The Old English Poems of Cynewulf
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The Old English poems attributed to Cynewulf, who flourished some time between the eighth and tenth centuries, are unusual because most vernacular poems in this period are anonymous. Other than the name, we have no biographical details of Cynewulf, not even the most basic facts of where or when he lived. Yet the poems themselves attest to a powerfully inventive imagination, deeply learned in Christian doctrine and traditional verse-craft. Runic letters spelling out the name Cynewulf appear in four poems: Christ II (or The Ascension), Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, and Elene. To these a fifth can be added, Guthlac B because of similarities in style and vocabulary, but any signature (if one ever existed) has been lost because its ending lines are missing. What characterizes Cynewulf’s poetry? He reveals an expert control of structure as shown from the changes he makes to his Latin sources. He has a flair for extended similes and dramatic dialogue. In Christ II, for example, the major events in Christ's life are portrayed as vigorous leaps. In Juliana the force of the saint’s rhetoric utterly confounds a demon sent to torment her.
A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse
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A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse contains the Old English texts of all the major short poems, such as 'The Battle of Maldon', 'The Dream of the Rood', 'The Wanderer' and 'The Seafarer', as well as a generous representation of the many important fragments, riddles and gnomic verses that survive from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, with facing-page verse translations. These poems are the well-spring of the English poetic tradition, and this anthology provides a unique window into the mind and culture of the Anglo-Saxons. The volume is an essential companion to Faber's edition of Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney.
The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: A Collective Edition
The Junius Manuscript. (The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, a Collective Edition. Volume I)
The Vercelli Book [The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, A Collective Edition, II]
The Exeter Book (The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Volume 3)
Beowulf and Judith: The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Volume 4
The Paris Psalter and the meters of Boethius: The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Volume 5
The Anglo-Saxon minor poems: The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records Volume 6
The Anglo-Saxon World
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Crossley-Holland--the widely acclaimed translator of Old English texts--introduces the Anglo-Saxons through their chronicles, laws, letters, charters, and poetry, with many of the greatest surviving poems printed in their entirety.
Anglo-Saxon poetry, selected and translated by Prof. R. K. Gordon
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This is a revision of the translation which R.K. Gordon, formerly Professor of English in the University of Alberta, made of his own selection of Old English poetry of all kinds extending over the whole period from the seventh to the eleventh century. It includes heroic poems in the old tradition composed in the seventh century, but dealing with persons and events much further back in time, such as Beowulf, Waldhere and Deor. The later epics include The Battle of Maldon, a panegyric on the warriors of Essex and their commander, Byrhtnoth, who were killed in action over nine and a half centuries ago. Almost the entire contents of the famous Exeter and Vercelli manuscripts are translated and Professor Gordon has rendered into modern English many of the better known religious poems, including Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and the Dream of the Rood, which date from before the Danish invasion; and six of the finer elegies, among them The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife's Lament and The Ruin, which seem to foreshadow the characteristic English poetic vein which persisted down to the eighteenth century and later. There is also a generous selection from the old riddles and charms which are undateable bur obviously derived from traditions of pagan times, and contain themes recognizable in nursery stories and popular tales down to the present day.
Anglo-Saxon poetry : essays in appreciation : for John C. McGalliard
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Beowulf a New Verse Translation Bilingual Edition
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Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.
The Cultural World in Beowulf
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The study is divided into five major essays: on ethnology and social drama, the temporal world, the legal world, the economy of honour, and the psychological world. Hill presents a realm where genealogies incorporate social and political statements: in this world gift giving has subtle and manipulative dimensions, both violent and peaceful exchange form a political economy, acts of revenge can be baleful or have jural force, and kinship is as much a constructible fact as a natural one. Family and kinship relations, revenge themes, heroic poetry, myth, legality, and political discussions all bring the importance of the social institutions in Beowulf to the foreground, allowing for a fuller understanding of the poems and its implications for Anglo-Saxon society.
Interpretations of Beowulf
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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.
Klaeber's Beowulf
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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.
Readings on "Beowulf"
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Contains a collection of essays examining the epic poem in a cultural and social context, as well as essays dealing with thematic and structural issues
