Immediately she feels my might, she who confines me, the wundenlocc woman.
All Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature
January 1, 2014 By
All Things to All Men: Representations of the Apostle Paul in Anglo-Saxon Literature Valerie Susan Heuchan University of Toronto: Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Medieval Studies (2010) Abstract This dissertation examines the ways in which the Apostle Paul is presented in literature from Anglo-Saxon England, including both Latin and Old English texts. The first part […]
Towards A Poetics of Marvellous Spaces in Old and Middle English Narrative
January 1, 2014 By
I argue that the heart of this poetics of marvellous spaces is displacement. Their wonder and dread comes from boundaries that these places blur and cross, from the resistance of these places to being known or mapped, and from the deliberate distancing between these places and the home of their texts.
On Omissions and Substitutions in the Medieval English Translations of the Gospel
December 20, 2013 By
In view of this we carried out research on two English medieval translations of John’s Gospel, believing that their comparison would not only reveal differences in the perception and experience of biblical concepts (expressed through language), but also those in culture, society and cognition that occurred in the period between their occurrence.
The Bones in the Soup: The Anglo-Saxon Flavour of Tolkien’s The Hobbit
December 9, 2013 By
By reading The Hobbit from an Anglo-Saxonist point of view, we not only learn more about what inspired Tolkien to compose his narrative, we can also highlight the enduring value of studying his original sources.
A Word About Our Words
November 28, 2013 By
This may be a little hard to believe, considering the conspicuous lack of “thee” and “thou” in modern writing, but the forms of English that came before are even more foreign.
Seasonal Setting and the Human Domain in Early English and Early Scandinavian Literature
November 10, 2013 By
Seasonal Setting and the Human Domain in Early English and Early Scandinavian Literature Paul Sander Langeslag University of Toronto: Doctor of Philosophy, Centre for Medieval Studies (2012) Abstract The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the […]
Looming Danger and Dangerous Looms: Violence and Weaving in Exeter Book Riddle 56
October 10, 2013 By
I was inside there where I saw a wooden object wounding a certain struggling creature, the wood turning; it received battle-wounds, deep gashes.
The role of the devil in Old English narrative literature
September 30, 2013 By
It is a commonplace of Old English criticism that the devil instigates sin. It is curious, therefore, that no one has asked in any systematic or comprehensive manner exactly how the devil does this.
Happiness and the Psalms
September 27, 2013 By
Throughout Anglo-Saxon England, on each day of the year, at all hours of the day, thousands of men and women sang the psalms.
‘None Shall Pass’: Mental Barriers to Travel in Old English Poetry
September 24, 2013 By
I shall be exploring a xenophobia so extreme that it is a wonder that anyone went anywhere.
Creating the Christian Anglo-Saxon and the Other in the Old English Judith and Beowulf
September 21, 2013 By
This thesis explores the thematic relationship between the Old English poem Judith and the Old English epic Beowulf. I focus on seven narrative similarities between the two texts that are used to distinguish between the heroes, Judith and Beowulf, and their enemies, Holofernes, Grendel, and Grendel’s mother.
Shadow and Paradoxes of Darkness in Old English and Old Norse Poetic Language
September 20, 2013 By
This thesis confronts, explores, and attempts to meaningfully interpret a surprising nexus of stimulating cruces and paradoxes in Old English poetry and prose and Old Norse skaldic and Eddic poetry.
Wild woman and her sisters in medieval English literature
August 18, 2013 By
The subject of this work is the concept and figure of the Wild Woman. The primary focus will be on various forms this figure assumes in medieval English literature: Grendel’s mother—the second monster Beowulf faces—and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, along with other figures.
What Seamus Heaney Did to Beowulf : An Essay on Translation and Transmutation of English Identity
July 24, 2013 By
Heaney’s Beowulf provides us with a great deal which other translations do not: a poetic fluency rendered in Modern English, a skilled understanding of linguistic choices, and most importantly, a consciousness of the translative act which negotiates fluidly between modern perspectives and Anglo Saxon artistry.
The case for a West Saxon minuscule
July 19, 2013 By
Julian Brown’s famous analysis of what he termed the Insular system of scripts marked out a number of routes, now well trodden, through the debris of undated and unlocalized manuscript material from the pre-Viking-Age British Isles.
Beowulf Is Not God Cyning
June 28, 2013 By
By understanding the etymology of the Old English cyning, and by recognizing the poet’s use of Scyld as the model for a good king, we can see that each of the three uses of the phrase ‘Þæt wæs god cyning’ has a different meaning…
Medievalism in the Medieval: Gothic Elements in Old English Literature
June 9, 2013 By
The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic genre of literature is difficult to define. In reality, the genre is a set of tropes rather than a clearly articulated literary system. Interestingly, these Gothic elements are also apparent in several works in the Old English poetic tradition.
Listening for the Vikings: Some Evidence from Etymology
May 18, 2013 By
The Vikings left behind several kinds of evidence during their stay in Anglo-Saxon England. Richard Dance notes that ‘one crucial aspect is the etymological.’
Bite Me: Rude Food and the Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition
May 3, 2013 By
Andy Orchard, one of the world’s leading experts in Old English literature, presented on the tradition of early medieval riddles, and how the themes of food and sex can be found in these works.
The “Battle with the Monster”: Transformation of a Traditional Pattern in “The Dream of the Rood”
April 14, 2013 By
Thus, although I would not suggest that “The Dream of the Rood” was composed orally in performance, it is, I would contend, oral-derived, and it is that presumption upon which this analysis is founded. The poem, in other words, straddles both worlds, having ties to both textuality and orality.
Wonders and Wisdom: Anglo-Saxons and the East
April 11, 2013 By
What the Anglo-Saxons ‘knew’ about Moslems and Jews, and about Babylon and Egypt and India, depended upon Biblical exegesis, saints’ lives, and other texts derived from Latin sources. Numerous Old English texts, as well as Latin versions that circulated and were copied in Anglo-Saxon England, concern Asia; these are quite varied in genre and in content.
A Feminist Critique of Beowulf: Women as Peace-Weavers and Goaders in Beowulf’s Courts
April 9, 2013 By
This thesis will examine the fundamental roles of women in the societies described in Beowulf, paying specific attention to the function as peace-weavers and goaders.
Old English and the lexicography of Old High German
April 8, 2013 By
In this lecture I will focus on how Old English affected the early German written record and on the difficulties of its lexicographical description.
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