scholarly journals Ofermod y heroísmo humilde: sobre la interpretación de Tolkien

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Jon Mentxakatorre Odriozola ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Inflection Point ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
New Research

This paper studies Tolkien’s interpretation of German heroism, taking as a starting point his essay-poem «The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son» on The Battle of Maldon. Through academic texts on Beowulf and Sigurd, as well as his own legendarium, his reading and contribution are explored, placing the latter in dialogue with the latest research, and detailing the lines and scope of his ideas. After locating the inflection point that Tolkien marked around the word ofermod(e), the historical, literary and religious components that base Tolkien’s interpretation will be explained, in line with the Anglo-Saxon poetic and heroic tradition. Through this, it will become clear that the humble heroism of the subordinate who faces the fatal fate to which his master has led him is rooted in clear examples of Old English literature, and that the darkness brought by the terrible enemy has a mythical dimension, which refers to the shadow and to hell. Finally, in light of the latest contributions, Tolkien’s interpretation will be reaffirmed and enriched, opening new research perspectives on his work

Histories and surveys of Old English literature: a chronological review

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 201-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel G. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary History ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Main Tendency ◽  
Special Quality

Literary history emerges when critical readers in sufficient number move beyond primary recognition of individual texts into a secondary awareness of a scheme, a sense of the connections that exist between these texts.1 Literary history considers the development of a whole body of literature, tracing multifarious influences and innovations through time. In the course of Anglo-Saxon studies the slow and sporadic reappearance of the literary remains resulted in the late nourishing of a schematic or historical overview. As Wellek reminds us, ‘the antiquarian study of Anglo-Saxon remained…outside the main tendency towards literary history’2 that occurred in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century England. So, too, the special quality of Old English poetry itself contributed to the laggard creation of a history. It is difficult to map the path of a literature in which all dating is only good guessing and in which a tenaciously conservative oral—formulaic style makes attempts at suggesting influence hazardous.

The scholarly recovery of the significance of Anglo-Saxon records in prose and verse: a new bibliography

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 223-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The new bibliography by Stanley B. Greenfield and Fred C. Robinson of the entire body of publications on Old English literature provides the occasion for reviewing not so much the bibliography itself as the subject it covers. This article is, of course, not a brief history of Anglo-Saxon studies from the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII's reign to the 1970s. It is a highly selective exemplification of some of the changing aims and achievements of scholars when they went to the vernacular records in prose and verse that survive from Anglo-Saxon times.

Old English literature and the liturgy: problems and potential

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237-247
Author(s):  
Milton MCC. Gatch
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Scholarly Publications

A number of recent scholarly publications hint that students of Old English are coming to believe that knowledge of medieval liturgies might provide keys for unlocking some of the secrets of literary monuments. A prospectus for such pursuits is set out by the Reverend Cyril L. Smetana in a forthcoming article on further ramifications of the use of the homiliary of Paul the Deacon by Ælfric: It has long been recognized that the Anglo-Saxon poets were influenced by the liturgy and that hymns, homilies and antiphons inspired some of the best poetry.

Literary art and oral tradition in Old English and Serbian poetry

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Miles Foley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
Higher Criticism ◽  
Literary Art

Oral literature research entered Old English literature through Albert Lord's 1949 dissertation, eleven years later to becomeThe Singer of Tales, and Francis P. Magoun, Jr's ensuing essay, ‘The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry’.1As I have pointed out elsewhere,2these two scholars were not the first to identify and discuss the recurrent phrase or ‘formula’ in the poetry; German Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century had analysed the use of commonplaces of diction (orParallelstellen) to try to determine authorship and to establish the text of various poems. What Lord and Magoun originated was the idea of an explicit and necessary connection between the formula, defined by Milman Parry as ‘a group of words regularly used under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’,3and a poem's orality. Following the lead of Parry's ground-breaking analyses of Homeric epic and the Parry–Lord field work on South Slavic oral epic, they and scholars following them reasoned that the source of formulaic structure lay in a tradition of oral verse-making and that formulaic phraseology was a kind of poetic idiom fashioned over generations by bards responding to the continual pressure of composition in performance. Only if his mind were well stocked with phrases of metrical shape – if, in short, he had learned his poetic language well – could an oral poet fluently tell his tale in the form of traditional verse.

Cristes leorningcnihtas: traditions of the apostles in Old English literature

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-115
Author(s):  
Hugh Magennis
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon

This chapter, by Hugh Magennis, considers the theme of the interpretation and application of Christian knowledge as reflected in treatments of the apostles in vernacular writings in Anglo-Saxon England. The acta of the apostles originated in the East but were transmitted and reworked by western writers, not least in pre-Conquest England. Surveying depictions of the apostles in Old English, Magennis’s chapter emphasises the definitive place that the apostles occupy within Christian systems of knowledge and understanding but also examines how traditions of the apostles are appropriated and reconceived by Anglo-Saxon writers (including the poet of Andreas, whose reworking of his source is considered in greater detail in the chapter in this volume by Richard North).

Place-name evidence for an Anglo-Saxon animal name: OE *pohha/*pocca fallow deer’

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Hough
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Fallow Deer ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Animal Names ◽  
To Come

It is well known that the extant corpus of Old English literature preserves only a proportion of the vocabulary that once existed. In some instances, terms for concepts that must have been familiar to the Anglo-Saxons have been lost without trace; in others, they may be reconstructed from non-literary forms of evidence such as the place-names coined by early settlers in the areas now known as England and southern Scotland. The main dictionary of place-name terminology, Smith's English Place-Name Elements of 1956, includes many entries for words which are otherwise either unattested, or attested only with other meanings. Animal names in particular constitute an area of vocabulary which is under-represented in literary sources but common in place-names, and for which toponymic evidence often proves crucial. Old English animal names unattested in the extant literature but included in English Place-Name Elements are *bagga ‘badger’, *bula ‘bull’, *ean ‘lamb’, *gæten ‘kid’, *galt ‘pig, boar’, *græg ‘badger’, *hyrse ‘mare’, *padde ‘toad’, *padduc ‘frog’, *pigga ‘young pig’, *stedda ‘horse’, *tacca and *tagga ‘teg, young sheep’, *tige ‘goat’, *todd ‘fox’ and *wiðer ‘ram, wether’. Those identied more recently include *brun ‘pig’ and *wearg ‘wolf ’. As the English Place-Name Survey progresses, providing detailed coverage of the country's toponyms in a series of annual volumes inaugurated in the 1920s, further examples may be expected to come to light. The aim of this article is to offer a new addition to the corpus.

Eve in Anglo-Saxon Retellings of the Harrowing of Hell

Traditio ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Glaeske
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Old English Martyrology ◽  
Patristic Exegesis

A spate of recent articles attests to a growing interest in Eve in criticism of Old English literature. However, these same articles demonstrate the narrowness of this interest, as they all focus on Eve in one poem — Genesis B — which is not even an entire poem, but rather a small (albeit significant) interpolation into another poem. Other Old English writings have been little studied: in particular, several prominent occurrences of Eve during the Harrowing of Hell survive in the Old English Martyrology; Blickling Homily 7; a homily De descensu Christi ad inferos in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 121; and the poem Christ and Satan, but have received little comment. In each of these texts Eve supplicates Christ when he descends into hell to free the souls of the biblical patriarchs and prophets after his crucifixion; furthermore, six Old English homilies record Eve's appearance during the Harrowing, although not her active involvement. The Evangelium Nicodemi most fully describes the Harrowing of Hell; Eve's appearance within these texts, however, does not derive from this apocryphon. Moreover, while these episodes incorporate ideas drawn from patristic exegesis, they do not derive directly from patristic writings either; nevertheless, Eve's role in these texts may be an Anglo-Saxon modification of the patristic contrast between Eve and Mary, whereby Eve is portrayed as a type of Mary instead of as her antithesis.

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