English Epic and Heroic Poetry PDF Download

Author: William Macneile Dixon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

View

Book Description

Author: W. M. Ormrod
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300048769
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 156

View

Book Description
Beowulf, the primary epic of the English language, is a powerful heroic poem eloquently expressive of the Anglo-Saxon culture that produced it. In this beautiful book a designer, a poet, and a specialist in Anglo-Saxon literature recreate Beowulf for a modern audience. Interweaving evocative images, a new interpretation in verse, and a running commentary that helps clarify the action and setting of the poem as well as the imagery, the book brings new life to this ancient masterpiece. Randolph Swearer's oblique and allusive images create an archaic, mysterious atmosphere by depicting in forms and shadows the world of Germanic antiquity--Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon art, artifacts, and scenery. At the same time, Raymond Oliver gives Beowulf a world in which to live, filling in the cultural gaps not with a thick matrix of footnotes but with poetry itself. Unlike many translations of Beowulf in existence, Oliver's retelling of the epic uses modern verse forms for poetic effect and includes a wealth of historically authentic descriptions, characterizations, and explanations necessary for modern readers. Marijane Osborn completes the process of restoring context to the poem by supplying a commentary to clarify the historical and geographical dimensions of the story as well as the imagery that accompanies it. All three work together to bring a likeness of an old and elusive tale to today's reader. "The book's design and the commentary on it provide a unique visual complement to Oliver's poem... A strange and moving story, compellingly told and seriously interesting to any serious reader of books."--Fred C. Robinson, from the Introduction

Author: D. G. Scragg
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719008382
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132

View

Book Description

Author: Ulrich Broich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521309653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

View

Book Description
This book is the first comprehensive study of the theory, the conventions and the history of the mock-heroic genre. In the first part, Ulrich Broich shows how mock-heroic poetry combines the characteristics of various discourses - epic, comedy, parody, satire and occasional poetry. The second part traces the history of mock-heroic poetry.

Author: Robert Auty
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 9780900547720
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 402

View

Book Description

Author: Kenneth Borris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521781299
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

View

Book Description
Challenging conventional notions that literary allegorism declined precipitously around 1600, Kenneth Borris reassesses the Renaissance relations between allegory and heroic poetry, particularly in the major texts of Sidney, Spenser and Milton. Through wide-ranging consideration of Homeric and Virgilian reception and its influence on both continental and English literary theory, he shows that allegorical epic tended to double for and displace epic throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Borris offers a fresh approach to the interaction of allegory with literary genres; focusing on epic, he further analyses the distinctive codes and conventions that constituted the generic repertoire of Renaissance allegorical epic poetry. Whereas standard literary history assumes Sidney opposes allegory, and that Milton minimises or rejects it in following Spenser, Borris's detailed readings demonstrate that Sidney and Milton are also major allegorists, and that Spenser remained so even in the latter books of The Faerie Queene. This book was first published in 2000.

Author: Karl Reichl
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801437366
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
Oral epic poetry is still performed by Turkic singers in Central Asia. On trips to the region, Karl Reichl collected heroic poems from the Uzbek, Kazakh, and Karakalpak oral traditions. Through a close analysis of these Turkic works, he shows that they are typologically similar to heroic poetry in Old English, Old High German, and Old French and that they can offer scholars new insights into the oral background of these medieval texts.Reichl draws on his research in Central Asia to discuss questions regarding performance as well as the singers' training, role in society, and repertoire. He asserts that heroic poetry and epic are primarily concerned with the interpretation of the past in song: the courageous deeds of ancestors, the search for tribal and societal roots, and the definition and transmission of cultural values. Reichl finds that in these traditions the heroic epic is part of a generic system that includes historical and eulogistic poetry as well as heroic lays, a view that has diachronic implications for medieval poetry.Singing the Past reminds readers that because much medieval poetry was composed for oral recitation, both the Turkic and the medieval heroic poems must always be appreciated as poetry in performance, as sound listened to, as words spoken or sung.

Author: Ritchie Robertson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199571589
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 465

View

Book Description
A study of eighteenth- and early nineteeenth-century poetry in English, French and German, focusing on the mock epic (from Pope's Dunciad to Byron's Don Juan) as a critique of serious epic poetry and also as a literary means of exploring a wide range of sexual and religious issues in a humorous style.

Author: Dwight F. Reynolds
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

View

Book Description
An astonishingly rich oral epic that chronicles the early history of a Bedouin tribe, the Sirat Bani Hilal has been performed for almost a thousand years. In this ethnography of a contemporary community of professional poet-singers, Dwight F. Reynolds reveals how the epic tradition continues to provide a context for social interaction and commentary. Reynolds’s account is based on performances in the northern Egyptian village in which he studied as an apprentice to a master epic-singer. Reynolds explains in detail the narrative structure of the Sirat Bani Hilal as well as the tradition of epic singing. He sees both living epic poets and fictional epic heroes as figures engaged in an ongoing dialogue with audiences concerning such vital issues as ethnicity, religious orientation, codes of behavior, gender roles, and social hierarchies.

Author: Maria Dahvana Headley
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374715548
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 263

View

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Maria Dahvana Headley presents a modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers—a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran—fight to protect those they love in The Mere Wife. This modern fantasy tale transports you from the ancient mead halls of the Geats to the picket-fenced, meticulously planned community of American suburbia, known as Herot Hall. In the expert hands of Maria Dahvana Headley, this vibrant retelling underscores the timeless struggle between the protected and the outsiders. Enter the confines of Herot Hall, a gated community sequestered from the wild surroundings by sophisticated security systems. Here, life is a series of cocktail hours and playdates for Willa, the charming wife of Herot's heir, and her son Dylan. Meanwhile, deep in a nearby mountain cave lives Dana, a hardened soldier and mother of Gren, a child of mysterious origin. Their worlds collide in a shocking turn of events when Gren breaks into Herot Hall and escapes with Dylan. A brilliant literary novel that effortlessly melds modern literature with ancient mythology, The Mere Wife is a captivating testament to unintended consequences, the brutality of PTSD, and the enduring power of motherhood.