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How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems (Hardcover)
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How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems (Hardcover)
Series: The Middle Ages Series
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Total price: R1,624
Discovery Miles: 16 240
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The scribes of early medieval England wrote out their vernacular
poems using a format that looks primitive to our eyes because it
lacks the familiar visual cues of verse lineation, marks of
punctuation, and capital letters. The paradox is that scribes had
those tools at their disposal, which they deployed in other kinds
of writing, but when it came to their vernacular poems they turned
to a sparser presentation. How could they afford to be so
indifferent? The answer lies in the expertise that Anglo-Saxon
readers brought to the task. From a lifelong immersion in a
tradition of oral poetics they acquired a sophisticated yet
intuitive understanding of verse conventions, such that when their
eyes scanned the lines written out margin-to-margin, they could
pinpoint with ease such features as alliteration, metrical units,
and clause boundaries, because those features are interwoven in the
poetic text itself. Such holistic reading practices find a
surprising source of support in present-day eye-movement studies,
which track the complex choreography between eye and brain and
show, for example, how the minimal punctuation in manuscripts snaps
into focus when viewed as part of a comprehensive system. How the
Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems uncovers a sophisticated
collaboration between scribes and the earliest readers of poems
like Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Dream of the Rood. In
addressing a basic question that no previous study has adequately
answered, it pursues an ambitious synthesis of a number of fields
usually kept separate: oral theory, paleography, syntax, and
prosody. To these philological topics Daniel Donoghue adds insights
from the growing field of cognitive psychology. According to
Donoghue, the earliest readers of Old English poems deployed a
unique set of skills that enabled them to navigate a daunting task
with apparent ease. For them reading was both a matter of technical
proficiency and a social practice.
General
Imprint: |
University of PennsylvaniaPress
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Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
The Middle Ages Series |
Release date: |
April 2018 |
First published: |
2018 |
Authors: |
Daniel Donoghue
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Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 25mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
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Pages: |
248 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8122-4994-1 |
Categories: |
Books
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LSN: |
0-8122-4994-1 |
Barcode: |
9780812249941 |
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