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The Old English poem Andreas has long been considered to be indebted both to the signed works of Cynewulf and to Beowulf. Recent studies have demonstrated Andreas's debt to a number of other 'Cynewulfian' poems. This paper argues that the poet of Andreas likewise borrowed from Christ III (an earlier poem concerned with the Second Coming of Christ at Doomsday). The influence of the latter on the former is apparent on the basis of a large number of unique or almost unique verbal parallels listed in an appendix to this paper. The later poet does not just parrot his hypothesised source, but originally and artistically recasts his borrowings with various kinds of embellishment. The influence of Christ III on Andreas is also apparent on a thematic level. This paper demonstrates that the Andreas-poet was attracted to the twin themes of ignorance and judgement in Christ III, creating a miniature Doomsday narrative out of the conversion of the Mermedonians. In doing so, the Andreas-poet reveals himself as a sophisticated consumer of earlier poetry and an original artist, turning his Latin prose source into a novel, theologically imaginative narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that one way of reading the portrayal of misery in Old English poetry is as an abjected state; something against which the not-miserable self and community is continually being defined. It argues that, to this end, otherness of different forms is constructed as inherently miserable; and that we should therefore be open to reading unhappy figures as inherently othered. Using a range of poetic case studies, it goes on to suggest that this might be because Old English poetic unhappiness is associated with dissociation and fragmentation, which poses a fundamental threat to the profoundly networked sense of selfhood and intersubjective social system prevalent in the same poetic corpus. The social function of performing the poetry of alienation, then, is proposed to be a communal therapy of abjection, inviting self-identification with traumatised figures in order to abject that aspect of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crafted things abound in The Phoenix, from the ornamented trees in the phoenix's paradise, to the gem-like bird itself: in the world of the poem, beauty is synonymous with the skilful design of material things. In spite of this emphasis on construction and creation, the poem also foreshadows the necessary destruction of all the ornaments of this world. This paper reconsiders the crafted things in the poem, including not only the famous description of the phoenix itself, but also the phoenix's nest, and the mysterious ball it fashions out of its own bones and ashes, reading these crafted things alongside analogues from both Old and Middle English literature. This new reading reveals that the crafted things of the poem are central to the poem's message about the certainty of the resurrection and the cessation of all cycles of creation and destruction. Although, in the end, the poem reveals that all the crafted things of this world must eventually be exchanged for the lasting home and gleaming ornaments of heaven, the treasures of The Phoenix have an enduring vibrancy which remains even in the face of the destroying Judgement Day fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Old English poem known as The Wanderer has long been said to rely on the device of 'pathetic fallacy' in its descriptions of stormy and frozen land- and seascapes. This piece of literary-critical terminology has strong ties to both Romantic and realist aesthetic ideals of the nineteenth century, and this paper outlines the assumptions which underpin the term and questions our continued use of it when discussing The Wanderer. By pointing us towards the external world as a projection of the interior psychological world of the 'wanderer' figure, the term obscures two key features of the text. Firstly, the label sweeps to the side the literal significance of the material world to which the poem's central speaker responds, despite the fact that this landscape bears marks of divine anger and potency and seems to participate in the Augustinian tradition of the degraded Sixth Age of the World. Secondly, the term points us towards a dramatic characterisation of a single heroic-age nobleman in a manner that the text is itself relatively uninterested in pursuing, instead emphasising conditions of exile, isolation, and despair as universalised spiritual problems. Seeing this poem as governed by pathetic fallacy distracts us from such facets, when other interpretive frameworks have more to offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the lexical domains of DISGUST and UNPLEASANT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and their associated emotional responses in Old English poetry. Combining methods from corpus-based lexical semantics and cognitive linguistics, this paper delves into the role of proximity senses in negative aesthetic experience in this particular literary context, looking into the phenomenology of these aesthetic emotions. This research proves that these aesthetic emotions, despite their apparent sensory dimension, almost always index cognitive evaluations that are, in most of the cases, religiously oriented towards the preservation of social order. Furthermore, this paper also indicates that aesthetic emotion of DISGUST, particularly its dimension of "moral taint", is the most prevalent and effective negative aesthetic emotion in Old English poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Drawing on the recent studies on aesthetic emotions and on their recent application to the field of the Old English aesthetic emotions, this paper explores one emotion from the emotion family of AMAZEMENT in the Old English poetic corpus, attending to the type of wonder that is typically triggered by objects of beauty, excellent manufacture and by the natural world. The purpose of this paper is to understand better the poetic usage of the Old English terms for wonder as well as evidence their role in literary and everyday contexts. Through a fine-grained analysis of the above domains, this paper has shown that the wonder implicit in these texts can be triggered by perceptual or cognitive appraisals, but also by a combination of both, highlighting the complexities and particularities of the early medieval English emotion of WONDER, as well as its similarity to other emotions like the EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY or AWE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares Heliand (Old Saxon) and Otfrid von Weissenburg's Evangelienbuch (Old High German) with each other and with several Old English poems to determine the extent to which those poems partake of a common stylistic tradition as regards their handling of direct speech. Particular attention is given to the location and form of the inquit and to terms of address. Close examination of those features confirms the well-known fact that Heliand uses a style that is very close to the Old English poetic tradition, whereas the Evangelienbuch is much more innovative stylistically. However, it also reveals significant differences between Heliand and Old English poetry that go beyond matters of dialect or metre. Conversely, it shows that, for all its innovation, the Evangelienbuch is not entirely exempt from traditional features characteristic of West-Germanic alliterative poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though as of late there has been a renewed interest in the aesthetic ideals in early Medieval England, the conceptualisation and experience of ugliness in Old English sources has been largely neglected. Drawing on the recent research carried out on aesthetic emotions and folk aesthetics, and despite the lack of academic materials on artistic and literary canons of ugliness, the purpose of this paper is to look into the terms that rendered the experience of ugliness and its closest emotional response, aesthetic horror, in order to examine how these are employed in poetic texts. The findings from this study evidence a lack of use of terms for negative aesthetic experience in Old English poetry that suggests that the lexical domain of ugliness and related emotional responses were not fundamental constituents of the Old English formulaic style, while the lexical domain of beauty and its responses were. Additionally, this study highlights the fundamentally moral character of the idea of ugliness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bliss & Frantzen's (1976) paper against the previously assumed textual integrity of Resignation has been a watershed in research upon the poem. Nearly all subsequent studies and editions have followed their theory, the sole dissenting view being expressed by Klinck (1987, 1992). The present paper offers fresh evidence for the textual unity of the poem. First examined are codicological issues, whether the state of the manuscript suggests that a folio might be missing. Next analysed are the spellings of Resignation and its phonology, here the paper discusses peculiarities which both differentiate Resignation from its manuscript context and connect the two hypothetical parts of the text. Then the paper looks at the assumed cut-off point at l.69 to see if it may provide any evidence for textual discontinuity. Finally the whole Resignation, seen as a coherent poem, is placed in the history of Old English literature, with special attention being paid to the traditions of devotional texts and the Old English elegies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poet of the Old English Exodus is often assumed to have been influenced by the well-known allegorical interpretations of the biblical Exodus. As such, scholars have read the Egyptians' plundered treasures, which play a much larger role in the Old English poem than in the biblical account, in these allegorical terms. However, while acknowledging that allegorical interpretations of Exodus must have been known to the Old English poet, this paper will argue that the despoiling of the Egyptians is informed as much (if not more so) by the heroic, vernacular tradition, in which death and the loss of treasure are closely associated. By comparing the scene of plunder at the start of Exodus with three scenes of deprivation in Beowulf, this paper will argue that the poet of Exodus had this tradition in mind when composing the account of death and despoiling on the night of the Israelites' departure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heroic economy of treasure subtends both the treasure plundered from the temple in Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the political structure of Babylon in the Old English Daniel. The golden idol that Nebuchadnezzar erects is a sign of the worldly glory and wealth that generates the flow of goods in the heroic economy of exchange of honour. The aim of the paper is to argue that the Daniel poet makes a contrast between the secular flow of treasure, at the foundation of Nebuchadnezzar's power, and the divine economy of grace, at the centre of the covenant between the Hebrews and God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reviews and assesses past scholarship on the so-called vasa mortis riddle of the Old English poem Solomon and Saturn II (lines 75-103) before proposing its own solution. It examines the trajectory of the scholarly literature that initially attempts to identify the vasa mortis as an exact answer to a riddle, but more recently aims to free the riddle from any specific solution in order to interpret it more broadly. This paper's own solution to the riddle is that the vasa mortis is to be understood as the thing that will destroy the Philistines at Doomsday. This solution is reached through analogies in the Old English passage and accounts of the traditional etymology of the Philistines, as well as biblical and patristic descriptions of eschatological demons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses compounds and related formations in some of the Old English elegies as well as in the ThCapA (Theodulfi Capitula, A version). Both texts (or groups of texts) show the productivity of compounding, and both show that noun + noun compounds were the most productive type of compounds. But they also show significant differences: Whereas many compounds in the elegies are due to the poetic principle of variation, some compounds in the ThCapA are or may be loantranslations based on Latin models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the predominant metaphorical conceptualization of sadness in three Old English elegiac monologues whose main themes are the pain and solitude of exile and separation. Taking as a starting point the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and briefly reviewing the experimental evidence that supports the experiential grounding of our conceptualization of sadness, as well as our own previous research on the Old English expressions for emotional distress, we analyze the use of sadness metaphors in the elegies The Wanderer, The Seafarer and The Wife's Lament. This analysis clearly shows that in the Old English period, as in present day English, sadness was largely expressed in metaphorical terms. Cold, darkness and physical discomfort were recurrent source domains in its depiction, which suggests a long-term trend in the metaphorical conceptualization of sadness, whose cognitive reality is empirically supported by experimental research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an edition and translation of the poem in the Exeter Book better called Paternal Precepts, not just Precepts, with some commentary. The poem is abstract, and father and son are no dramatis personae. Its instruction is that not only how one thinks and acts, but also how one speaks should be endowed with virtue. The brief introduction of Paternal Precepts directs us into the ten paternal precepts to teach a well-born son. The first precept instructs the son to be virtuous, and to honour his parents and teachers. The second and third precepts direct the son not to keep bad company, and teach that God rewards virtue and punishes complicity in evil. The fourth precept is about loyalty, both to one's friends and to one's high principles. The fifth precept is about what is to be avoided: drunkenness, evil thoughts, lies, boasting; and the dangers of loving women. It is important to be a safekeeper of one's words. The sixth precept is about understanding the concepts good and evil. The seventh precept reflects, in expressive contrasts, on futurity, and that the wise recognize sorrow in joys, whereas a fool fails to see that exultation may be enmeshed in sorrow. The eighth precept is about the theological concepts of God and saints. It ends with the glory of truth. The long ninth precept dwells on the Lord's commandments, and with terms not entirely clear: ancient writings, perhaps the Scriptures together with the writings of the Church Fathers; 'forward-looking writings', that is perhaps prophecies, and native traditions. The long tenth precept embraces sins of words and deeds, truth, wrath, and wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how Old English narrative poems reintroduce narration after direct speech. It is based on a survey of eight poems: Andreas, Beowulf, Christ and Satan, Elene, Genesis A and B, Guthlac A and Juliana. Results show that those transitions (like the initial inquits) contribute to the sharp delimitation of direct speech in Old English poetry. However, the paper also demonstrates that sharp delimitation is not synonymous with freedom from narratorial interference as the framing of speeches is often used to orient interpretation. Further, it suggests that the strong delineation of direct speech should not be seen as an independent phenomenon, but as representative of the way narrative poetry treats coherent sequences of text more generally. Indeed, similarities in the treatment of transitions between passages of narration and from direct speech to narration suggest that Anglo-Saxon poets perceived direct speech as perhaps worthier of attention, but not as radically different from narration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper dwells on Ezra Pound's translations of Old English poetry. The essay gives a brief outlook on Pound’s study of the Old English language during his college years, highlights the poet’s interests in a field of Old English culture. Pound’s view on the very issue of translation as an interpretation (that is the reason why Pound’s translations are not literal) is analyzed on the basis of his essays. It is highly characteristic for Pound to reduce the text of the original while translating it, which is due to several reasons. First of all, it is connected with the imagery which was of Pound’s interest: he translated fragments which were compliant with his own poetic voice (the character of the poem often becomes the poet’s persona; a certain conflict is reflected in the poem). Next, it was characteristic of the early XXth century scholars of Old English who strove to “clean up” authentic Old English texts from later insertions, to return them into their original state. Thus, Christian motifs in Old English poetry were considered to be later insertions; Pound, translating Old English texts, removed all Christian imagery from them. Finally, Pound's interpretative translation technique could be drawn from the medieval translation strategy called translatio, which allowed changing the original text while translating it. However, despite taking some liberties in his translations, Pound paid special attention to the sound image of the translated texts. On the basis of the abovementioned, the paper gives an analysis of two Pound’s translations – Old English charm “Wið færstice” (ca. 10th century; Pound’s translation ca. 1904-1905) and the heroic elegy “Sæfaran” (10th century; Pound’s translation “The Seafarer”, 1911).

Time is a singular noun, but includes a multiplicity of temporalities, including what J. T. Fraser has termed sociotemporality. In this paper, I discuss facing the urgency of time in a narrative dominated by sociotemporality, that of the Old English poem Beowulf, and suggest how criticism of the narrative structure of Beowulf has derived from a monovalent understanding of narrative time. Moreover, in recognizing sociotemporality as dominant in the organization of the poem, the modern reader can gain greater access to what was valued in the social context of its response to "the urgency of time." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A. J. Bliss, in his authoritative and influential monograph on The Metre of Beowulf (1967), analysed l. 1563a, hē ġefēng þā fetelhilt, as a member of his group (4) of verses beginning with finite verbs. In verses of that group, in which the verb is the last particle before the first stressed element, alliterating finite verbs are thought to be an integral part of the alliterative scheme of the line and hence to be metrically stressed. This means that, according to Bliss, l. 1563a is a Type 1A2a with hē and ġe- in anacrusis. This analysis is compatible with Bliss’s definition of anacrusis, according to which any two unstressed syllables can be in the extrametrical prelude to a verse. As this essay shows, however, personal pronouns are not normally found in anacrustic positions in the poem, and so it appears reasonable to believe that seemingly anacrustic hē is not part of the authorial reading, but a result of scribal misapprehension of the text in the exemplar. After considering several possibilities and solutions, this article proposes cancellation of hē on the grounds that the scribe found the absence of a pronominal subject at that point confusing, and so decided to supply one to make the syntax of the passage closer to the syntax of late Old English verse. Emendation to ġefēng þā fetelhilt does not change Bliss’s analysis of l. 1563a as a Type 1A2a, but it does mean that that verse should be considered a member not of group (4), but of group (3): the verb is the only particle before the first stressed element. The essay concludes by reminding readers of Bliss’s monograph that his definition of anacrusis can be accepted as long as pronouns and linguistic elements other than verbal prefixes and proclitic ne are excluded from the definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Old English poetry and prose, declarations of unknowing and inexpressibility appear as quasi-formulaic assertions that no human being exists who could know or express the declarations' subject--even when the text surrounding the declaration of unknowing contains evidence to the contrary. Consistently, in homilies and poetry alike, declarations of unknowing mark out the supernatural, functioning as traditional poetic markers of wonder and awe. With declarations of unknowing as a case study, this paper proposes a network model for visualizing the relationship between motifs, texts, and traditional associations within the larger expressive economy of oral-traditional Old English poetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gifts of Men is among poems of the Exeter Book that have been less highly regarded than they deserve. This paper is an edition with translation, presented in several parts. The poem includes a long sum-catalogue, often found less attractive than the 'elegies' in the same manuscript; its intellectual distinction, often neglected in critical appraisal, is considered. Lines 18-29 express in a single sentence God's generosity to mankind. In this part, as elsewhere in the poem, some significant words are polysemous and an attempt is made to explain them. The poet uses a strikingly large number of nominal compounds, and his art of expression is revealed when his usage is compared with other Old English poems. The sum-catalogue of lines 30-96 teaches the variousness of human endowments, including some endowments rarely praised in religious verse, and including some failings treated with empathetic understanding. Several unusual words in the catalogue require elucidation, and that is attempted in this study. The conclusion of the poem may be a reflection on the poet's own talents, as of value in the religious community in which he probably lived. The very end of the poem is designed to teach humility. Of course, the poem is religious, not heroic, not even secular; its ideas are subtly expressed, with potent touches of humanity, perhaps even of thought applicable to the poet's self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a corpus-based, quantitative investigation of the non-expression of referential pronominal subjects in a wide selection of Old English prose and poetic texts. The paper demonstrates that 'empty' referential subjects are significantly more frequent in Old English poetry as opposed to the prose. This result may contribute to explaining the widely differing assessments found in the literature concerning the grammaticality of empty subjects in Old English. It is also shown for both genres that the occurrence of such subjects correlates with the date of composition and, to a weaker degree, with the translation-status of the analysed texts. These results weaken Walkden's (2012) dialectsplit hypothesis somewhat, since the asymmetry between West Saxon and Anglian/ Anglian-influenced texts discussed by Walkden may at least partially be explained by the genre, period and translation-status of the texts. The paper also shows that the differences in frequency between prose and poetry cannot be explained by morphosyntactic factors such as clause type and person/number features, since the empty subjects form similar patterns of distribution across these variables in both genres. It is also argued that verbal agreement cannot explain the occurrence of empty referential subjects in Old English prose or poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a pilot study in the lemmatisation of Old English comparative adverbs. This research is a further contribution to the lemmatisation methodology implemented in the OE verbal classes. The adverbs graded for the comparative have been chosen for this study. The data have been retrieved from The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose and The York- Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry. The starting point of this study is the automatic extraction of the forms morphologically tagged with the ADVR label (comparative adverbs). Secondly, the resulting forms are manually assigned the lemma provided by the lexical database of Old English Nerthus. Thirdly, the results are compared with Seelig (1930) and with the Dictionary of Old English in order to verify the lemma assignment and disambiguate doubtful cases. The conclusions insist on the applicability of the lemmatisation method to all non-verbal categories of Old English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The maxim Wyrd oft nereð // unfægne eorl, / þonne his ellen deah "Fate often spares an undoomed man when his courage avails" (Beowulf 572b-573) has been likened to "Fortune favors the brave," with little attention to the word unfægne, which is often translated "undoomed". This comparison between proverbs emphasizes personal agency and suggests a contrast between the proverb in 572b-573 and the maxim G3ð a wyrd swa hio scel "Goes always fate as it must" (Beowulf 455b), which depicts an inexorable wyrd. This paper presents the history of this view and argues that linguistic analysis and further attention to Germanic cognates of (un)fæge reveal a proverb that harmonizes with 455b. (Un)fæge and its cognates have meanings related to being brave or cowardly, blessed or accursed, and doomed or undoomed. A similar Old Norse proverb also speaks to the significance of the status of unfæge men. Furthermore, the prenominal position of unfægne is argued to represent a characterizing property of the man. The word unfægne is essential to the meaning of this proverb as it indicates not the simple absence of being doomed but the presence of a more complex quality. This interpretive point is significant in that it provides more information about the portrayal of wyrd in Beowulf by clarifying a well-known proverb in the text; it also has implications for future translations of these verses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Exeter Book poem, 102 lines long, traditionally and appropriately called The Wonder(s) of Creation, was renamed in The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, III, 163-6, The Order of the World. This article traces the tradition (since 1842) and shows the inappropriateness of the new name. The whole poem is edited and translated in the article. The sentence structure is complex, and the unit of discourse is the sentence paragraph, rather than the gnome. Two thoughtful personae open the poem, one far-travelled and experienced, the other about to set out on his journey. The first twenty lines are about the intellectual grasp of the mystery of creation. There is a long eulogy of God the Creator and the wonder of his creation, Cædmonian and psalmodic in spirit. Line 46b, unemended þurh þa miclan gemynd, is shown to be pivotal, and the emendation gecynd, to avoid double alliteration in the second half-line, is rejected. The human mind is insufficient to grasp the greatness of God, as Creator and as Judge. The sun is glorified as the best of God's Creation, reminiscent of Psalmody. The lability of initial /h/ in Old English may lead to subtle wordplay. Towards the end of the poem thought turns to heaven, the eorðwerud 'that household originally on earth' may form the heorðwerud 'inhabitants of (God's) homestead' in heaven. Throughout, the paper stresses that rules established by prosodists from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first have frequent exceptions, and should not be used by editors in the hope of regularizing the transmitted texts of Old English poetry. A substantial appendix confirms manuscript readings rejected by martinetish editors; it ranges more widely than The Wonder of Creation, and the 'impossible' second half-line þurh þa miclan gemynd is at the centre of this appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observed most closely in Beowulf, Kaluza's law is a constraint on operation of resolution in Old English meter: after a stressed syllable, only short disyllables ending in pre-OE *-i or *-u (-V$Ci$ or -V$Cu$) are subject to resolution, thereby constituting a single position; by contrast, the remaining disyllables (-V$CV$ -- where the final V ≠ pre-OE *-i or *-u -- or -V$CVC$) count as two metrical positions through suspension of resolution. This paper examines the treatment of Kaluza's law in the Old Saxon Heliand in comparison with Beowulf and late Old English poetry. Drawing on statistical analysis as appropriate, I will argue that, no longer sensitive to the original distinction between short and long disyllables, the law was replaced by another generalization that was predicated on the distinction between open and closed disyllables: in the Heliand, open disyllables (-V$CV$) are susceptible to resolution, whereas closed ones (-V$CVC$) are immune to it. I will then identify a complex of metrical, phonological, and morphological factors that can be held responsible for the metrical reorganization in question: (i) loss of type A2a; (ii) diminished use of poetic compounds; (iii) leveling of unstressed vowels; (iv) reduced functional load of high vowel endings; (v) analogical loss of the original alternation between -i/-u and zero; (vi) extensive occurrence of vowel epenthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to resolve the paradoxical nature of the juxtaposition of Germanic pagan with Christian teachings and ideas in Old English elegies. First, the most relevant notions of religious encounter are discussed. Then, the notion of 'Wyrd,' the Germanic fate motif, shall be introduced. Subsequently, after giving a concise summary of the history and story of "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer," the paper deals with the narrative structure of each, then analysing their relevant parts in depth. The paper also elaborates on the phenomenon of 'progression.' The word is here used to refer to the shift in tone (from earthly to transcendent) which occurs to emphasise the importance of the new religion and is achieved by presenting Christian teachings as consolation for the exiled protagonists. In "The Wanderer," the pagan retrospective view is exchanged for the eschatological, while in "The Seafarer" the development from a lament to sermon is what will be the means of this consolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper focuses on two types of boast words as they are used in Beowulf. The first type to be considered is the act of speaking we commonly associate with bragging, while the second, more important kind of boast, functions as a promise that the speaker will perform specific acts of courage. Close examination of Beowulfs speeches in their narrative contexts shows that type one boasts, as they are defined here, help to establish Beowulfs credibility as a man who can be trusted to do what he says he will do, while type two boasts show the degree to which he commits himself to follow through on his promises. Attention is also given to the boast words Wiglaf utters as he comes to the aid of his king, and to words spoken by J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings heroes that also function, in their much later contexts, as type two, heroic promise boasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is both a reflection on the cultural, social, and political stakes of how early medieval literature and language functions as heritage in England, and on my practices as a museum educator. Language and literature in heritage contexts may enable rich emotional and intellectual engagement with early medieval stories, landscapes, and objects in ways which may unloose the early medieval from the grip of exclusionary narratives. I discuss how Old English language and literature may be understood within wider contexts of early medieval heritage, often called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in English institutions, by sketching the overlapping public spaces of encounter with the past, and how we may read across them. With its longstanding links with Old English poetry across scholarship and public history, I suggest that Sutton Hoo provides an ideal case study for examining the enmeshment of early medieval literature, language, landscape, and archaeology as heritage categories. I discuss the planning and delivery of ‘Trade and Travel’, a temporary display and learning programme that I organised with the National Trust in 2017, and present findings from qualitative data I collected to suggest how people make sense of place, archaeology, and early medieval language and literature. Understanding language and literature as heritage, I show how visitors discover and create meaning through encounter and conversation. In heritage spaces, literature and language are sensory and emotional artefacts and experiences: observing visitor engagement reveals how both become integral to creative and identity-making work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Geatish King Hygelac welcomes Beowulf back home from his successful fight against the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother in Denmark. Topics include examines in his lengthy response, Beowulf gives an account of his exploits and also mentions King Hrothgar's daughter Freawaru being married to King Ingeld of the Heathobards.

In Hálfs saga, a king named Alrekr finds himself with two wives, and he declares that he will stay married to the one "er bettra aul giordi" [who should brew better ale]; the two queens then "keptuzt um aulgíordína" [contended in ale-brewing] ([31]). Even when it is, the identity of the brewer is usually effaced by constructions such as "var lheita mikil" ([27]) [there was a great ale-brewing], and "Yngvar ... lét thá l heita" ([16]) [Yngvar ... then had ale brewed]. The need to heat the mash/wort accounts for one of the usual verbs for making ale, heita (to heat); the other is simply gera (to make).[11] In Iceland, it is likely that barley ale was the only alcoholic drink produced locally and that by the thirteenth century, any barley or barley malt available would have been used for brewing ale ([75]). The final example of a male brewer in Sturlunga saga is Björn, a retainer of a powerful landowner named Brynjólfr in Norway: "Hann gerdi öl ok vardveitti drykk hversdagliga" ([76]) [He brewed ale and was responsible for the drink every day]. [Extracted from the article]

In the article, the author discusses the importance of worldbuilding as an essential component of creative fiction as it involves the creation of a fictional world with specific components like fauna, peoples, cultures, and languages. Also cited are the works by Manfred Kiedorf and Gerhard Batz in creating the Rococo fantasy world, as well as the literary styles of authors like John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Ernest M. Hemingway (1899-1961).

The Fuller Brooch is considered the earliest English representation of the five senses. The central character, representing sight, is thought to also hold one or more figurative meanings, linked to ideas and concepts that were current in King Alfred's cultural context. These figurative meanings were presumably meant to be emphasised and clarified by the two objects this figure is holding. So far, however, these have not been satisfactorily interpreted, with most scholars tentatively identifying them as plants or cornucopias. This study makes a case for these objects to be torches, embodying the concept of light, so central in the theme of the oculi mentis 'eyes of the mind' and in Alfred's ideas of wisdom and learning. The relevance of divine light in the Alfredian cultural framework emerges clearly from the translations into English of the Soliloquia, of the Consolatio Philosophiae and of the Regula pastoralis. Evidence also emerges from the iconography of the inluminatio 'illumination' of the oculi mentis for the acquisition of divine wisdom featuring in the Utrecht Psalter (and its later copies), and from the iconographical connection between torches, light and God that can be seen in the historiated initial of one of the hymns of the Durham Hymnal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of the Old English poem Andreas have long debated its dating and authorship, as the poem shares affinities both with Beowulf and the signed poems of Cynewulf. Although this debate hinges on poetic style and other internal evidence, the stylistic uniformity of Andreas has not been suitably demonstrated. This paper investigates this question by examining the distribution of oral-formulaic data within the poem, which is then correlated to word frequency and orthographic profiles generated with lexomic techniques. The analysis identifies an earlier version of the poem, which has been expanded by a later poet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]