Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse

Description

'Authors, Audiences, and Old English Verse' re-examines the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition from the eighth to the eleventh centuries and reconsiders the significance of formulaic parallels and the nature of poetic authorship in Old English. Offering a new vision of much of Old English literary history, Thomas A. Bredehoft traces a tradition of 'literate-formulaic' composition in the period and contends that many phrases conventionally considered oral formulas are in fact borrowings or quotations. His identification of previously unrecognized Old English poems and his innovative arguments about the dates, places of composition, influences, and even possible authors for a variety of tenth- and eleventh-century poems illustrate that the failure of scholars to recognize the late Old English verse tradition has seriously hampered our literary understanding of the period. Provocative and bold, 'Authors, Audiences and Old English Verse' has the potential to transform modern understandings of the classical Old English poetic tradition. Preface ix Bibliographical Note xv Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Authorship and Anonymity in Old English Verse 3 1. Manuscript Audiences and Other Audiences 39 2. The Audience for Saxon Songs in the Late Ninth Century 65 3. Literate Poetic Composition in Tenth-Century Classical Poems 104 4. What Has Ælfric to Do with 'Maldon'? 146 5. Eleventh-Century Traditions of Formulaic Composition 171 6. Conclusion 199 Appendix: Two Unrecognized Late Old English Poems 208 Works Cited 217 Index 231