A Grammatical Analysis of the Old English Poem, "The Owl and the Nightingale."

1875 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
L. A. Sherman
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Grammatical Analysis

Solomon and Saturn I, 89 a, “prologa prim”: An Exercise in Monastic Reading Practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
pp. 618-648
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Half Line ◽  
Lectio Divina ◽  
Reading Practice ◽  
John 1 ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
Subsequent Episode ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThis article reassesses the grammatically problematic half-line prologa prima (l. 89a) in the Old English wisdom poem Solomon and Saturn I, and suggests that it ought to be emended to the grammatically viable reading of “prologa prim”. Line 89 a introduces a passage in which the words of the Pater Noster become anthropomorphised as warriors and attack the devil. I will argue that “prologa prim” is an exegetical exercise, informed by grammatical theory and liturgical practice, designed for an audience of monastic readers. This multivalent half-line offers different levels of meaning when read according to different permutations of language and metaphor, in a process analogous to the interpretation of scripture according to the influential model of fourfold exegesis. When read literally, as ‘the first of the initial letters’, “prologa prim” indicates the unfolding and time-bound process of reading. Previous scholars (Anlezark 2009; Anderson 1998) have noted the allusive references in line 89 a to Greek logos (‘word’) and Old English prim (‘first hour’, ‘Prime office’), but not their full significance. Through these allusions, the reader shifts from a literal reading to a spiritual and metaphorical reading of the half-line, achieving a diachronic perspective of the Pater Noster’s recitation across time, and finally an atemporal perspective, reading in line 89 a a paraphrase of John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word”. In conjunction with the subsequent episode of the battle, line 89 a forms an exemplum of the monastic practice of lectio divina. This example of ‘monastic poetics’ (O’Camb 2014; Niles 2019) moves from grammatical analysis to a vision of the Word.

Sepulchral Jews and Stony Christians

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Lavezzo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Temple

This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old English poem Elene. It takes as its starting point how Bede and Cynewulf tackle a material long associated with Jewish materialism, stone, in comparison with Christian materialism and descibes their accounts of the sepulchral Jew as well as the stony nature of Jews. It also considers how Bede and Cynewulf construct Christianity by asserting its alterity and opposition to an idea of Jewish carnality that draws on and modifies Pauline supersession. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Bede's and Cynewulf's charged engagements with supersession and “Jewish” places contribute both to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture and to the important role that ideas of the Jew played in such materialisms.

LIX. The Address of the Soul to the Body

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolph Willard
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
The Body ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Conspicuous Feature ◽  
University Library ◽  
Intermediate Time ◽  
The Moment

There exist in Old English a number of compilations in which an address of the soul to its body is a conspicuous feature. The best known is the poem in the Vercelli and the Exeter Books, in which the soul returns to its body once a week and communes with it, the sinful soul reproaching it vituperatively, the righteous comforting it lovingly and joyously. The fourth Vercelli homily has a remarkable scene, an elaborated account of the judgement of the soul at Doomsday, in which the souls address their bodies as they stand in the presence of the Judge. The Last Judgement is again the scene of an address, and that in one of the homilies presented by Assmann. There is, finally, the Old English vision, printed by Thorpe and Napier, of the bringing forth of the soul, wherein the newly-released soul of a sinner vituperates the body it has just left. To this literature, I wish to add passages from two unpublished Old English homilies, in which the address is made, not at the moment of death, as in Thorpe and Napier, nor at the Last Judgement, as in Vercelli Homily iv and in Assmann, but at some intermediate time, when the soul returns intermittently to its body for that purpose, as in the Old English poem. These two texts are Homilies ii and iv of MS. Junius 85 of the Bodleian Library, and Homily xl of MS. Ii. 1.33 of the Cambridge University Library.

Hebrews, Israelites, and Wicked Jews: An Onomastic Crux in ‘Andreas’ 161-67

Traditio ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 358-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas D. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poem

In the Old English poem Andreas, the narrative begins with the imprisonment and suffering of Matthew, who is blinded and forced to drink a magic potion which is intended to reduce him to bestiality. This drink, which literarily is directly descended from Circe's potion, fails to be effective in this case, and Matthew prays to God for help in his affliction. God responds directly and tells Matthew that He will bring help. God's help is mediated by the apostle Andrew, and immediately before God summons Andrew He is apostrophized in the following passage: þa w æs gemyndig, se Ðe middangeardgestaÐelode strangum mihtum.hu he in ellþeodigum yrmÐum wunodebelocen leoÐubendum, þe oft his lufan adregfor Ebreum ond Israhelum,swylce he Iudea galdorcræftumwiÐstod stranglice.1

scholarly journals Women Write the Past: Medieval Scholarship, Old English and New Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Clare A. Lees
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Medieval Women ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Eavan Boland ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women Scholars ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Consolation Of Philosophy ◽  
New Literature ◽  
Contemporary Artists

This article explores the contributions of women scholars, writers and artists to our understanding of the medieval past. Beginning with a contemporary artists book by Liz Mathews that draws on one of Boethius‘s Latin lyrics from the Consolation of Philosophy as translated by Helen Waddell, it traces a network of medieval women scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries associated with Manchester and the John Rylands Library, such as Alice Margaret Cooke and Mary Bateson. It concludes by examining the translation of the Old English poem, The Wife‘s Lament, by contemporary poet, Eavan Boland. The art of Liz Mathews and poetry of Eavan Boland and the scholarship of women like Alice Cooke, Mary Bateson, Helen Waddell and Eileen Power show that women‘s writing of the past – creative, public, scholarly – forms a strand of an archive of women‘s history that is still being put together.

The prefix un- and the metrical grammar of Beowulf

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin B. Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Old English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wide Area ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
English Poem ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Considerable Period

Two rules of the metrical grammar of the Beowulf poet are the subject of this paper. One concerns the variation of stress on the prefix un-; the other pertains to the alliteration of compounds. The two are correlated. The paper rests on the premise that the ‘metre’ of an Old English poem is only one function of a set of regularities that make it something we call verse rather than prose. Separately these regularities may be described as ‘rules’; taken as a group, the rules comprise a metrical grammar. Each Anglo-Saxon scop absorbed such a grammar during the course of long immersion in the poetic tradition of his culture. No two scops' metrical grammars could have been exactly alike; in addition to individual differences, there must have been regional and dialectal variations, although the poetic tradition ensured remarkable uniformity over a wide area and a considerable period of time, and only at the end of the Old English period, with let us say The Battle of Maldon, are significant changes manifest. Further investigation would therefore be needed to determine to what extent the rules here described apply to other grammars.

scholarly journals LINGUOSTYLISTIC MEANS OF CONTEXTUAL SEGMENTATION OF THE OLD ENGLISH POEM THE SEAFARER

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Mukhin ◽  
◽  
Darya A. Efremova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poem
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