Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts
Title | Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts PDF eBook |
Author | Elizabeth Marshall |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 269 |
Release | 2022-07-19 |
Genre | Beowulf |
ISBN | 1843846403 |
A fresh and sympathetic investigation of the depiction of wolves in early medieval literature, recuperating their reputation.
Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry
Title | Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry PDF eBook |
Author | Joseph St. John |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 221 |
Release | 2024-07-31 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 104007765X |
Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry explores the adaptation of antediluvian Genesis and related myth in the Old Testament poems Genesis A and Genesis B, as well as in Beowulf, a secular heroic narrative. The book explores how the Genesis poems resort to the Christian exegetical tradition and draw on secular social norms to deliver their biblically derived and related narratives in a manner relevant to their Christian Anglo-Saxon audiences. In this book it is suggested that these elements work in unison, and that the two Genesis poems function coherently in the context of the Junius 11 manuscript. Moreover, the book explores recourse to Genesis-derived myth in Beowulf, and points to important similarities between this text and the Genesis poems. It is therefore shown that while Beowulf differs from the Genesis poems in several respects, it belongs in a corpus where religious verse enjoys prominence.
The Wolf
Title | The Wolf PDF eBook |
Author | Ian Convery |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 435 |
Release | 2023-07-18 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 1837650152 |
New insights into the changing human attitudes towards wild nature through the depiction of wolves in human culture and heritage. Few animals arouse such strong opinion as the wolf. It occupies a contested, ambiguous, yet central role in human culture and heritage. It appears as both an inspirational emblem of the wild and an embodiment of evil. Offering a mirror to different human attitudes, beliefs, and values, the wolf is, arguably, the species that plays the greatest role in shaping our views on what nature is or should be. North America and, more recently, Europe have witnessed a remarkable return of the grey wolf (Canis lupus, and its close relative the Eurasian wolf, Canis lupus lupus) to eco-systems. The essays collected here explore aspects of this recovery, and consider the history, literature and myth surrounding this iconic species. There are chapters on wolf taxonomy, including the coywolf, the red wolf, and the many faces of the dingo. We also meet the Tasmanian wolf and encounter Nazi Werewolves from Outer Space. The book explores the challenges of separating fact from fiction and superstition, and our willingness to co-exist with large carnivores in the twenty-first century. Biologists, historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, conservationists and museologists will all find riches in the detail presented in this wolf collection.
Trees As Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages
Title | Trees As Symbol and Metaphor in the Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Bintley |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 307 |
Release | 2024-03-26 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1843846640 |
Forests, with their interlacing networks of trees and secret patterns of communication, are powerful entities for thinking-with. A majestic terrestrial community of arboreal others, their presence echoes, entangles, and resonates deeply with the human world. The essays collected here aim to highlight human encounters with the forest and its trees at the time of the European Middle Ages, when, whether symbol and metaphor, or actual and real, their lofty boughs were weighted with meaning. The chapters interrogate the pre-Anthropocene environment, reflecting on trees as metaphors for kinship and knowledge as they appear in literary, historical, art-historical, and philosophical sources. They examine images of trees and trees in-themselves across a range of environmental, material, and intellectual contexts, and consider how humans used arboreal and rhizomatic forms to negotiate bodies of knowledge and processes of transition. Looking beyond medieval Europe, they include discussion of parallel developments in the Islamic world and that of the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand.
Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages
Title | Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Bintley |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 232 |
Release | 2023-08-14 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1000918858 |
This book is a comprehensive introduction to the landscapes of the Middle Ages within and beyond Europe, paying close attention to the relationship between ‘real’ and imagined landscapes and the ways that medieval people made and inhabited their world. Rather than studying 'nature' in the Middle Ages, the book instead examines the spaces that people constructed through soil, stone, and song; water and wasteland; plants and animals; and timber, textiles, and texts, which in turn made up the medieval world. Likewise, the text emphasises a definition of environment that focuses on ‘living with’, inviting readers to think about the more-than-human worlds that medieval people depended on, cared for, constructed, and damaged. Bringing together a wide range of primary source material, including evidence from texts, material culture, and visual arts, the book reflects the diversity of landscapes and human responses to them throughout the course of this period and considers the role that these medieval worlds have played in shaping the modern, both physically and culturally. Landscapes and Environments of the Middle Ages is an excellent resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in medieval studies and history, offering interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational insights into this period of immense change and innovation.
Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland
Title | Animal-Human Relationships in Medieval Iceland PDF eBook |
Author | Harriet Jean Evans Tang |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 259 |
Release | 2022-08-30 |
Genre | Domestic animals in literature |
ISBN | 1843846438 |
Domestic animals played a range of roles in the imaginative world of medieval Icelanders: from partners in settlement and household allies, to violent offenders, foster-kin and surrogate wives, they were vital and effective members of the multispecies communities established from the ninth century onwards. This book examines the domestic animals of early Iceland in their physical and textual contexts, through detailed analysis of the spaces and places of the Icelandic farm and farming landscape, and textual sources such as The Book of Settlements, the earliest Icelandic laws, and various episodes from the Sagas and Tales of Icelanders. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to animal-human relationships, it sees animals not solely as symbols, metaphors, or objects, but as subjects in affective relationships with their human co-settlers who become the focus of intense exploration, delight, anxiety and condemnation in later textual narratives. By inviting readers to question how these sources form, embrace, or reject animal-human relationships, it provides a resource for understanding these archaeological sites and textual narratives differently: as products of multispecies communities in which animals and humans lived, worked, and died together.ect animal-human relationships, it provides a resource for understanding these archaeological sites and textual narratives differently: as products of multispecies communities in which animals and humans lived, worked, and died together.ect animal-human relationships, it provides a resource for understanding these archaeological sites and textual narratives differently: as products of multispecies communities in which animals and humans lived, worked, and died together.ect animal-human relationships, it provides a resource for understanding these archaeological sites and textual narratives differently: as products of multispecies communities in which animals and humans lived, worked, and died together.
Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy
Title | Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy PDF eBook |
Author | KellyAnn Fitzpatrick |
Publisher | Boydell & Brewer |
Pages | 246 |
Release | 2019 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1843845415 |
The medieval in the modern world is here explored in a variety of media, from film and book to gaming.