MS Junius 11 and Its Poetry
MS Junius 11 and Its Poetry

Author: Carl Kears

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-02-21

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1914049136

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A fresh close reading of the texts of one of the four surviving major manuscripts of Old English poetry, reappraising Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 to discover some of the preoccupations of its compliers. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11 is one of the four major manuscripts of Old English poetry to survive and the only one of these to have had a planned sequence of illuminations. Junius 11 is made up of different poems - Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan - compiled to resemble a long narrative that represents salvation history from its violent origins to its Last Days. While the poems draw inspiration from biblical, apocryphal and commentary traditions, they combine in the manuscript to create powerful effects that can also be understood through an appreciation of the distinctive craft and complexity of early medieval vernacular verse. But can the language of the poetry within the manuscript tell us anything about the aims of the Junius 11 project, or the preoccupations of its compilers? This book approaches Junius 11 as an ambitious poetic endeavour that was designed to offer counsel through the medium of Old English verbal art. Tracing thematic language across and between the poems, and offering close readings of them in their manuscript context, MS Junius 11 and its Poetry argues that it is early medieval political ideas represented by the Old English words ræd (good counsel) and unræd (ill counsel) that emerge as the key components underlying the central conflicts of the history of humankind the makers of this manuscript sought to create. The poems themselves, by giving us many examples of rulers and leaders falling to ruin, have the potential to offer their own ræd to those who may have found themselves in relatable positions. But Junius 11 demands work for such gifts. Its poems generate impressions cumulatively and collectively, offering instruction to those who might build connections across pages, demanding audiences become attentive and active readers so that they might find solace and advice in a world that moves towards destruction.

Reading Old English Biblical Poetry
Reading Old English Biblical Poetry

Author: Janet Schrunk Ericksen

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2020-11-19

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1487507461

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Reading Old English Biblical Poetry considers the Junius 11 manuscript, the only surviving illustrated book of Old English poetry, in terms of its earliest readers and their multiple strategies of reading and making meaning. Junius 11 begins with the creation story and ends with the final vanquishing of Satan by Jesus. The manuscript is both a continuous whole and a collection with discontinuities and functionally independent pieces. The chapters of Reading Old English Biblical Poetry propose multiple models for reader engagement with the texts in this manuscript, including selective and sequential reading, reading in juxtaposition, and reading in contexts within and outside of the pages of Junius 11. The study is framed by particular attention to the materiality of the manuscript and how that might have informed its early reception, and it broadens considerations of reading beyond those of the manuscript's compiler and possible patron. As a book, Junius 11 reflects a rich and varied culture of reading that existed in and beyond houses of God in England in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and it points to readers who had enough experience to select and find wisdom, narrative pleasure, and a diversity of other things within this or any book's contents.

The Poems of MS Junius 11
The Poems of MS Junius 11

Author: R. M. Liuzza

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 113482985X

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Taken from the same manuscript as Cynewulf, the Junius 11 poems-Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan-comprise a series of redacted Old English works that have been traditionally presented as the work of Bede's Caedmon. Medieval scholars have concluded that the four poems were composed by more than one author and later edited by Junius in 1655. All of the poems are notable for their Christian content. Apart from its focus on the Junius 11 manuscript, this collection of essays is also important as a study of how to read, edit, and define any medieval literary text.

The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature
The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature

Author: Clare A. Lees

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-11-29

Total Pages: 910

ISBN-13: 131617509X

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Informed by multicultural, multidisciplinary perspectives, The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature offers a new exploration of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland, from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century. Beginning with an account of writing itself, as well as of scripts and manuscript art, subsequent chapters examine the earliest texts from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the tremendous breadth of Anglo-Latin literature. Chapters on English learning and literature in the ninth century and the later formation of English poetry and prose also convey the profound cultural confidence of the period. Providing a discussion of essential texts, including Beowulf and the writings of Bede, this History captures the sheer inventiveness and vitality of early medieval literary culture through topics as diverse as the literature of English law, liturgical and devotional writing, the workings of science and the history of women's writing.

Christ and Satan
Christ and Satan

Author: Robert Finnegan

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0889200408

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Christ and Satan is the title of the last of four poems in the eleventh-century Junius XI manuscript of Anglo-Saxon poetry. This critical edition contains text, glossary, textual and explanatory notes, and an essay surveying former criticisms and setting forth the author’s ideas on the poem’s principle of unity. Of particular value to students and scholars of Old English, Christ and Satan makes an important contribution to the understanding of this fine and interesting poem.

The Wisdom of Exeter
The Wisdom of Exeter

Author: E.J. Christie

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-09-21

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1501513060

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This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in literary criticism and literary theory, philology, codicology, metrics, and art history. Composed by prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline. As a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator and innovator, Pat has contributed to Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades. It is hard to say which of his legacies is most profound.

The Miniatures and Meters of the Old English Genesis, MS Junius 11
The Miniatures and Meters of the Old English Genesis, MS Junius 11

Author: Seiichi Suzuki

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-05-22

Total Pages: 726

ISBN-13: 3110788179

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The Old English Genesis is the sole illustrated Anglo-Saxon poem. In full appreciation of this unique concurrent execution of visualization and versification in a single manuscript, this multidisciplinary work explores the pictorial (Vol. 1) and the metrical (Vol. 2) organization from both synchronic–structural and diachronic–comparative perspectives. Among the most significant findings of each volume are: The first twenty-two images in the Old English Genesis originated on the whole from the Touronian Bibles; and the underlying classical Old English and Old Saxon meters were interactively reshaped through mutual adaptation and recomposition aimed at their firm integration into a synthesized Old English Genesis. While each part is solidly embedded in the respective scholarly tradition and pursues its own disciplinary concerns and problematics, vigorous formal and cognitive reasoning and theorizing run commonly through both. By way of mutual corroboration and integration, the twin volumes eventually converge on the hypothesis that the earliest portion of the extant Old English Genesis (lines 1–966) derived from the corresponding episodes of an illustrated Touronian Old Saxon Genesis in both pictorial and metrical terms.

Genesis A
Genesis A

Author: Alger Nicolaus Doane

Publisher:

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13:

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Among Old English poems, Genesis A is second--both in length and importance--only to Beowulf. With this new edition, Alger N. Doane reveals both the full stature of the poem and the significant achievement of the poet. Indeed, Doane's creative and scrupulous work calls for both a rereading and a reassessment of Genesis A among all scholars in the field. In the editing of the text and the commentary--the heart of the work--Doane brings his full learning to bear in the service of illuminating the poem. His detailed commentary touches upon all the points of interest of the poem, and places it in context--both historically and aesthetically--among other works of Old English and Germanic poetry, showing both its limits and achievements.

Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry
Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry

Author: Joseph St. John

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-31

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 104007765X

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Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry explores the adaptation of antediluvian Genesis and related myth in the Old Testament poems Genesis A and Genesis B, as well as in Beowulf, a secular heroic narrative. The book explores how the Genesis poems resort to the Christian exegetical tradition and draw on secular social norms to deliver their biblically derived and related narratives in a manner relevant to their Christian Anglo-Saxon audiences. In this book it is suggested that these elements work in unison, and that the two Genesis poems function coherently in the context of the Junius 11 manuscript. Moreover, the book explores recourse to Genesis-derived myth in Beowulf, and points to important similarities between this text and the Genesis poems. It is therefore shown that while Beowulf differs from the Genesis poems in several respects, it belongs in a corpus where religious verse enjoys prominence.