The intricacies of counting to four in Old English poetry

2021 ◽  
pp. 096394702110122
Author(s):  
Ian Cornelius ◽  
Eric Weiskott
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Old English ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Analytic Description ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Metrical Theory ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
The Subject

The metrical theory devised by Eduard Sievers and refined by A. J. Bliss forms the basis for most current scholarship on Old English meter. A weakness of the Sievers–Bliss theory is that it occupies a middle ground between two levels of analytic description, distinguished by Roman Jakobson in an influential article as ‘verse instance’ and ‘verse design’. Metrists in the Sievers–Bliss tradition employ a concept of metrical position (a key component of verse design), yet the focus of attention usually remains on the contours of stress of individual verses. Important exceptions are the studies of Thomas Cable and Nicolay Yakovlev. The theoretical innovations of Cable and Yakovlev, among others, enable a more concise presentation of verse design than anyone writing on the subject has yet offered. The present essay attempts to show what such a presentation might look like, while also giving due acknowledgment to the complexities of position-count in this meter. We presume no prior knowledge of the Sieversian system. Illustrations are drawn principally from Cædmon’s Hymn and the Seafarer.

Evidence for primacy of alliteration in Old English metre

1985 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 75-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Hoover
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Half Line ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Metrical Theory ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Past

The study of Old English metre has a long and illustrious history, yet it seems fair to say that the work of many respected scholars over the past hundred years has not produced unanimity. One reason for this is that objective and unequivocal evidence about the metre of Old English poetry is very difficult to discover. That is, before evidence is considered, or even collected, a substantial amount of interpretation and analysis has usually taken place. In the following pages, however, I shall present some previously unnoticed and quite unequivocal evidence about Old English metre that does not depend upon any particular metrical theory or upon unsupported assumptions, but rather upon the uncontroversial and universally accepted fact that Old English poetry requires a minimum of two alliterating stresses, one in each verse (or half-line), and allows two alliterations on the same sound only in the a verse.

On Translating Anglo-Saxon Poetry

PMLA ◽  
1898 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-296
Author(s):  
Edward Fulton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Verse ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early English

What verse to use in translating Anglo-Saxon poetry is a question, which, ever since Anglo-Saxon poetry has been thought worth translating, has been discussed over and over again, but unfortunately with as yet no final conclusion. The tendency, however, both among those who have written upon the subject and those who have tried their hand at translating, is decidedly in favor of a more or less close imitation of the original metre. Professor F. B. Gummere, in an article on “The Translation of Beowulf and the Relations of Ancient and Modern English Verse,” published in the American Journal of Philology, Vol. vii (1886), strongly advocates imitating the A.-S. metre. Professor J. M. Garnett, in a paper read before this Association in 1890, sides with him, recanting a previously held belief in the superiority of blank verse. Of the various translations which imitate the A.-S. metre, the most successful, undoubtedly, is the Beowulf of Dr. John Leslie Hall, which appeared in 1892. Stopford Brooke, in his History of Early English Literature, also declares his belief in imitations of the original metre, though in his translations he does not always carry out his beliefs. He lays down the rule—and a very good rule it is—that translations of poetry “should always endeavour to have the musical movement of poetry, and to obey the laws of the verse they translate.” For translating A.-S. poetry, blank verse, he thinks, is out of the question; “ it fails in the elasticity which a translation of Anglo-Saxon poetry requires, and in itself is too stately, even in its feminine dramatic forms, to represent the cantering movement of Old English verse. Moreover, it is weighted with the sound of Shakspere, Milton, or Tennyson, and this association takes the reader away from the atmosphere of Early English poetry.”

Color in Old English Poetry

PMLA ◽  
1899 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-206
Author(s):  
William E. Mead
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
High Interest ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Color Sense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Exhaustive Study

It is a somewhat singular fact that although students of our language and literature have been carefully gleaning their chosen fields and leaving scarcely any entirely new theme for investigation, there should remain practically untouched a subject of high interest and æsthetic importance,— I mean the use of color in poetry. To some extent the matter has attracted attention in the study of other literatures than ours. Critics often remark upon the brilliant color-sense of the Celtic poets and of the writers of the Old Norse sagas and poems. Gladstone devoted a long section of his Homeric Studies to the color-epithets in the Iliad and the Odyssey; and a German scholar, with characteristic thoroughness, has made an exhaustive study of the color-words in the entire body of the Latin and Greek classics. But an adequate investigation of the development of the color-sense in English poetry is yet to be written. I know of but one paper that treats the matter in any detail, and that paper is confessedly tentative and leaves the older periods untouched. As for color in Old English poetry, a few words by Professor March and a few more in a very rare paper by Dr. Sweet exhaust about all that has been said on the subject.

Null subjects in Old English

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Substantial Variation ◽  
Quantitative Investigation ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Verbal Agreement

AbstractThe possibility of referential null subjects in Old English has been the subject of conflicting assertions. Hulk and van Kemenade (1995:245) stated that “the phenomenon of referentialpro-drop does not exist in Old English,” but van Gelderen (2000:137) claimed that “Old English has pro-drop.” This paper presents a systematic quantitative investigation of referential null subjects in Old English, drawing on the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE; Taylor, Warner, Pintzuk, & Beths, 2003) and the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry (YCOEP; Pintzuk & Plug, 2001). The results indicate substantial variation between texts. In those texts that systematically exhibit null subjects, these are much rarer in subordinate clauses, with first- and second-person null subjects also being rare. I argue that the theory of identification of null subjects by rich verbal agreement is not sufficient to explain the Old English phenomenon, and instead I develop an account based on Holmberg's (2010) analysis of partial null subject languages.

scholarly journals The Law Challenged and the Critique of Identity with Emmanuel Levinas

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Petrilli
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

AbstractIdentity as traditionally conceived in mainstream Western thought is focused on theory, representation, knowledge, subjectivity and is centrally important in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. His critique of Western culture and corresponding notion of identity at its foundations typically raises the question of the other. Alterity in Levinas indicates existence of something on its own account, in itself independently of the subject’s will or consciousness. The objectivity of alterity tells of the impossible evasion of signs from their destiny, which is the other. The implications involved in reading the signs of the other have contributed to reorienting semiotics in the direction of semioethics. In Levinas, the I-other relation is not reducible to abstract cognitive terms, to intellectual synthesis, to the subject-object relation, but rather tells of involvement among singularities whose distinctive feature is alterity, absolute alterity. Humanism of the other is a pivotal concept in Levinas overturning the sense of Western reason. It asserts human duties over human rights. Humanism of alterity privileges encounter with the other, responsibility for the other, over tendencies of the centripetal and egocentric orders that instead exclude the other. Responsibility allows for neither rest nor peace. The “properly human” is given in the capacity for absolute otherness, unlimited responsibility, dialogical intercorporeity among differences non-indifferent to each other, it tells of the condition of vulnerability before the other, exposition to the other. The State and its laws limit responsibility for the other. Levinas signals an essential contradiction between the primordial ethical orientation and the legal order. Justice involves comparing incomparables, comparison among singularities outside identity. Consequently, justice places limitations on responsibility, on unlimited responsibility which at the same time it presupposes as its very condition of possibility. The present essay is structured around the following themes: (1) Premiss; (2) Justice, uniqueness, and love; (3) Sign and language; (4) Dialogue and alterity; (5) Semiotic materiality; (6) Globalization and the trap of identity; (7) Human rights and rights of the other: for a new humanism; (8) Ethics; (9) The World; (10) Outside the subject; (11) Responsibility and Substitution; (12) The face; (13) Fear of the other; (14) Alterity and justice; (15) Justice and proximity; (16) Literary writing; (17) Unjust justice; (18) Caring for the other.

Maxims in Old English Poetry (review)

Parergon ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-192
Author(s):  
Antonina Harbus
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry
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