theory of prose in english literature

Most Old English poems are recorded without authors, and very few names are known with any certainty; the primary three are Cædmon, Aldhelm, and Cynewulf. The first widely accepted theory was constructed by Eduard Sievers (1893), who distinguished five distinct alliterative patterns. The earliest from 937 is called The Battle of Brunanburh, which celebrates the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and Norse. The Completion or Initiation of a Journey. Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human by Kate Soper . [54] The presence of a portion of the poem (in Northumbrian dialect[60]) carved in runes on an 8th century stone cross found in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, verifies the age of at least this portion of the poem. Learn More. The author is unknown, and no mention of Britain occurs. D. K. Crowne first proposed this theme, defined by four characteristics: One example Crowne cites in his article is that which concludes Beowulf's fight with the monsters during his swimming match with Breca: Crowne drew on examples of the theme's appearance in twelve Anglo-Saxon texts, including one occurrence in Beowulf. The theory proposes to explain this fact by suggesting that the poetry was composed of formulae and themes from a stock common to the poetic profession, as well as literary passages composed by individual artists in a more modern sense. Literature of Nature: An International Source-book by Patrick D. Murphy What is Nature? In the 10th century, the Caroline minuscule was adopted for Latin, however the Insular minuscule continued to be used for Old English texts. It is considered one of the finest, but both the beginning and end are missing and the only manuscript was destroyed in a fire in 1731. Describe old english poetry and old english prose. In 1987 Denise Levertov published a translation of Cædmon's Hymn under her title "Caedmon" in the collection Breathing the Water. Other similar short verses, or charms, include For a Swarm of Bees, Against a Dwarf, Against a Stabbing Pain, and Against a Wen. That is, the theory proposes that certain features of at least some of the poetry may be explained by positing oral-formulaic composition. Thereafter, it was increasingly influenced by Caroline minuscule, while retaining certain distinctively Insular letter-forms. [33], Although William of Malmesbury claims that Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne (d. 709), performed secular songs while accompanied by a harp, none of these Old English poems survives. ENGL 470 Theory and Practice of Teaching Literature (5, max. The title 'Theory and independence' highlights the important idea that, within a literature course, students should have the opportunity to work as independently as possible. Working Groups. [54], The Exeter Book contains a series of poems entitled Christ, sectioned into Christ I, Christ II and Christ III. [37] Frequent oral-formulaic themes in Old English poetry include "Beasts of Battle"[38] and the "Cliff of Death". The longest is a 10th-century translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy contained in the Cotton manuscript Otho A.vi. [74], There are a number of interesting medical works. [71], The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was probably started in the time of King Alfred the Great and continued for over 300 years as a historical record of Anglo-Saxon history. Well-known early translations include Alfred, Lord Tennyson's translation of The Battle of Brunanburh, William Morris's translation of Beowulf and Ezra Pound's translation of The Seafarer. These were re-wordings of Biblical passages in Old English, not exact translations, but paraphrasing, sometimes into beautiful poetry in its own right. Contained in Daniel are two lyrics, Song of the Three Children and Song of Azarias, the latter also appearing in the Exeter Book after Guthlac. Non-exam assessment: Theory and independence; What's assessed. He included some lives of the saints in the Catholic Homilies, as well as a cycle of saints' lives to be used in sermons. It has survived in six fragments. The cult of the True Cross was popular in Anglo-Saxon England and this poem was instrumental in promoting it. The course is inclusive of genres such as Poetry, Drama, Novel, Prose, and History. [54], Anglo-Saxon riddles are part of Anglo-Saxon literature. B.A. [70], Ælfric of Eynsham, who wrote in the late 10th and early 11th century, is believed to have been a pupil of Æthelwold. By the 12th century they had been arranged into two large collections (see Textus Roffensis). This poet finds little glory in bravery for bravery's sake. In descending order of quantity, Old English literature consists of: sermons and saints' lives; biblical translations; translated Latin works of the early Church Fathers; Anglo-Saxon chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical works on grammar, medicine, geography; and poetry. Answers on a Postcard, please... Posted on Monday 15 March 2021. The hypotheses of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on the Homeric Question came to be applied (by Parry and Lord, but also by Francis Magoun) to verse written in Old English. Want something more? The longest is called Nine Herbs Charm and is probably of pagan origin. Scholars are divided over the date of the present text, with hypotheses ranging from the 8th to the 11th centuries. [10] The Tremulous Hand is known for many Latin glosses of Old English texts, which represent the earliest attempt to "translate" the language in the post-Norman period, but perhaps his most well known scribal work is that of the aforementioned Worcester Cathedral Library MS F. 174, which contains part of Ælfric's Grammar and Glossary and a short fragmentary poem often called "St. Bede's Lament", in addition to the Body and Soul poem. [52], In addition to Biblical paraphrases are a number of original religious poems, mostly lyrical (non-narrative). [76], More recently other notable poets such as Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, Denise Levertov and U. Tolkien adapted the subject matter and terminology of heroic poetry for works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and John Gardner wrote Grendel, which tells the story of Beowulf's opponent from his own perspective. Two have survived in fragments: The Fight at Finnsburh, controversially interpreted by many to be a retelling of one of the battle scenes in Beowulf, and Waldere, a version of the events of the life of Walter of Aquitaine. Juliana describes the life of Saint Juliana, including a discussion with the devil during her imprisonment. “Even the development of poetical drama between 1579 A.D. -1629 A.D., is hardly more extraordinary than the sudden expansion of English prose & its adaptation to every kind of literary requirement.” The Birth of English Novel. Critical Theory. 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The Old English poet was particularly fond of describing the same person or object with varied phrases, (often appositives) that indicated different qualities of that person or object. Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing.Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." Europe. [68], The oldest collections of church sermons is the Blickling homilies, found in a 10th-century manuscript. His sermons were highly stylistic. These poems are named Menologium, The Fates of the Apostles, The Rune Poem, The Seasons for Fasting, and the Instructions for Christians.[52]. While Anglo-Saxon (Old English) epic poetry may bear some resemblance to Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey, the question of if and how Anglo-Saxon poetry was passed down through an oral tradition remains a subject of debate, and the question for any particular poem unlikely to be answered with perfect certainty. 10) VLPA Reviews the institutional history of English as an academic discipline and the core debates and politics that have shaped the content, teaching, and study of literature and literacy theory. [1] Poetry written in the mid-12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English;[2] for example, The Soul's Address to the Body (c. 1150–1175) found in Worcester Cathedral Library MS F. 174 contains only one word of possible Latinate origin, while also maintaining a corrupt alliterative meter and Old English grammar and syntax, albeit in a degenerative state (hence, early scholars of Old English termed this late form as "Semi-Saxon"). Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) is considered as the father of English novel. The first was William Somner's Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (1659). Manuscripts written in both Latin and the vernacular remain. These include many kinds of texts: records of donations by nobles; wills; documents of emancipation; lists of books and relics; court cases; guild rules. Thought shall be the harder, the heart the keener, The Beowulf Manuscript (British Library Cotton Vitellius A. xv), sometimes called the. There are four additional lives in the earliest manuscript of the Lives of Saints, the Julius manuscript: Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Saint Mary of Egypt, Saint Eustace and Saint Euphrosyne. Besides Old English literature, Anglo-Saxons wrote a number of Anglo-Latin works. [53] Another is The Phoenix in the Exeter Book, an allegorisation of the De ave phoenice by Lactantius. [57], Guthlac consists of two poems about the English 7th century Saint Guthlac. [71], In the same category as Ælfric, and a contemporary, was Wulfstan II, archbishop of York. [52] He was the greatest and most prolific writer of Anglo-Saxon sermons,[68] which were copied and adapted for use well into the 13th century. [71], In the Nowell Codex is the text of The Wonders of the East which includes a remarkable map of the world, and other illustrations. [35], Alfred is said to be the author of some of the metrical prefaces to the Old English translations of Gregory's Pastoral Care and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy. [54], Considered one of the most beautiful of all Old English poems is Dream of the Rood, contained in the Vercelli Book. This poem exists in a Northumbrian and later version. [46], Other heroic poems besides Beowulf exist. These include corrections, alterations and expansions of the main text, as well as commentary upon it, and even unrelated texts. There is also a large volume of legal documents related to religious houses. [72], One of the earliest Old English texts in prose is the Martyrology, information about saints and martyrs according to their anniversaries and feasts in the church calendar. Christ appears as a young hero-king, confident of victory, while the cross itself feels all the physical pain of the crucifixion, as well as the pain of being forced to kill the young lord.[61]. [8] In all there are over 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, of which about 189 are considered "major".[9]. A. Fanthorpe's "Caedmon's Song" in her Queuing for the Sun (2003). Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Metrical Preface and Epilogue to Alfred's, This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 05:09. Parry and Lord had already demonstrated the density of metrical formulas in Ancient Greek, and observed that the same phenomenon was apparent in the Old English alliterative line: In addition to verbal formulas, many themes have been shown to appear among the various works of Anglo-Saxon literature. Psychoanalytic Theory. [54] There are verse translations of the Gloria in Excelsis, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed, as well as some hymns and proverbs. English offers students innovative opportunities for individual and collaborative learning through BA, MFA, and PhD programs. There are a number of religious debate poems. A large number of manuscripts remain from the Anglo-Saxon period, with most written during its last 300 years (9th to 11th centuries). Tolkien is credited with creating a movement to look at Old English as a subject of literary theory in his seminal lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936). Medieval Women's Poetry and Prose. "Cædmon's Hymn", composed in the 7th century, according to Bede, is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English. [68], There are a number of saint's lives prose works; beyond those written by Ælfric are the prose life of Saint Guthlac (Vercelli Book), the life of Saint Margaret and the life of Saint Chad. [52], There are a group of mnemonic poems designed to help memorise lists and sequences of names and to keep objects in order. The most popular, Old English Gospel of Nicodemus, is treated in one manuscript as though it were a 5th gospel; other apocryphal gospels in translation include the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Vindicta salvatoris, Vision of Saint Paul and the Apocalypse of Thomas. J.R.R. [34], Bede is often thought to be the poet of a five-line poem entitled Bede's Death Song, on account of its appearance in a letter on his death by Cuthbert. These included Laurence Nowell, Matthew Parker, Robert Bruce Cotton and Humfrey Wanley. For instance, in the first line of Beowulf, "Hwaet! Old English poetry traditionally alliterates, meaning that a sound (usually the initial consonant sound) is repeated throughout a line. The test emphasizes authors, works, genres and movements. [27], Cædmon is considered the first Old English poet whose work still survives. Beowulf relates the exploits of the hero Beowulf, King of the Weder-Geats or Angles, around the middle of the 5th century. There is a translation of Apuleius's Herbarium with striking illustrations, found together with Medicina de Quadrupedibus. Larry Benson introduced the concept of "written-formulaic" to describe the status of some Anglo-Saxon poetry which, while demonstrably written, contains evidence of oral influences, including heavy reliance on formulas and themes. I have written answers to various questions related to Ecocriticism for English Literature Education and I am sure you will have many things to know here: Ecocriticism as a literary theory It is the story of Saint Andrew and his journey to rescue Saint Matthew from the Mermedonians. [71], There are six major manuscripts of the Wessex Gospels, dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. The Dream of the Rood is a dream vision in which the personified cross tells the story of the crucifixion. [50][51] They are lyrical and Boethian in their description of the up and down fortunes of life. [68] In the process, some original content was interweaved through the translations. These translations differ greatly from one another, just as Seamus Heaney's Beowulf (1999) deviates from earlier, similar projects. The Junius manuscript contains three paraphrases of Old Testament texts. The Vercelli Book and Exeter Book contain four long narrative poems of saints' lives, or hagiography. [11] In the 19th and early 20th centuries the focus was on the Germanic and pagan roots that scholars thought they could detect in Old English literature. [68], A single example of a Classical romance has survived: a fragment of the story of Apollonius of Tyre was translated in the 11th century from the Gesta Romanorum. His best known work is Sermo Lupi ad Anglos in which he blames the sins of the English for the Viking invasions. Alfred the Great wrote a wisdom poem over the course of his reign based loosely on the neoplatonic philosophy of Boethius called the Lays of Boethius. 44 ] [ 4 ] the majority consists of two texts: one and. Differ greatly from one another, just as Seamus Heaney 's Beowulf ( 1999 ) deviates earlier... Continuing into the 12th century the poem Beowulf, which retells the same category as,! Peterborough Chronicle can also be considered a late-period text, with hypotheses ranging from the 11th centuries interesting! 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