New This Month - O'Donoghue on Beowulf

Out now from Bloomsbury Academic:

Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero

Heather O'Donoghue (Author)

Full details and ordering information at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/beowulf-9781788312882/,

Product details

Published Jun 13 2024

Format Hardback

Edition 1st

Extent 192

ISBN 9781788312882

Imprint Bloomsbury Academic

Dimensions 9 x 6 inches

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

The Old English epic poem Beowulf has an established reputation as a canonical text. And yet the original poem has remained inaccessible to all but experienced scholars of Old English. This book aims to present the poem to readers who want to know what makes it such a remarkable work of art, and why it is of such cultural significance.

Most readers will only have encountered Beowulf through one of its many translations or adaptations; others have had to take on this unique survivor from a past era as a challenging translation exercise, part of their academic study of the poem. This book sidesteps scholarly debates about the poem's unknowns – its date, provenance or author – and focusses instead on its poetic artistry, its interleaving of heroic pasts and Christian present, and its poet's extraordinary breadth of reference, from biblical history to Old Norse myth. But the strange intricacies of Old English metre and poetic language are explained, and the poet's evocation of the ethics and material world of an imagined pre-Viking Scandinavia is explored.

Beowulf: Poem, Poet and Hero follows the story of the poem through its many interwoven voices from different times and places, and the poem emerges as a work of reflective beauty, its human characters full of touching pathos and wisdom, its notorious monsters still speaking to our own societies' abiding insecurities. The final section, on post-medieval responses to Beowulf, shows how the poem has been taken up as a European cultural icon. This book restores its status as a literary masterpiece.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: The Storyworld

1. The Setting

2. The Human Characters

3. The Monsters

Part Two: Poet, Narrator and Scop

4. A Christian Poet

5. An Old Norse Scholar

6. The Narrator

7. The Scop

Part Three: Post-Medieval Meanings

8. Earliest Audiences

9. Early Modern Audiences

10. Translations

11. Contemporary Meanings

Further Reading

Index

Recently Published -Old English Medievalism

Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Edited by Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck and Oliver M. Traxel

Full details, preview, and ordering information at: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843846505/old-english-medievalism/.

TITLE DETAILS

312 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

1 b/w illus

Series: Medievalism

Series Vol. Number: 21

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

9781843846505

November 2022

$125.00 / £85.00

(also available as an ebook)

DESCRIPTION

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Old English language and literary style have long been a source of artistic inspiration and fascination, providing modern writers and scholars with the opportunity not only to explore the past but, in doing so, to find new perspectives on the present. This volume brings together thirteen essays on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, exploring how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by translators, novelists, poets and teachers. These afterlives include the composition of neo-Old English, the evocation in a modern literary context of elements of early medieval English language and style, the fictional depiction of Old English-speaking worlds and world views, and the adaptation and recontextualisation of works of early medieval English literature. The sources covered include W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Seamus Heaney, alongside more recent writers such as Christopher Patton, Hamish Clayton and Paul Kingsnorth, as well as other media, from museum displays to television. The volume also features the first-hand perspectives of those who are authors and translators themselves in the field of Old English medievalism.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Early Medieval English in the Modern Age: An Introduction to Old English Medievalism - Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck and Oliver M. Traxel

1 Reinventing, Reimagining and Recontextualizing Old English Poetry

1 Old English as a Playground for Poets? W. H. Auden, Christopher Patton and Jeramy Dodds - M. J. Toswell

2 'Abroad in One's Own Tradition': Old English Poetry and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908) - Victoria Condie

3 Wulf and Eadwacer in 1830 New Zealand: Anglo-Saxonism and Postcolonialism in Hamish Clayton's Wulf (2011) - Martina Marzullo

4 Old English Poetry and Sutton Hoo on Display: Creating 'the Anglo-Saxon' in Museums - Fran Allfrey

II Invoking Early Medieval England and Its Language in Historical Fiction

5 Creating a 'Shadow Tongue': The Merging of Two Language Stages - Oliver M. Traxel

6 At the Threshold of the Inarticulate: The Reception of 'Made-up' English in Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake (2014) - Judy Kendall

7 Reimagining Early Medieval Britain: The Language of Spirituality - Karen Louise Jolly

8 Historical Friction: Constructing Pastness in Fiction Set in Eleventh-Century England - James Aitcheson

III Translating and Composing in Neo-Old English

9 Ge wordful, ge wordig: Translating Modern Texts into Old English - Fritz Kemmler

10 Fruit, Fat and Fermentation: Food and Drink in Peter Baker's (Neo-) Old English Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Denis Ferhatović

11 The Fall of the King and the Composition of Neo-Old English Verse - Rafael J. Pascual

IV Approaching Old English and Neo-Old English in the Classroom

12 Mitchell & Robinson's Medievalism: Echoes of Empire in the History of Old English Pedagogy - Joana Blanquer, Donna Beth Ellard, Emma Hitchcock and Erin E. Sweany

13 The Magic of Telecinematic Neo-Old English in University Teaching - Gabriele Knappe

Bibliography

Index

EDITORS

Rachel A. Fletcher holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Glasgow. She has published on the history of Old English lexicography, Old English scholarship in the Early Modern period, and J. R. R. Tolkien's work on the Oxford English Dictionary.

Thijs Porck is University Lecturer in Medieval English at Leiden University. He has published on Old English textual criticism, Beowulf, old age, medievalism, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Oliver M. Traxel is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Stavanger. He has a Ph.D. in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic from the University of Cambridge and habilitated in English Philology at the University of Münster. He has published widely on the representation of past language stages in the modern world.

Recent Book - Beowulf in Contemporary Culture

Bit old now, but still very useful.

Beowulf in Contemporary Culture

Edited by David Clark

Full details, preview, and ordering information at the publisher's website: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-4306-5.

Cambridge Scholars 

ISBN: 1-5275-4306-4

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-4306-5

Release Date: 10th December 2019

Pages: 263

Price: £61.99

Description

This collection explores Beowulf’s extensive impact on contemporary culture across a wide range of forms. The last 15 years have seen an intensification of scholarly interest in medievalism and reimaginings of the Middle Ages. However, in spite of the growing prominence of medievalism both in academic discourse and popular culture—and in spite of the position Beowulf itself holds in both areas—no study such as this has yet been undertaken. Beowulf in Contemporary Culture therefore makes a significant contribution both to early medieval studies and to our understanding of Beowulf’s continuing cultural impact. It should inspire further research into this topic and medievalist responses to other aspects of early medieval culture. Topics covered here range from film and television to video games, graphic novels, children’s literature, translations, and versions, along with original responses published here for the first time. The collection not only provides an overview of the positions Beowulf holds in the contemporary imagination, but also demonstrates the range of avenues yet to be explored, or even fully acknowledged, in the study of medievalism.

Contents (from WorldCat)

Introduction / David Clark

Beowulf on Film: Gender, Sexuality, Hyperreality / David Clark

Race/Ethnicity and the Other in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands / David Clark

'I braved in my youth-days battles unnumbered': Beowulf, Video Games, and Hack-and-Slash Medievalism / Victoria E. Cooper and Andrew B.R. Elliott

Manly Fantasy: Medieval and Modern Masculinities in Two Juvenile Versions of Beowulf / Janice Hawes

Thomas Meyer's Beowulf: The Visual Text / Claire Pascolini Campbell

The Monsters, the Translators, and the Artists: iofgeornost and the Challenges of Translating Beowulf / Jorge Luis Bueno Alonso

From Scop to Subversive: Beowulf as a Force for Inclusivity / Meghan Purvis

Playful Storytelling in Beowulf / S.C. Thomson

'The Whale Road': A Musical Response to the World of Beowulf / Mark Atherton

A Conversation between Maria Dahvana Headley and Carolyne Larrington

Editor Bio

David Clark specializes in Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse literatures, and contemporary medievalism. He is the author of Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature (2009) and Gender, Violence, and the Past in Edda and Saga (2012), the translator of The Saga of Bishop Thorlak (2013), and the editor of three edited collections.

CFP Beowulf at Rocky Mountain MLA (6/30/2024; Las Vegas 10/10-12/2024)

Call for Papers: The Pagan Beowulf: Alternatives to the Usual Beowulf

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) 77th Annual Convention

October 10-12 (Thur.-Sat.) at the Westgate Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada



Deadline for Submissions: June 30, 2024



For centuries, the “usual” Beowulf translation has been full of Christian references and very little Pagan references. Yet, Christianity did not arrive in Scandinavia until around 710, well after the time of the events in Beowulf, which is around 550 AD. In contrast, the first Christian missionary to Anglo-Saxon England was with St. Augustine in 597. While there are some definite Christian references in Beowulf, there are actually far fewer than the far greater pagan references in the poem. Your abstract should address this theme specifically.



Send your 350-word abstract, with a short 50-word bio, to Jim Buckingham, Old English Session Chair, at wibuck50@gmail.com by June 30, 2024.

Odin asked, “Can you Read the Runes?”: How to Read the Runic Letters in Part I of Beowulf.

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) 77th Annual Convention

October 10-12 (Thur.-Sat.) at the Westgate Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada



Join us in Las Vegas this October, where we will defy the odds and time, and you can learn how to read some of the 419 (and counting) letter runes found in the first third of Beowulf.



This groundbreaking, ninety-minute session is the first of its kind in teaching how one can detect and decipher between two alphabets that use the same letters, with one being just a letter and the other being a letter that represents a word. Unlike Odin, you will not have to give up an eye.




All attendees will receive a letter rune chart.



Contact Jim Buckingham, Old English Session Chair, at wibuck50@gmail.com by June 30, 2024 to express your interest in attending. Limit per Session is 100 attendees.