Late Old English Verse
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Eric Weiskott
Organizer Affiliation
Boston College
Presider Name
Dylan Wilkerson
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Toronto
Paper Title 1
"The Grave" as a Paradoxical Encomium
Presenter 1 Name
Richard Ford Burley
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Boston College
Paper Title 2
What Is Late about Late Old English Meter?
Presenter 2 Name
Geoffrey Richard Russom
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Brown Univ.
Paper Title 3
Found You! Old English Homiletics and/in the Early Middle English Poema Morale
Presenter 3 Name
Carla María Thomas
Presenter 3 Affiliation
New York Univ.
Start Date
15-5-2016 10:30 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 205
Description
This session focuses on Old English poetry datable to between c. 950 and 1150. Many of these poems are embedded in late annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; most of them were snubbed by being excluded from the standard edition of Old English verse, the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Columbia Univ. Press, 1931-53). As a result, late Old English poems as a group are severely understudied. Indeed, because Old English verse is written out in unlineated text blocks in manuscript, and because most theories of Old English meter are based on putatively pre-950 poems like Beowulf, scholars disagree about the exact number of extant late Old English poems. As recently as 2007, Thomas Bredehoft could identify an entirely new, never-before-discussed poem. This session explores what the study of short, late, and (often) topical Old English poems might contribute to critical conceptions of English literary culture and literary history.
The three papers in this session discuss late Old English verse as a moment in the history of an underappreciated poetic genre; as a juncture in metrical history; and as a repository for source study of late twelfth-century English poetry. The first and third papers also extend the chronological scope of the session by connecting late Old English literature to late twelfth-century English poetry sometimes categorized (by modern scholars) as 'Early Middle English verse.'
Eric Weiskott
Late Old English Verse
Bernhard 205
This session focuses on Old English poetry datable to between c. 950 and 1150. Many of these poems are embedded in late annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; most of them were snubbed by being excluded from the standard edition of Old English verse, the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Columbia Univ. Press, 1931-53). As a result, late Old English poems as a group are severely understudied. Indeed, because Old English verse is written out in unlineated text blocks in manuscript, and because most theories of Old English meter are based on putatively pre-950 poems like Beowulf, scholars disagree about the exact number of extant late Old English poems. As recently as 2007, Thomas Bredehoft could identify an entirely new, never-before-discussed poem. This session explores what the study of short, late, and (often) topical Old English poems might contribute to critical conceptions of English literary culture and literary history.
The three papers in this session discuss late Old English verse as a moment in the history of an underappreciated poetic genre; as a juncture in metrical history; and as a repository for source study of late twelfth-century English poetry. The first and third papers also extend the chronological scope of the session by connecting late Old English literature to late twelfth-century English poetry sometimes categorized (by modern scholars) as 'Early Middle English verse.'
Eric Weiskott