Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry

Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry PDF

Author: Joseph St. John

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-31

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1040077668

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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.

Beowulf

Beowulf PDF

Author: George Clark

Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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Beowulf may be called a heroic and philosophical epic in a traditional verse form, an exploration of the possibilities of meaning in a finite life bounded by darkness. The poem's powerful story gives its vision of the human condition substance and authority; a reading of Beowulf must come to terms with its story and its stories; its characters and their world. This is a royalist's poem, its great hero is born a prince and dies a king still serving the memory of the beloved king of his youth. The characters of the poem are royals, courtiers, court poets, and aristocratic warriors; the poem's vision of history is dynastic and cyclical; royal families prove as mortal as royals themselves. The poem's brilliant world is seen as transitory from the first and at the last the poem proposes in a world of uncertainty a value not subject to the injury of time, the fame that survives the hero.

The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England

The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England PDF

Author: Paul Cavill

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780859918411

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Essays exploring a wide array of sources that show the importance of Christian ideas and influences in Anglo-Saxon England. A unique and important contribution to both teaching and scholarship. Professor Elaine Treharne, Stanford University. This is a collection of essays exploring a wide array of sources that show the importance ofChristian ideas and influences in Anglo-Saxon England. The range of treatment is exceptionally diverse. Some of the essays develop new approaches to familiar texts, such as Beowulf, The Wanderer and The Seafarer; others deal with less familiar texts and genres to illustrate the role of Christian ideas in a variety of contexts, from preaching to remembrance of the dead, and from the court of King Cnut to the monastic library. Some of the essays are informative, providing essential background material for understanding the nature of the Bible, or the distinction between monastic and cleric in Anglo-Saxon England; others provide concise surveys of material evidence orgenres; others still show how themes can be used in constructing and evaluating courses teaching the tradition. Contributors: GRAHAM CAIE, PAUL CAVILL, CATHERINE CUBITT, JUDITH JESCH, RICHARD MARSDEN, ELISABETH OKASHA, BARBARA C. RAW, PHILIPPA SEMPER, DABNEY BANKERT, SANTHA BHATTACHARJI, HUGH MAGENNIS, MARY SWAN, JONATHAN M. WOODING.

A Critical Companion to Beowulf

A Critical Companion to Beowulf PDF

Author: Andy Orchard

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0859917665

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This is a complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. In this book, the specific roles of selcted individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed.

Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture

Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture PDF

Author: James Paz

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-07-07

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1526116006

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture uncovers the voice and agency possessed by nonhuman things across Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture. It makes a new contribution to ‘thing theory’ and rethinks conventional divisions between animate human subjects and inanimate nonhuman objects in the early Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon writers and craftsmen describe artefacts and animals through riddling forms or enigmatic language, balancing an attempt to speak and listen to things with an understanding that these nonhumans often elude, defy and withdraw from us. But the active role that things have in the early medieval world is also linked to the Germanic origins of the word, where a þing is a kind of assembly, with the ability to draw together other elements, creating assemblages in which human and nonhuman forces combine.