Direct Speech In Beowulf And Other Old English Narrative Poems (anglo-saxon Studies)
by Elise Louviot /
2016 / English / PDF
3.3 MB Download
Some of the most celebrated passages of Old English poetry are
speeches: Beowulf and Unferth's verbal contest, Hrothgar's words of
advice, Satan's laments, Juliana's words of defiance, etc. Yet
Direct Speech, as a stylistic device, has remained largely
under-examined and under-theorized in studies of the corpus. As a
consequence, many analyses are unduly influenced by anachronistic
conceptions of Direct Speech, leading to problematic
interpretations, not least concerning irony and implicit
characterisation. This book uses linguistic theories to reassess
the role of Direct Speech in Old English narrative poetry. Beowulf
is given a great deal of attention, because it is amajor poem and
because it is the focus of much of the existing scholarship on this
subject, but it is examined in a broader poetic context: the poem
belongs to a wider tradition and thus needs to be understood in
that context. The texts examined include several major Old English
narrative poems, in particular the two Genesis, Christ and Satan,
Andreas, Elene, Juliana and Guthlac A.
Some of the most celebrated passages of Old English poetry are
speeches: Beowulf and Unferth's verbal contest, Hrothgar's words of
advice, Satan's laments, Juliana's words of defiance, etc. Yet
Direct Speech, as a stylistic device, has remained largely
under-examined and under-theorized in studies of the corpus. As a
consequence, many analyses are unduly influenced by anachronistic
conceptions of Direct Speech, leading to problematic
interpretations, not least concerning irony and implicit
characterisation. This book uses linguistic theories to reassess
the role of Direct Speech in Old English narrative poetry. Beowulf
is given a great deal of attention, because it is amajor poem and
because it is the focus of much of the existing scholarship on this
subject, but it is examined in a broader poetic context: the poem
belongs to a wider tradition and thus needs to be understood in
that context. The texts examined include several major Old English
narrative poems, in particular the two Genesis, Christ and Satan,
Andreas, Elene, Juliana and Guthlac A.
