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.

Update - Grendel Grendel Grendel: Animating Beowulf

Grendel Grendel Grendel: Animating Beowulf

Dan Torre (Author) , Lienors Torre (Author)

This book is available in hardcover (2021), paperback (2023), and open-access. 

Extent 216

ISBN 9781501381119

Imprint Bloomsbury Academic

Illustrations 65 bw illus

Dimensions 9 x 6 inches

Series Animation: Key Films/Filmmakers

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

Description

This open access study of the film Grendel Grendel Grendel, directed by Alexander Stitt, presents it as a masterpiece of animation and design which has attained a national and international cult status since its release in 1981. The film, based on the novel, Grendel, by John Gardner, is a loose adaptation of the Beowulf legend, but told from the point of view of the monster, Grendel. Grendel Grendel Grendel is a mature, intelligent, irreverent and quite unique animated film - it is a movie, both in terms of content and of an aesthetic that was well ahead of its time. Along with a brief overview of Australian animation and a contextualization of where this animated feature fits within the broader continuum of Australian (and global) film history, Dan Torre and Lienors Torre provide an intriguing analysis of this significant Australian animated feature.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introducing Grendel

Chapter One: The Genealogy of Grendel

Chapter Two: Scenes of Grendel Grendel Grendel

Chapter Three: Themes of Grendel Grendel Grendel

Chapter Four: Making of Grendel Grendel Grendel

Chapter Five: Aesthetics of Grendel Grendel Grendel

Chapter Six: Grendel'll Get You

Concluding Grendel

A Guide to Further Research

Bibliography

Filmography

Index

About the authors

Dan Torreis a lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He has written widely on animation, media and popular culture.

Lienors Torre is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, Australia. She writes on animation and related areas and is co-author of the book, Australian Animation - An International History (2018). She is also a practicing animator and artist.

Now on video: Bae Wolf

Missed this initially. It's now available as a streaming video on Tubi (at this link) and for purchase as a streaming video or on disc:

CFP What's in a Name? (Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere (12/20/2021; conference in Padua 6/6-7/2022)

What's in a Name? (Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere

deadline for submissions: December 20, 2021

full name / name of organization: Alessandra Petrina / University of Padua, Italy

contact email: alessandra.petrina@unipd.it

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/10/whats-in-a-name-abuse-of-anglo-saxon-in-english-speaking-cultures-and-elsewhere

What’s in a Name?

(Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere

Padova 6-7 June 2022

Since the seventeenth century, the use of the term Anglo-Saxon has been characterised by a strong identity and ideological acceptation. The nationalistic sentiment grown after British imperialism obtained legitimation in the appropriation and remodelling of Britain’s own past, conferring on Anglo-Saxon meanings that were increasingly connected with national and racial identity (Horsman 1976, 1981; Greenberg 1982).

This fictitious idea of ancestry has exerted a special fascination on collective imagery also thanks to the cultural movement known as ‘medievalism’, a recurrent theme in British and American art which also characterises the contemporary political debate in those countries. In America, far-right (pseudo-)political groups make large use of medievalism, and, in particular, of their alleged ‘Anglo-Saxon’ origins in the attempt to back their xenophobic and racist claims, based on white supremacy.

A connection between Anglo-Saxon and whiteness has also emerged within Medieval Studies and this gave birth to firm and, sometimes, drastic reactions. In recent years, a movement formed of women researchers of non-Western origins voiced vibrant protests against the treatment they have been suffering in this academic field, which they consider racist, sexist and xenophobic.

In this regard, they have identified the terms Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxonist as the most obvious expressions of this attitude.

This debate concerns the specifically ideological and extremist uses of Anglo-Saxon, but little attention has been devoted to the use of this term in all forms of communication and the semantic values it has received in history, not only in English, but also in other languages and cultures. Beyond the ideological dimension that seems to prevail in some contexts, how and to what purposes has Anglo-Saxon been employed? And to what extent does this term eventually designate an exclusive and superior racial or cultural origin?

The purpose of this conference is to investigate this phenomenon across time, languages, and media. The topics include (but are not limited to) the use of Anglo-Saxon (and its corresponding forms in other languages) in:

• Literature
• Journalism
• Political discourse
• Performative arts (theatre, cinema, TV and web series, etc.)
• Gaming

Please send an abstract (roughly 500 words) and a short curriculum by 20 December to Omar Khalaf omar.khalaf@unipd.it

Last updated November 10, 2021