Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts
By (author) John D Niles
Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts develops the theme that all stories- all ‘beautiful lies’, if one considers them as such- have a potentially myth-like function as they enter and re-enter the stream of human consciousness. In particular, the volume assesses the place of heroic poetry (including Beowulf, Widsith, and The Battle of Maldon) in the evolving society of Anglo-Saxon England during the tenth-century period of nation-building. Poetry, Niles argues, was a great collective medium through which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of their changing social world and made mental adjustments to it. Old English ‘heroic geography’ is examined as an aspect of the mentality of that era. So too is the idea of the oral poet (or bard) as a means by which the people of this time continued to conceive of themselves, in defiance of reality, as members of a tribe-like community knit by close personal bonds. The volume is rounded off by the identification of Bede’s story of the poet CAedmon as the earliest known example of a modern folktale type, and by a spirited defense of Seamus Heaney’s recent verse translation of Beowulf.
- By (author) John D Niles
Other Titles in this Series
Duelling with the Past
Medieval Authors and the Problem of the Christian Era (c. 990-1135)
Volume 21
England and the Continent in the Tenth Century
Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876-1947)
Volume 37
Language and History in Viking Age England
Linguistic Relations between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English
Volume 6
Mosaics of Time, The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD
Volume I, A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages
Volume 33
Sacred Sites and Holy Places
Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape through Time and Space
Volume 11
Poetics of Wonder
Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World
Volume 31
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