Old English Poetry

Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people's lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. By attending to the ways in which birds were actually observed and experienced, this book aims to offer new perspectives on how and why they were meaningful in five major poems -- The Seafarer, the Exeter Book Riddles, The Owl and the Nightingale, The Parliament of Fowls and Confessio Amantis. In a consideration of sources from Isidore of Seville and Anglo-Saxon place-names to animal-sound word lists and Bartholomew the Englishman, the author shows how ornithological truth and knowledge are integral to our understandings of his chosen poems. Birds, he argues, are relevant to the medieval mind because their unique properties align them with important religious and secular themes: seabirds that inspire the forlorn Anglo-Saxon pilgrim; unnamed species that confound riddling taxonomies; a belligerent owl who speaks out against unflattering literary portraits. In these poems, human actions and perceptions are deeply affected by the remarkable flights and voices of birds.

Using the critical lens of Claire Sponsler’s scholarship on subversive performance, this essay considers the warrior Cú Chulainn’s lament for his foster-brother in the medieval Irish Táin. This ritualized spectacle washes clean and revivifies the slain hero’s body: poetry’s incantatory alliterations and rhymes re-fuse the dismembered body and animate it with story. By considering the lament in terms of caoineadh (“keening”), a genre typically associated with women, we gain insights into the subversive potential of Cú Chulainn’s performance. A man’s transgressive performance of caoineadh provides a critique of gender and disempowerment: the surrounding narrative provides multiple examples of young warriors, noble daughters, and other figures whose bodies and lives are pawned to execute the wishes of morally bankrupt kings and queens. This lament thus participates in the caoineadh’s mode of protest, as a cry against the slaughter of youth in the wargames of the powerful.

This is not just a book about a battle; it is a book about the biggest battle before Hastings 1066.
This is a battle most people have probably never heard of, but it is a battle where five Scottish and Viking kings and seven earls died, somewhere in the kingdom of Northumbria in late 937. As well as royalty, the bones of tens of thousands of ordinary men from Northern England, Scotland and the Viking territories lie buried in a place which, according to the chroniclers, is no longer known.
This book is about that battle and the search to find the long-lost site. Thousands of pages have been written about the Battle of Brunnenburh, but this book is unique. It is written by descendants of a legendary Viking Egill Skallagrimsson. Thousands of pages have been written about Brunnenburh but all of them are written from the perspective of the victor, King Athelstan of Wessex and Mercia. This book is the closest anyone is likely to get to a Northern Viking account.
Even if you have no real interest in the site of the Battle of Brunnenburh this is worth the effort you will put into it this book to understand it. Take a deep dive into the world and beliefs and times of the competing factions in 10 th century England and beyond, and the battle that first unified the United Kingdom.

Настоящий перевод пролога (строки 1–32) древнеанглийской поэмы «Даниил» представляет собой первую попытку перевода этого текста средствами русского языка с воспроизведением особенностей древнеанглийского поэтического языка и стиля. В большинстве случаев в переводе использованы аллитерационные созвучия. Не везде удается передать специфику аллитерации как созвучия ударных корневых морфем, характерную для германского аллитерационного стихосложения [2]. В переводе последовательно сохранен принцип эквилинеарности. Текст разделен на две краткие строки за счет использования пробелов. Такой способ представления текста проводится переводах древнеанглийской поэзии на русский язык В. Г. Тихомирова [1;3], он сохраняет специфику записи текста в рукописи, где есть последовательное деление на краткие строки. Принцип максимальной близости оригиналу в построении фразы, характерный для филологического перевода, проводится с целью как можно точнее передать специфику древнеанглийского текста.

In Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, Simon Thomson analyses details of scribal activity to tell a story about the project that preserved Beowulf as one of a collective, if error-strewn, endeavour and arguing for a date in Cnut’s reign. He presents evidence for the use of more than three exemplars and at least two artists as well as two scribes, making this an intentional and creative re-presentation uniting literature religious and heroic, in poetry and in prose.

He goes on to set it in the broader context of manuscript production in late Anglo-Saxon England as one example among many of communities using old literature in new ways, and of scribes working together, making mistakes, and learning.

In Cynewulf’s Juliana, Juliana’s suitor Heliseus, called “the guardian of treasure,” represents secular material culture, in which women are weakened by the male control of materiality. The material culture of the heroic world reproduces the masculine body politic, reducing women to objects of exchange in contractual relationships between men. The
present paper makes a case that from the poem emerges a contrast between a perception of materially constituted masculinity, aligning manhood with wealth and status, and a more inclusive spiritual manhood, available to both sexes. In relation to this Juliana achieves
spiritual manhood as a miles Christi exampling how feminine holiness empowers women. Consequently Juliana’s emasculation of the devil becomes a challenge to the secular patriarchal order in which they are the currency of exchange.

A new translation of the full text of this seminal work, using an approximation of the  Old English verse form, and with an Afterword by the translator.
The translation aims to replicate and integrate the physicality and explicitly Christian spirituality of the original, in language that aspires to the vigour and beauty achieved by its anonymous composer.

Not all of the emotional weight of Old English poetry is given explicit verbal expression. As the poet of Maxims I declares, ‘Hyge sceal gehealden, hond gewealden’ [The spirit should be held, the hand wielded] (l. 121). Along these lines, when Hrothgar mourns the loss of his closest confidant, Beowulf responds, ‘Ne sorga, snotor guma; selre bið æghwæm / þæt he his freond wrece, þonne he fela murne’ [Do not grieve, wise man; every man is better that avenges his friends, than one that deeply mourns] (Beowulf, ll. 1384–5). In place of verbal expression, Beowulf itself uses conventional, concrete description to both reveal psychological states and foreshadow further action, both of which its heroes must carefully control. One such significant overlooked description is Beowulf’s sitting or standing at crucial moments, particularly through the construction [adverb] + astod. In the three instances of this verbal motif in the poem, the poet reverses a poetic type scene in which a figure sits while mourning by emphasizing key triumphant moments at which Beowulf stands instead and turns the tide of battle.

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The first element in more or less original compounds like OE an-haga/-hoga, an-floga (only in The Seafarer), an-stapa (only in The Panther) and
an-genga is commonly translated as « lone(ly) » or « solitary ». By a careful re-reading of the passages in which these words occur, the present investigation shows that sometimes this interpretation can be questioned, and that in some cases a meaning « unique, unparalleled, singular » is to be preferred. In determining the meaning of the an-element in such compounds, the immediate Latin source may prove
decisive (cf. The Phoenix 87a an-haga, and possibly The Panther 15a an-stapa), but the context plays an important role, especially when an allegorical meaning lies in the background, which is a common feature of all the occurrences discussed here, from Beowulf to Ælfric (an-genga), from The Phoenix to Guthlac B (an-haga/-hoga), from The Seafarer (an-floga) to The Panther (an-stapa).
Even if conclusive evidence cannot be offered for all cases, the point of this article is that at least good grounds exist for questioning the overall standard interpretative pattern of this class of words, and to maintain that the Anglo-Saxon poets may have answered to the metaphorical issues of their subject-matters by occasionally investing some of these terms with original or possibly with intentionally ambiguous meanings.

This paper is a case study of the Stylistics in the poem “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne. As a Metaphysical poem, it is fills with very complex structure and style which are the reasons of making it a famous rich literary work that deserve different kinds of analysis as a good example for the Metaphysical poetry in the 17th century.  The aim of this study is to highlight the view of the use of the Stylistics way in this poem. Feminism refined love of the mind and has nothing to do with the joys of sex, in which the lovers cannot define the nature and essence of their pure love as well as their souls are one. The poet uses various stylistics tools to show up the idea of love through metaphors. The researcher explains the idea of this poem throughout the poet’s images, rhetorical simulations and metaphor that show how the poet connects the impalpable into the real touching things. Donne's poetry makes a beautiful strong link between female subjectivity and metaphysical style. This paper will analyze this poem of Donne regarding the notion of feminism and Donne's shift of attitude towards women.
Key words: valediction, mildly, metaphysics, conceit, woman, love poetry.

Prologue : Des mots pour dire l'énigme Par énigme, entendez une trouvaille singulière de l'esprit, porteuse d'un fruit de sagesse, mais enveloppée et occulte : en sorte que si elle est supérieure et parfaite, c'est à grand peine ou plutôt en vain qu'essaiera de l'entendre un autre que son inventeur, quand bien même il tendrait à cela toute l'acuité de son intelligence. Pire : par cela même qu'un autre la pénétrerait, aussitôt elle cesserait d'être une énigme, dont l'essence même est le secret et l'obscur. Aussi, quiconque la percerait à jour, mettant dans la cible de sa signification, on estime qu'il aurait vaincu son auteur et ravi les dépouilles de son invention. C'est pourquoi les poètes jadis ont imaginé que l'énigme de la Sphinge une fois expliquée par OEdipe, celle-ci se serait sur le champ jetée dans le vide, achevant d'un coup sa vie, qui n'était que son obscurité et s'évanouissant et périssant sous la lumière éclatante de la solution. (Miguel Vasquez, « Sermon sur le Mystère de la Trinité » ap. Maximilien van der Sandt, Theologia symbolica, 1626, p. 151) 1 Le mot « énigme », commun à plusieurs de nos langues indo-européennes, vient du grec « ainigma », attesté dès le V e siècle avant notre ère dans les oeuvres de Pindare, Eschyle (Prométhée enchaîné, 610) et Sophocle (OEdipe-Roi, passim). De genre neutre, il est à rapprocher du verbe ainissomai, « dire à mots couverts », « faire allusion », et du substantif ainos, le « récit » ou la « fable », en particulier celui ou celle qui contient une leçon cachée pour son destinataire (cf. Hésiode, Les Travaux et les Jours, 202). La proximité phonétique de ce nom et de l'adjectif ainos, « terrible, affreux », a peut-être contribué à renforcer le caractère obscur ou ambigu de l'énigme. Le substantif grec est passé en latin sous la forme aenigma,-atis, également de genre neutre, qui explique la graphie française du XIV e siècle : enigmat, puis celle des XV e et XVI e siècles : ainigme, avant de se fixer, en 1529, sous la forme que nous connaissons aujourd'hui. Jusqu'au XVII e siècle, le mot est de genre masculin en français et certains auteurs d'énigmes ou de recueils d'énigmes hésiteront parfois à cette époque entre le masculin et le féminin. Dans la littérature latine de l'Antiquité, aenigma n'a presque jamais le sens que lui confèrent Eschyle et Sophocle. Il n'y a guère que Virgile qui fasse exception à la règle dans sa troisième Églogue (vv. 104-107), d'inspiration toute grecque. Chez les auteurs chrétiens des époques 1 « Nemo, quem ego quidem consuluerim, accuratius et elegantius, quaesito huic satisfacit, quam Michael Vasquez in oratione de augustissimo SS. Trinitatis mysterio: ubi, Sacramentum, seu Mysterium, idem sonat (inquit) quod Aenigma, hoc est singulare quoddam mentis inuentum, hinc quidem sapientia foetum, inde vero perplexum adeo, atque occultum; ut si praestans fuerit, ac perfectum, vix, aut ne vix quidem alius, quam eius auctor, atque inuentor (quantumcumque in eius explicationem, interpretationemque, mentis aciem intendat) assequi eam possit. Quin & hoc ipso, quod alium quispiam eo penetrauerit Aenigma ilico esse desinet: cuius tota ratio in arcano, atque obscuro sita est. Atque adeo, si quis eius sensum peruiderit, significationisque; veluti scopum fixerit, illius auctorem vicisse, ac suo inuento exuisse existimabitur. Atque hoc certe causae fuit, cur Poetae olim finexerint, Sphyngis Aenigmate ab Oedipo explicato, eam confestim se praecipitem dedisse, ac vitam (quae sua nimirum obscuritas illi fuerat) finiuisse, atque oborta manifestae solutionis claritate, disparuisse, periisseque. » (Traduit en français par Florence VUILLEUMIER-LAURENS dans Charles COTIN, Les Énigmes de ce temps, Paris, 2003, p. IX.)

The theme of posture is an important feature of Anglo-Saxon hagiography that frames decapitation scenes. Ælfric’s account of the martyrdom of Edmund, king of East Anglia, uses many postural descriptions to depict the king’s saintly qualities. From Christian defiance to self-sacrifice, Edmund is portrayed as a Christian king who heroically defies his heathen enemies. After his death, Edmund assumes great control over his enemies and administers divine justice. These key stages of Edmund’s death and burial focus heavily on his posture and that of his adversaries. This saint’s life provides one example of how the Anglo-Saxons used postural gesture, upright positioning, and elevation and descent to describe the virtues of saints and the vices of enemies.

Many of the Anglo-Saxon charms identify locations for their performance and function. Previous scholarship has used locations as evidence of continuous pre-Christian practices and this argument has impacted on how the charms are perceived. As a result, the role of the church building as one of the charms’ identified locations has not yet been properly highlighted. Rather than focusing on the potential pre-Christian associations with certain sites in the charms, it is more enlightening to look at how other locations orientate around the church building. In this article I will explore how charms use liturgical and public spaces to signify their function during the late Anglo-Saxon period. After outlining the main scholarly views of Anglo-Saxon locations that have had an impact on charm studies, my analysis will make a comparative case study of two charms against elf-sickness to open readings of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon charms. This approach reveals interesting information about the Anglo-Saxons’ interaction with their landscape in the tenth and eleventh centuries and helps us to redefine the religious nature of these rituals.

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas is an introduction to the language of the Vikings offering in one book graded lessons, vocabulary, grammar exercises, pronunciation, student guides, and maps. It explains Old Icelandic literature, Viking history, and mythology. Readings include runestones, legends, and sagas.  Viking Language 1 focuses on the most frequently occurring words in the sagas, an innovative method which speeds learning. Because the grammar has changed little from Old Norse, the learner is well on the way to mastering Modern Icelandic. It provides a wealth of information about Iceland, where the sagas were written and Old Scandinavian history and mythology were preserved. Viking Language 1 is accompanied by Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader.

384 a prevalere, almeno alla luce del sole, senza tuttavia riuscire mai a sradicare completamente l'altro, tanto è vero che non esiste epoca o corrente letteraria inglese che non abbia al suo interno, come componente minoritaria oppure in sua aperta opposizione ...

Although it is commonplace in scholarship today to talk about a ‘system’ of kennings or ‘kenning system’, critical discussion has tended to take the qualification ‘system’ for granted and left this topic unexplored. The present paper presents a study of extended kennings which reveals that the systemic network of kennings have different referents. It shows that kennings for MAN/WARRIOR are at the center of this network.

This essay seeks to root the poem Genesis B’s well-known divergence from doctrine within the pre-Christian folktales of Continental Saxony. First it is argued by comparison with Old Icelandic poetry and prose mythography that the devil in the Garden of Eden is modelled on a Saxon version of Loki. I extend the argument to include the devil’s scene with Adam which is attributed to a Saxon version of Loki’s dealings with Þórr. Then I argue that the secondary devil’s temptation of Eve is enabled by a Saxon version of Loki’s interaction with the goddess Iðunn. Loki’s former friendship with Óðinn is thereafter taken to furnish the type-scene for this devil’s volunteering to help his chained master Satan in hell. Finally, I suggest that this reconfiguration of old gods into good and bad biblical roles, humans versus demons, was undertaken as part of a recasting of biblical history in local form, the better to bring the still heathen-inclined Saxons of Carolingian Germany back into the arms of the church.
To come out in 'Between the Worlds', ed. Wilhelm Heizmann and Matthias Egeler

A print-friendly PDF version of Mimisbrunnr.info's unofficial index for Rudolf Simek's "Dictionary of Northern Mythology" (2007 [1993], Boydell & Brewer). Readers can also find the original, web-based version of the Simdex at the following URL: https://www.mimisbrunnr.info/dnm-index

'Rolf H. Bremmer Jr. is then set the task of introducing "Old English heroic literature," which he achieves through some helpful musing upon the nature of heroes in their Germanic context, moving via an examination of poetry with a Migration-age backdrop to a subtle discussion of the "heroic ethic" in Old English verse with a more contemporary setting.'
Richard W. Dance, Medieval Review, 06.09.23

In recent years, Anglo-Saxonists have widened the scope of their studies to include not only various aspects of Anglo-Saxon society and literature, but also their own discipline. Studying the scholarship on The Wife's Lament and Wuld and Eadwacer, Berit Åström examines the roles of these scholars in the critial history of the two poems. The poems are two of the most haunting, and at the same time cryptic, texts of the entire Old English corpus. Because of these characteristics, the reserach they inspires is wide-ranging, imaginative and provocative. The study focuses mainly on two aspects of scholarly reserach: the emergence of a professional identity among Anglo-Saxonist scholars and their choice of either a metaphoric or metonymic approach to the material. A final chapter charts the concomitant changes within Old English feminist studies. The study summarises the approaches to points of ambiguity in the poems and provides a comprehensive bibliography of twentieth century scholarship to the field of Old English studies, which should make it not only a concise introduction to the field of Old English studies, but also a useful work of reference for anyone wishing to pursue further research on the poems.

Complete lecture for this paper - https://youtu.be/iBjHaBHO_qU

In India during the Post-Independence Era; a period of colossal chaos, Sahir struggled to align his stance and literary point of view. Interestingly, rather than going to extremes, Sahir chose the middle path. He kept himself aloof from becoming a complete advocate of revolution or love and chose to express the anguish of both; the personal and the political.

The contrasts and similarities on how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Carol Ann Duffy explore masculinity and patriarchal power, its effects and resistance to it.

The texts in which these themes were explored in are:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. (2009) The Thing Around Your Neck, London: Fourth Estate Publishers

Duffy, Carol Ann. (1999) The World’s Wife, London: Pan Macmillan Publishers, 2017 Edition

The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-awakened Balrog not only constitutes one of the turning points in the War of the Ring, but it also provides a glimpse of what Tolkien may have envisioned as a Christian reinterpretation of the traditional model of Germanic heroism. The two notions are, of course, at a clearly detectable ethical variance, the former being fundamentally defined by the self-sacrificial dedication to the cause, the latter by the self-centred pursuit of transient glory. Seen in the light of medieval literature, the bridge episode might also be read as a conceptual reimagining of the roughly analogous situation in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, where the far-too-confident ealdorman Byrhtnoth allows the enemy safe passage across the ford, thus placing himself and his people at a considerable strategic disadvantage. In The Lord of the Rings, the role of Byrhtnoth is obviously assigned (albeit inversely) to the character of Gandalf whose courageous efforts to protect his companions accentuate the wizard's sense of responsibility, upwards (the cause) as well as downwards (his companions).