This is a complete guide to the text and context of the most famous Old English poem. In this book, the specific roles of selcted individual characters, both major and minor, are assessed.
Roman epic is both index and critique of the foundational culture of the western world. It is one of Europe's most persistent and determinant poetic modes. In this book distinguished Latinists examine the formation and evolution of Roman epic from its beginnings in the third century BC to the high Italian Renaissance. Featuring a variety of methodologies and approaches, it clarifies the literary importance and political and moral meaning of Roman epic.
"The different cultures from which the middle ages drew its inspiration are represented: Cu Cuchulainn from the Celtic world, Apollonius of Tyre from Greek romance, Attila the Hun and Theodoric the Ostrogoth from the struggle of the Roman empire against the Barbarians. Each entry gives an outline of the story, how it spread through Europe, its modern retelling and appearances in art, and a selective bibliography."--Jacket.
Medieval German Literature provides a comprehensive survey of this Germanic body of work from the eighth century through the early fifteenth century. The authors treat the large body of late-medieval lyric poetry in detail for the first time.
This book presents the first collection of the earliest West Germanic bridal-quest narratives together with a comparative study of them. In contrast to earlier studies, the author locates the origin of this narrative tradition in the oral and written Germanic literary tradition, a result that leads to a re-assessment of the genesis of vernacular German and Scandinavian literature. The chapters deal in chronological order with the Latin chronicles of the Germanic peoples and with the early Latin and vernacular literature in Germany and Scandinavia.
Writing the Barbarian Past examines the presentation of the non-Roman, pre-Christian past in Latin and vernacular historical narratives composed between c.550 and c.1000: the Gothic histories of Jordanes and Isidore of Seville, the Fredegar chronicle, the Liber Historiae Francorum, Paul the Deacon’s Historia Langobardorum, Waltharius, and Beowulf; it also examines the evidence for an oral vernacular tradition of historical narrative in this period. In this book, Shami Ghosh analyses the relative significance granted to the Roman and non-Roman inheritances in narratives of the distant past, and what the use of this past reveals about the historical consciousness of early medieval elites, and demonstrates that for them, cultural identity was conceived of in less binary terms than in most modern scholarship.
Medieval writers who 'translated' Latin texts into Germanic vernaculars not only transmitted their originals, but, driven by individualistic impulses and cultural conventions, also transformed them. This process of domesticating texts was fundamentally creative and might more accurately be described as 'reconstruction'. The essays in Germanic Texts and Latin Models: Medieval Reconstructions explore the ways in which Latin texts and traditions were reconstructed in Old English, Old Icelandic and Old High German and cover a range of genres: legal texts, genealogies, histories, and poetry. They examine how medieval Germanic authors negotiated the need to transmit their models while at the same time fulfilling their own political, artistic and didactic objectives in the creation of vernacular texts. These new studies demonstrate the variety of ways in which medieval Germanic texts were indebted to their Latin exemplars, while reflecting their new culturally specific circumstances in the complex nexus of Latin learning and Germanic lore.
Vols. for 1921-1969 include annual bibliography, called 1921-1955, American bibliography; 1956-1963, Annual bibliography; 1964-1968, MLA international bibliography.
This volume presents a series of penetrating analyses of particular poems and problems of literary history illustrating the many sides of medieval poetry and the interactions of learned, popular and courtly traditions. The first and longest essay, 'Waltharius-Gaiferos', aims to characterize the diverse treatments of one of the major European heroic themes - in modes that include lay and epic, saga and ballad, and range from pre-Carolingian times to the Renaissance. There follow three interrelated essays on the medieval transformations of Ovid, and a larger group devoted to close reading of medieval lyrics. After discussing some brilliant Latin compositions, of the 9th-12th centuries, both sacred and profane, and the work of two of the most captivating 'goliard' poets, Peter Dronke looks at the earliest formations of love-lyric in two vernaculars, Spanish and English. Finally, he explores the unique symbiosis of Latin and vernacular imagery in two key moments of Dante's Divine Comedy. Ce volume contient une série d’analyses perspicaces de poèmes spécifiques et de certains problèmes de l’histoire littéraire illustrant les multiples facettes de la poésie médiévale et l’interaction des traditions érudites, populaires et courtoises. Le premier essai, "Waltharius-Gaïferos", tente de décrire les divers traitements de l’un des principaux thèmes héroïques européens selon des modes qui incluent: le lai et l’épique, la saga et la ballade et qui s’étendent sur une période allant de l’époque pré-carolingienne à la Renaissance. Suivent trois articles corrélatifs sur les adaptations médiévales des textes d’Ovide, ainsi qu’un groupe d’études voue à la lecture détaillée de la poésie lyrique médiévale. Après avoir considéré l’oeuvre de deux des plus passionnants poètes "goliards" et un certain nombre de remarquables compositions latines, sacrées et profanes, datant du 9e-12e siècles, Peter Dronke se tourne vers les pre