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Say What I Am Called
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. InSay 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 Calledis a rewarding study of some of the most interesting works from the Anglo-Saxon period.
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An Introduction to Old English
A student's introduction to the first centuries in the history of the English language
The first edition of 'An Introduction to Old English' was written by Richard Hogg. The second edition has been revised by Rhona Alcorn.
Combining a wide variety of short texts with a coherent and up-to-date assessment of the forms of language which remain as the foundation of English today, this introduction offers a unique study of Old English in context. It is designed for students unfamiliar with the earliest stages of the English language and provides a basis for further study of the history of the language to the present day.
All the basic elements of Old English are covered, including nouns, adjectives, verbs, syntax, word order, vocabulary and sound values. Wherever possible comparisons are drawn between Old English and the present-day language, but also with other related languages such as Dutch, German and French. There are also chapters introducing Old English poetry and dialect variation, as well as a chapter looking at what happened to the language after the Norman Conquest.
Key Features
Up-to-date account of the linguistics of the Old English period with particular stress on syntax and vocabularyIntegrates accounts of the language with selected texts graded to improve accessibility for the beginnerStrong emphasis on the relation between Old English and present-day English together with relevant features in related languagesContains exercises, a glossary of key terms and an Old English glossary
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Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse
Authors, Audiences, and Old English Versere-examines the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition from the eighth to the eleventh centuries and reconsiders the significance of formulaic parallels and the nature of poetic authorship in Old English.
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God's exiles and English verse : on the Exeter anthology of Old English poetry
This monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as 'The Exeter Book'. Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed'n 2006), has re-named the manuscript 'The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry'. The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology.0'God's Exiles and English Verse' is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture.0The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction.
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Unriddling the Exeter Riddles
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.
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Undoing Babel : the Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon literature
\"The Tower of Babel narrative is one of the most memorable accounts of the Bible, and its interpretative potential has produced a vast array of literary adaptations. Undoing Babel is the first extensive examination of the development of the Babel narrative amongst Anglo-Saxon authors from late antiquity to the eleventh century. Tristan Major's illuminating and original insight into Anglo-Latin and Old English works, including the writings of Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin, Aelfric, and Wulfstan, reveals the cultural ideologies and anxieties that transformed the Babel narrative. In doing so, Major argues that these Babel narratives provide a basis for understanding the world's ethnic and linguistic diversity as well as a theological stimulus to evangelize non-Christian and non-European people. Undoing Babel highlights the depth of literary innovation in this period and disproves any notion of a single Anglo-Saxon reception of biblical sources.\"--Jacket.
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Isidorean Perceptions of Order
This book discusses the considerable influence exerted by Isidore's Etymologiae on the compilation of early medieval enigmata. Either in the form of thematic clusters or pairs, Isidorean encyclopedic patterns are observed not only in major Latin riddle collections in verse but can also be detected in the two vernacular assemblages contained in the Exeter Book.
As with encyclopedias, the topic-centered arrangement of riddles was pursued by compilers as a strategy intended to optimize the didactic and instructional possibilities inherent in these texts and favor the readers' assimilation of their contents. This book thus provides a thoroughgoing investigation of medieval riddling, with special attention to the Exeter Book Riddles, demonstrating that this genre constituted an important part of the school curriculum of the early Middle Ages.
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