Old English Poetry and Its Legacy

• Other Authors: Bjork, Robert E. (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2023
• Subjects: Literature & literary studies; old English poetry; runology; Vercelli Book; Cynewulf; semiotics; Multiliteralism; Old English poetry; Old English riddles; Exeter Book; Riddle 5; shields; cutting boards; prosopopoeia; agency; social critique; humor; Old English literature; reception history; medievalism; riddles; The Husband's Message; Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936); ghost stories; horror genre; supernatural fiction; The Ruin; Old English poetics; Beowulf; animal studies; medieval hunting; monsters; Solomon and Saturn; codicological reading; Incarnational poetics; compilation; monastic poetics; Old English; wisdom; medieval dialogue; Anglo-Saxon culture; medieval Christian tradition; emotions; hagiography; Old English prose; Latin literature; cave; cruel husband; oaths; the word bot; rock-cut buildings; pagan temple site; longing and loneliness; the "imagery of silence"
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

This collection focuses on the legacy of Old English poetry and includes new interpretations of works such as Exeter Book Riddle 5, which provides an enduring legacy of social critique crafted through humor; the three manuscripts that contain the Solomon and Saturn dialogues, which reveal a shift in the use of poetry over time; Fates of the Apostles in which a previously unseen eighth rune is semiotically operative along with Cynewulf's signature; The Wife's Lament, in which the cave occupied by the wife has its archeological antecedents in early medieval rock-cut buildings; The Ruin, in which both the poem's text and the silent spaces of wyrd's traces are inscribed upon the material manuscript; the history of the reception of the riddles, which is instrumental in inspiring one of the acknowledged classic ghost stories of the twentieth century; tears and weeping in the whole corpus of Old English literature; and Beowulf, in which the figures of the stag and wolf play an important role in the thematic design of the poem but have not been examined before. The reprint is prefaced with a detailed account of the scholarly contributions to Old English studies by John D. Niles.