Download or read book The use of ironic understatement in Beowulf written by Marc Walsh and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: Merit, University of Nottingham, course: MA Applied Linguistics, language: English, abstract: This paper will describe the use of litotes and meiosis in "Beowulf", discuss the functions that have been ascribed to these linguistic features and consider why it has proven problematic to assign a specific function to understatement in the poem. Several commentators have identified litotes, ironic understatement and negation as characteristic features of Old English poetry. Patterson (2000, 135) states that litotes is the 'characteristic mode of "Beowulf"'. Mitchell and Robinson (2012, 281) in a footnote to "The Wanderer", refer to 'the Anglo-Saxons' predilection for understatement', while Bracher (1937), in an early study of understatement in Old English Poetry, describes its use as 'frequent' and 'striking'. In the same study Bracher suggests that Albert Tolman may have been the first to identify this feature in Old English poetry, when he asserted that 'the rhetorical device known as "denying the opposite" is more frequent in A.-S. than in later English poetry' (Tolman, 1887). Bracher (1937) finds that understatement occurs in Beowulf with a ratio of one occurrence per 34 lines and that this ratio is exceeded in several other poems, up to a ratio of one occurrence per 17 lines in "The Riming Poem". Bracher (1937) cites this high occurrence of understatement, along with its rarity in prose, as evidence that it was a characteristic linguistic feature of Old English poetry. Bracher also points out that in the rare occurrences where it is possible to compare prose and poetic versions of the same material, understatement is restricted to the poetry.
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 written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a series of critical essays discussing the structure, themes, and subject matter of the epic poem which relates the exploits of the Anglo-Saxon warrior Beowulf, and how he came to defeat the monster Grendel.
Download or read book Direct Speech in Beowulf and Other Old English Narrative Poems written by Élise Louviot and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new examination of the little-studied phenomena of Direct Speech in Old English poetry. Some of the most celebrated passages of Old English poetry are speeches: Beowulf and Unferth's verbal contest, Hrothgar's words of advice, Satan's laments, Juliana's words of defiance, etc. Yet Direct Speech, as a stylistic device, has remained largely under-examined and under-theorized in studies of the corpus. As a consequence, many analyses are unduly influenced by anachronistic conceptions of Direct Speech, leading to problematic interpretations, not least concerning irony and implicit characterisation. This book uses linguistic theories to reassess the role of Direct Speech in Old English narrative poetry. Beowulf is given a great deal of attention, because it is amajor poem and because it is the focus of much of the existing scholarship on this subject, but it is examined in a broader poetic context: the poem belongs to a wider tradition and thus needs to be understood in that context. The texts examined include several major Old English narrative poems, in particular the two Genesis, Christ and Satan, Andreas, Elene, Juliana and Guthlac A. Elise Louviot is a Lecturer at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France) and a specialist of Old English poetry. Her research interests include orality, tradition, formulas and the linguistic expression of subjectivity.
Download or read book A Beowulf Handbook written by Robert E. Bjork and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most revered work composed in Old English,Beowulfis one of the landmarks of European literature. This handbook supplies a wealth of insights into all major aspects of this wondrous poem and its scholarly tradition. Each chapter provides a history of the scholarly interest in a particular topic, a synthesis of present knowledge and opinion, and an analysis of scholarly work that remains to be done. Written to accommodate the needs of a broad audience,A Beowulf Handbookwill be of value to nonspecialists who wish simply to read and enjoy Beowulf and to scholars at work on their own research. In its clear and comprehensive treatment of the poem and its scholarship, this book will prove an indispensable guide to readers and specialists for many years to come.
Download or read book A Companion to Beowulf written by Ruth A. Johnston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-07-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most important work written in Old English, Beowulf grew out of a culture very different from ours, and yet its story of war, violence, and heroism remains relevant to modern readers. Accessible to high school students, general readers, and undergraduates, this companion overviews the poem and its legacy. The initial chapters review the plot of Beowulf, while later chapters discuss its style and language, its cultural and historical contexts, and its afterlife in contemporary popular culture. The first part of the book provides information of interest to a wide range of readers, while the second covers more specialized topics. Thus the initial chapters review the merits of different translations and offer a detailed plot summary, while later chapters discuss the poem's language and style, its treatment of religion, its relation to Anglo-Saxon culture, and its legacy in popular culture. One of the greatest Beowulf scholars was J.R.R. Tolkien, and the book gives special attention to his use of the poem in his own fiction. High school students, undergraduates, and general readers will find this book a valuable guide to one of the most challenging yet enduring works of English literature.
Download or read book Beowulf written by Howell D. Chickering and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major poem in English literature, Beowulf tells the story of the life and death of the legendary hero Beowulf in his three great battles with supernatural monsters. The ideal Anglo-Saxon warrior-aristocrat, Beowulf is an example of the heroic spirit at its finest. Leading Beowulf scholar Howell D. Chickering, Jr.’s, fresh and lively translation, featuring the Old English on facing pages, allows the reader to encounter Beowulf as poetry. This edition incorporates recent scholarship and provides historical and literary context for the modern reader. It includes the following: an introduction a guide to reading aloud a chart of royal genealogies notes on the background of the poem critical commentary glosses on the eight most famous passages, for the student who wishes to translate from the original an extensive bibliography From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book A Study Guide for Beowulf written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Case for Irony in Beowulf with Particular Reference to Its Epithets written by Tom Clark and published by Peter Lang Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines irony in the Old English poem Beowulf. It synthesises an argument that the poetics of Beowulf are fundamentally contrastive. Contrastiveness is a feature of expression that enables the presence of irony, although it does not guarantee it. Using a definition that emphasises contextual rather than absolute readings of irony, this study shows how irony is created in Beowulf by contrastive techniques such as the dichotomy of words and deeds, the use of juxtaposition in its development of characters, and the use of litotes. The author devotes particular attention to the epithets of Beowulf, examined as both an attributive phrase and the concomitant amplification of that phrase through its poetic context. Close readings of the poem's epithets reveal many ironies and many different types of irony. The systematic coherence of those types shows Beowulf in a new light, as a thoroughly ironic poem.
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 Klaeber s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg written by R. D. Fulk and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features an introduction and a commentary that incorporates the scholarship on "Beowulf" that has appeared since 1950. This work includes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. It also addresses aids to pronunciation and advances in the study of the poem's language.
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 Beowulf written by and published by Wordsworth Editions. This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf, a young warrior of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, in his time of need. He first fights the hellish Grendel, then struggles with Grendel's no less fearsome mother in her hall beneath the cold waters of the mere. More than fifty years later, he must face his final challenge in the shape of a huge dragon.
Download or read book Beowulf and Other Old English Poems written by Craig Williamson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best-known literary achievement of Anglo-Saxon England, Beowulf is a poem concerned with monsters and heroes, treasure and transience, feuds and fidelity. Composed sometime between 500 and 1000 C.E. and surviving in a single manuscript, it is at once immediately accessible and forever mysterious. And in Craig Williamson's splendid new version, this often translated work may well have found its most compelling modern English interpreter. Williamson's Beowulf appears alongside his translations of many of the major works written by Anglo-Saxon poets, including the elegies "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer," the heroic "Battle of Maldon," the visionary "Dream of the Rood," the mysterious and heart-breaking "Wulf and Eadwacer," and a generous sampling of the Exeter Book riddles. Accompanied by a foreword by noted medievalist Tom Shippey on Anglo-Saxon history, culture, and archaeology, and Williamson's introductions to the individual poems as well as his essay on translating Old English, the texts transport us back to the medieval scriptorium or ancient mead hall to share an exile's lament or herdsman's recounting of the story of the world's creation. From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom, to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, the world becomes a place of rare wonder in Williamson's lines. Were his idiom not so modern, we might almost think the Anglo-Saxon poets had taken up the lyre again and begun to sing after a silence of a thousand years.
Download or read book Klaeber s Beowulf Fourth Edition written by R.D. Fulk and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2008-04-05 with total page 1273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf has long been the standard edition for study by students and advanced scholars alike. Its wide-ranging coverage of scholarship, its comprehensive philological aids, and its exceptionally thorough notes and glossary have ensured its continued use in spite of the fact that the book has remained largely unaltered since 1936. The fourth edition has been prepared with the aim of updating the scholarship while preserving the aspects of Klaeber's work that have made it useful to students of literature, linguists, historians, folklorists, manuscript specialists, archaeologists, and theorists of culture. A revised Introduction and Commentary incorporates the vast store of scholarship on Beowulf that has appeared since 1950. It brings readers up to date on areas of scholarship that have been controversial since the last edition, including the construction of the unique manuscript and views on the poem's date and unity of composition. The lightly revised text incorporates the best textual criticism of the intervening years, and the expanded Commentary furnishes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. Aids to pronunciation have been added to the text, and advances in the study of the poem's language are addressed throughout. Readers will find that the book remains recognizably Klaeber's work, but with altered and added features designed to render it as useful today as it has ever been.
Download or read book The Theme of Treasure in Beowulf written by Heather Lee Angus and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
