Performance in "Beowulf" and Other Old English Poems

Description

An examination of the depiction and representation of performative acts in Old English texts. Acts of performance, such as music, storytelling, and poetry recital, have made significant contributions to the rediscovery and widening popularity of Old English poetry. However, while these performances capture the imagination, they also influence an audience's view of the world of the original poems, even to propagating certain assumptions, particularly those to do with performance practices. By stripping away these assumptions, this book aims to uncover the ways in which representations of performance in Old English poetry are intimately associated with poetic production and fundamental cultural concerns. Through an examination of 'Beowulf', diverse wisdom poems, and the "artist" poems 'Deor' and 'Widsith', it proposes that poets constructed an imaginary domain of "poetic performance", which negotiated tensions between early medieval creativity and core social beliefs. It also shows how the poems' relationship with oral methods of composition and circulation weakened in later medieval poetry as both language and poetic form altered. Overall, the book explores what depictions of performance within these texts can tell us about early medieval conceptualisations, processes, and practices, in the poetic imagination and in wider culture. List of Illustrations and Tables viii Acknowledgements ix List of Abbreviations x Poem Titles, Orthography, Editions, and Translations xi Introduction: Realising the Intangible 1 1. Instruments of the Poet: Exploiting the Old English Lexis 35 2. Multiformity and the Orality of Associative, Architectonic Poetics 74 3. Providence and Pleasure: Performance as Symbol 104 4. Storytelling in 'Beowulf' and Meta-storytelling in 'Andreas' 119 5. Wisdom and Power: Philosophies of Performance 144 6. Theme Songs: An English Tradition of Performance? 174 7. The Lure of the Lyre: Interpretation, Reenactment, and the Corpus 216 Conclusion: ‘Poetic Performance’ 230 Bibliography 237 Index 257