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.

‘Beowulf’ and the Celtic World: The Uses of Evidence

Traditio ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 109-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Dumville
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Under Five ◽  
English Poem ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Made In

Sporadic attempts have been made in the past to demonstrate direct connexions between the various Celtic literatures andBeowulf; I think it fair to say that the proposed links have always seemed tenuous or imaginary and have not been taken seriously by most students of the Old English poem. A century of desultory comparisons, leading to a negative result, by persons qualified in either Old English or Celtic or neither, does not, however, exhaust the subject or indicate its irrelevance. It seems to me that a determined attack on the subject may indicate desirable approaches and cautions which students ofBeowulfcould consider as they contemplate further work on the poem. I shall organise my remarks under five headings: the possibility of Irish (or other Celtic) influence onBeowulfin particular and on Old English literature in general; archaism in the language and metrics of ‘traditional’ verse; problems of archaism and anachronism in ‘traditional’ literature; the search for a text-history ofBeowulfwith its consequent issues of transmission and problems of dating; and general historical questions.

Tale and Parable: Theorizing Fictions in the Old English Boethius

PMLA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-355
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Lorden
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Classical Myth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Consolation Of Philosophy ◽  
First Time ◽  
Fictional Story

AbstractScholarship has often considered the concept of fiction a modern phenomenon. But the Old English Boethius teaches us that medieval people could certainly tell that a fictional story was a lie, although it was hard for them to explain why it was all right that it was a lie—this is the problem the Old English Boethius addresses for the first time in the history of the English language. In translating Boethius's sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, the ninth-century Old English Boethius offers explanatory comments on its source's narrative exempla drawn from classical myth. While some of these comments explain stories unfamiliar to early medieval English audiences, others consider how such “false stories” may be read and experienced by those properly prepared to encounter them. In so doing, the Old English Boethius must adopt and adapt a terminology for fiction that is unique in the extant corpus of Old English writing.

XVII.—Recent Translations of Old English Poetry.

PMLA ◽  
1903 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-458
Author(s):  
James M. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Past

The desire was expressed some years ago that we might soon have in English a collection of translations of Old English poetry that might fill the place so well filled in German by Grein's Dichtungen der Angelsachsen. This desire is now in a fair way of accomplishment, and much has been done during the past ten years, the period embraced in this paper. As was naturally to be expected from the work previously done in criticism of both text and subject-matter, Beowulf has attracted more than ever the thoughts and efforts of translators, for we had in 1892 the rhythmical translation of Professor J. Lesslie Hall and the prose version of Professor Earle; in 1895 (reprinted in cheaper form in 1898) the poetical translation of William Morris and A. J. Wyatt, the editor of Beowulf; in 1901 the prose version of Dr. J. R. Clark Hall, author of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; and only the other day, in 1902, the handy prose version of Professor C. B. Tinker.

The past, present, and future of intervention

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 1233-1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE LAWSON ◽  
LUCA TARDELLI
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

AbstractDespite the prominent place of intervention in contemporary world politics, debate is limited by two weaknesses: first, an excessive presentism; and second, a focus on normative questions to the detriment of analysis of the longer-term sociological dynamics that fuel interventionary pressures. In keeping with the focus of the Special Issue on the ways in which intervention is embedded within modernity, this article examines the emergence of intervention during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, assesses its place in the contemporary world, and considers its prospects in upcoming years. The main point of the article is simple – although intervention changes in character across time and place, it is a persistent feature of modern international relations. As such, intervention is here to stay.

The uncarpentered world of Old English poetry

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Earl R. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Dream Of The Rood ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Dependent ◽  
Military Security

Cultural archaism is often thought of as a natural concomitant of oral tradition, and by extension, of a literature that is influenced by oral tradition. In the case of Old English poetry, archaism might include residual pagan religious beliefs and practices, such as the funeral rites inBeowulfor the use of runes for sortilege, and certain outmoded aspects of social organization such as the idea of a state dependent upon thecomitatusfor military security. An example often cited is the adaptation of heroic terminology and detail to Christian topics. The compositional method in Cædmon's ‘Hymn’, for instance, is regarded by many scholars as an adaptation of panegyric epithets to the praise of God, although N. F. Blake has noted that heroic epithets in the poem could have derived their inspiration from the psalms. InThe Dream of the Rood, the image of Christ mounting the Cross as a warrior leaping to battle has been regarded variously as evidence of an artistic limitation imposed by oral tradition, or as a learned metaphor pointing to the divine and human nature of Christ and to the crucifixion as a conflict between Christ and the devil. The martyrdom of the apostles is represented as military conflict in Cynewulf'sFates of the Apostles, Christ and his apostles as king andcomitatusin Cynewulf'sAscension, and temptation by devils as a military attack inGuthlac A; these illustrate a point made by A.B. Lord concerning the nature of conservatism in oral tradition: ‘tradition is not a thing of the past but a living and dynamic process which began in the past [and] flourishes in the present’.

Yugoslavism: Some Aspects and Comments

1974 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrije Djordjević
Keyword(s):  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Post War ◽  
Science Association ◽  
Social Science Association ◽  
Comprehensive Study

AbstractAt the April, 1972, Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Social Science Association, which took place in Salt Lake City, five young American scholars presented papers dealing with various aspects of Yugoslavism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The papers and subsequent discussions were interesting from two standpoints. First, the authors belong to the youngest generation of American scholars familiar with the several Yugoslav languages and with Yugoslav archives and other sources. Second, the topic of Yugoslavism is not only complex and provocative, but currently topical as well. It is striking that even today, more than fifty-five years after the creation of the Yugoslav state, we do not have a modern and comprehensive study of the origins and development of the Yugoslav idea and, consequently, of the Yugoslav movement in the past. Inter-war Yugoslav historiography usually approached the problem from the "unitaristic" viewpoint, which corresponded to the political necessities of the time.1 As a reaction to this. post-war Yugoslav historiography espoused the other extreme: a stress on the national histories of the various Yugoslav peoples, to the detriment of the Yugoslav entity.2 When we attempt to study the development of Yugoslavism in the past, it strikes me as necessary to find the answers to three general questions: 1. What caused the origin of the Yugoslav idea? 2. What were the features of its development? 3. What were the internal and external obstacles the Yugoslav movement had to confront?

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.

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