Beowulf And The North Before The Vikings

Author : T. A. Shippey
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781641899338
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings written by T. A. Shippey and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Tolkien's famous lecture in 1936, it has been generally accepted that the poem Beowulf is a fantasy, and of no use as a witness to real history. This book challenges that view, and argues that the poem provides a plausible, detailed, and consistent vision of pre-Viking history which is most unlikely to have been the poet's invention, and which has moreover received strong corroboration from archaeology in recent years. Using the poem as a starting point, historical, archaeological, and legendary sources are combined to form a picture of events in the North in the fifth and sixth centuries: at once a Dark and a Heroic Age, and the time of the formation of nations. Among other things, this helps answer two long-unasked questions: why did the Vikings come as such a shock? And what caused the previous 250 years of security from raiders from the sea?

Author : Tom Shippey
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1780239505
Total Pages : 571 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Laughing Shall I Die written by Tom Shippey and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughing Shall I Die explores the Viking fascination with scenes of heroic death. The literature of the Vikings is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs, and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humor. Much of this mindset is markedly alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is this same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings—with their berserkers, valkyries, and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok—and has also been surprisingly corroborated by archaeological discoveries such as the Ridgeway massacre site in Dorset. Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology. Along the way, he recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald. One of the most exciting books on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents Vikings for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but warriors, marauders, and storytellers.

Author : Richard North
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191525731
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origins of Beowulf written by Richard North and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-02-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book suggests that the Old English epic Beowulf was composed in the winter of 826-7 as a requiem for King Beornwulf of Mercia on behalf of Wiglaf, the ealdorman who succeeded him. The place of composition is given as the minster of Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire (now Derbyshire) and the poet is named as the abbot, Eanmund. As well as pinpointing the poem's place and date of composition, Richard North raises some old questions relating to the poet's influences from Vergil and from living Danes. Norse analogues are discussed in order to identify how the poet changed his heroic sources while four episodes from Beowulf are shown to be reworked from passages in Vergil's Aeneid. One chapter assesses how the poem's Latin sources might correspond with what is known of Breedon's now-lost library while another seeks to explain Danish mythology in Beowulf by arguing that Breedon hosted a meeting with Danish Vikings in 809. This fascinating and challenging new study combines careful detective work with meticulous literary analysis to form a case that no future investigation will be able to ignore.

Author : Constance Hieatt
Publisher : Bantam Classics
ISBN 13 : 0307434826
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beowulf and Other Old English Poems written by Constance Hieatt and published by Bantam Classics. This book was released on 2010-05-26 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique and beautiful, Beowulf brings to life a society of violence and honor, fierce warriors and bloody battles, deadly monsters and famous swords. Written by an unknown poet in about the eighth century, this masterpiece of Anglo-Saxton literature transforms legends, myth, history, and ancient songs into the richly colored tale of the hero Beowulf, the loathsome man-eater Grendel, his vengeful water-hag mother, and a treasure-hoarding dragon. The earliest surviving epic poem in any modern European language. Beowulf is a stirring portrait of a heroic world–somber, vast, and magnificent.

Author : Robert D. Fulk
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253206398
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Interpretations of Beowulf written by Robert D. Fulk and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interpretations of Beowulf brings together over six decades of literary scholarship. Illustrating a variety of interpretative schools, the essays not only deal with most of the major issues of Beowulf criticism, including structure, style, genre, and theme, but also offer the sort of explanations of particular passages that are invaluable to a careful reading of a poem. This up-to-date collection of significant critical approaches fills a long-standing need for a companion volume for the study of the poem. Larger patterns in the history of Beowulf criticism are also traceable in the chronological order of the collection. The contributors are Theodore M. Andersson, Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, Jane Chance, Laurence N. de Looze, Margaret E. Goldsmith, Stanley B. Greenfield, Joseph Harris, Edward B. Irving, Jr., John Leyerle, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., M. B. McNamee, S. J., Bertha S. Phillpotts, John C. Pope, Richard N. Ringler, Geoffrey R. Russom, T. A. Shippey, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Author : Joseph St. John
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 104007765X
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Genesis Myth in Beowulf and Old English Biblical Poetry written by Joseph St. John and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : R. T. Farrell
Publisher : London : Viking Society for Northern Research, University College, London
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 86 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beowulf, Swedes, and Geats written by R. T. Farrell and published by London : Viking Society for Northern Research, University College, London. This book was released on 1972 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Neil Price
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096999
Total Pages : 629 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Children of Ash and Elm written by Neil Price and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.

Author : Elaine Treharne
Publisher : ARC Humanities Press
ISBN 13 : 9781641894708
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Poem Known As Beowulf written by Elaine Treharne and published by ARC Humanities Press. This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf by All is a community translation of the earliest English epic poem, produced for the first time in workbook form to encourage readers to create their own personal translations.

Author : Leonard Neidorf
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781961361140
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beowulf Translation and Commentary (Expanded Edition) written by Leonard Neidorf and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beowulf, composed around 700 A.D., is the first great epic poem in the English language. It tells the timeless story of a hero's fight against monsters and sets it against a complex background of political intrigue and tribal warfare. Situated in sixth-century Scandinavia, the poem brings to life a magnificent world that fuses history with fantasy. Tom Shippey's new translation of Beowulf, reflecting a lifetime of engagement with the poem, makes its story clearer and more compelling than it has ever been. The original Old English text of Beowulf is included along with an extensive and innovative commentary, which guides the reader passage-by-passage through the poem and its criticism. In addition to the text, translation, and commentary, this volume contains an extensive bibliography, a translator's preface, and an appended essay by Tom Shippey on "Tolkien and Beowulf-A Lifelong Involvement." The 2nd edition (revised and expanded) adds new texts and translations (by Tom Shippey) of Waldere, the Hildebrandslied, and the Fight at Finnsburg.