of understated horror. During his life, James often claimed that his stories were mere entertainments—pleasing distractions from a life largely defined by academic discipline and restraint—and readers over the years have been content to take him at his word. This intriguing volume, however, convincingly proves otherwise.
Download or read book Old English Riddles written by Alfred John Wyatt and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Life Course in Old English Poetry written by Harriet Soper and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book-length study of the whole lifespan in Old English verse, Harriet Soper reveals how poets depicted varied paths through life, including their staging of entanglements between human life courses and those of the nonhuman or more-than-human. While Old English poetry sometimes suggests that uniform patterns shape each life, paralleling patristic traditions of the ages of man, it also frequently disrupts a sense of steady linearity through the life course in striking ways, foregrounding moments of sudden upheaval over smooth continuity, contingency over predictability, and idiosyncrasy over regularity. Advancing new readings of a diverse range of Old English poems, Soper draws on an array of supporting contexts and theories to illuminate these texts, unearthing their complex and fascinating depictions of ageing through life. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Download or read book The Exeter Book Riddles written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ninety-six Anglo-Saxon riddles in the eleventh-century Exeter Book are poems of great charm, zest, and subtlety. Ranging from natural phenomena (such as icebergs and storms at sea) to animal and bird life, from the Christian concept of the creation to prosaic domestic objects (such as a rake and a pair of bellows), and from weaponry to the peaceful pursuits of music and writing, they are full of sharp observation, earthly humour and, above all, a sense of wonder. The main text of this volume contains Kevin Crossley-Holland's newly-revised translations of seventy-five fascinating and discursive riddles - all those not very badly damaged or impenetrably obscure - while a further sixteen are translated in the notes. These translations are very widely anthologised in Britain and the USA. Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias set some of them to music, Ralph Steadman has illustrated them and Michael Fairfax has incorporated them in his Riddle Sculpture."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Riddles in Literature written by Katharina Fischer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010-07-08 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Kassel (Institut f r Anglistik und Amerikanistik), 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Riddles and rhymes are very common in English speaking countries; they are even part of oral lore among children and students. True riddles or punning ones with a word of two uses are very popular, i.e. "What runs but never walks? - A river."1 Although they are regarded as special forms funny puzzles, enigmas and sayings were also an important element of poetic diction throughout the history of literature. Old English prose and verse are considered to be the oldest literature written in vernacular, although Latin and Germanic influence is apparent in the Old English language. During the Anglo-Saxon Period and especially under Alfred, King of Wessex, Old English language and poetry reached its highpoint. At this time the clergy was considered as the intellectual elite and so poetry was composed in monasteries and the so called "writing-rooms". The surviving manuscripts include heroic, elegiac and religious elements, as in the Beowulf poem, The Seafarer and The Dream of the Rood. Old English riddles can be found in The Book of Exeter anthology. The collection includes about ninety riddles with heroic, religious and philosophical elements. This special form of poetic diction provides characteristic stylistic devices like alliterative verse and kenning. Besides that, the enigmas had a didactic purpose, as they were intended for religious and linguistic learning at the monastery schools.
