Reading Old English Texts
Cambridge University Press, 1/12/2008
EAN 9780521469708, ISBN10: 0521469708
Paperback, 244 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Reading Old English Texts, first published in 1997, focuses on the critical methods being used and developed for reading and analysing writings in Old English. The collection is timely, given the explosion of interest in the theory, method, and practice of critical reading. Each chapter engages with work on Old English texts from a particular methodological stance. The authors are all experts in the field, but are also concerned to explain their method and its application to a broad undergraduate and graduate readership. The chapters include a brief historical background to the approach; a definition of the field or method under consideration; a discussion of some exemplary criticism (with a balance of prose and verse passages); an illustration of the ways in which texts are read through this approach, and some suggestions for future work.
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
Note on the text
Introduction Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
1. The comparative approach Michael Lapidge
2. Source study D. G. Scragg
3. Language matters Daniel Donoghue
4. Historicist approaches Nicholas Howe
5. Oral tradition Andy Orchard
6. The recovery of texts Paul E. Szarmach
7. At a crossroads
Old English and feminist criticism Clare A. Lees
8. Post-structuralist theories
the subject and the text Carol Braun Pasternack
9. Old English and computing
a guided tour Peter S. Baker
Suggestions for further reading
Index.