scholarly journals Modern, yet “full of forms, figures, shapes, objects”

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Michael Andrew Albright
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
False Premise

With over four hundred years separating today’s millennials from Shakespeare’s plays, it is little wonder that students and teachers have pegged Elizabethan English as difficult—if not impossible—to understand. Generally, the motivation for students who seek such resources or for teachers who furnish them comes from a shared assumption that Shakespeare’s language is indecipherable to today’s audiences—or, just too difficult to grasp. There are even some students (and, teachers) who operate under the false premise that Shakespeare’s plays are composed in Old English, a language that thrived centuries prior to Shakespeare’s earliest works. To make visible the troubling implications of so-called “modern” or “contemporary” translations of Shakespeare’s works, I will look to Shakespeare’s most academic play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, to propose how today’s students are complicit in dismissing Shakespeare for his words as much as audiences of Shakespeare’s time laughed away Holofernes. In addition to surveying a critical history of supplementary resources designed to ease the burden of Shakespeare’s language, an analysis of Holofernes’ stage presence will offer a natural opportunity to explore what happens if we willingly replace Shakespeare’s English for English that is perceived as easier—or, according to some outlets, even truer. This article sets out to complicate the facility and pervasiveness of such contemporary translations by calling attention to the language lessons Holofernes teaches through his folly, revealing that such work is, “not generous, not gentle, not humble” (Love’s Labour’s V.ii.617). 

A Critical History of Old English Literature

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 361
Author(s):  
Francis Lee Utley ◽  
Stanley B. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of

A New Critical History of Old English Literature

1988 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 660
Author(s):  
John C. Pope ◽  
Stanley B. Greenfield ◽  
Daniel G. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of

The several compilers of Bald's Leechbook

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 51-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Scott Nokes
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
British Library ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medical Learning ◽  
King Alfred

The critical history of the Old English charms is replete with examples of scholars claiming that the charms are pagan remnants with a thread-bare Christian garment covering ancient pre-Christian rituals. Other scholars, more interested in combing the charms for magical elements, have viewed them as even more primitive than a pre-Christian religion and have instead treated them as Germanic magic. The first two of three texts found in London, British Library, Royal 12. D. XVII, more commonly known as Bald's Leechbook, certainly do not fit this description. In this manuscript, we find medical referencebooks produced by a team of compilers, perhaps as part of the intellectual renaissance sponsored by King Alfred. Evidence in the manuscript also suggests that the Anglo-Saxons had considerable access to Latin sources of medical learning and also had a well-developed native medical knowledge.

A New Critical History of Old English Literature

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 286
Author(s):  
E. G. Stanley ◽  
Stanley B. Greenfield ◽  
Daniel G. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of

Sapiential Structure and Figural Narrative in the Old English ‘Elene’

Traditio ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 159-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Recent Critic

The Old English Elene has generally been considered Cynewulf's most successful poem; but while critics have admired specific passages in it, they have generally either ignored or patronized the poem as a whole. Thus Kemp Malone writes that in Elene, Cynewulf ‘told his tale simply and clearly as Old English poets go. Here he doubtless owed something to his Latin source ….’ The most recent editor of the text, Gradon, remarks that apart from the descriptions of the battle and the sea voyage, ‘there is little in Elene that can be shown to be original … a glance at Holthausen's composite text shows that, poetic circumlocution apart, there is little not to be found in some version of the Acta Cyriaci.’ One recent critic to deal with Elene, S. B. Greenfield, in his Critical History of Old English Literature, argues for a more sympathetic view of the poem, suggesting that ‘the struggle between good and evil that preoccupied Cynewulf is here [in Elene] presented thematically as a contrast between darkness and light, both on a physical and spiritual level’; he goes on to argue that the central episodes of the poem (i.e. Elene's quest for the cross) have a distinct literary if not necessarily poetic power.’ But Greenfield does not develop these suggestions in detail and it would, I think, be a fair summary of his discussion of the poem to say that where previous critics have been cool, Greenfield is lukewarm.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

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