The essential canon of Old English poetry, with parallel verse translation, in this now classic edition. A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse contains the Old English texts of all the major short poems, such as The Battle of Maldon', The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer and The Seafarer, as well as a generous representation of the many important fragments, riddles and gnomic verses that survive from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, with facing-page verse translations.

    A well–received feature is the grouping by codex to emphasize the great importance of manuscript context in interpreting the poems. The full contents of the Exeter Book are represented, summarized where not translated, to facilitate appreciation of a complete Anglo-Saxon book. The introduction discusses the nature of the legacy, the poet's role, chronology, and especially of translations attempt a style acceptable to the modern ear yet close enough to aid parallel study of the old English text. A check–list of extant Anglo-Saxon poetry enhances the practical usefulness of the volume. The whole thus adds up to a substantial and now widely–cited survey of the Anglo–Saxon poetic achievement.

    Ranging from natural phenomena to animal and bird life, from the Christian concept of creation to prosaic domestic objects, the riddles are full of sharp observation and earthy humour.

    Offered here are tales of battle, travel, and adventure, but also songs of heartache and longing, pearls of lusty innuendo and clear-eyed stoicism, charms and spells for everyday use, and seven "hoards" of delightfully puzzling riddles.Featuring all-new translations by seventy-four of our most celebrated poets—including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Eavan Boland, Paul Muldoon, Robert Hass, Gary Soto, Jane Hirshfield, David Ferry, Molly Peacock, Yusef Komunyakaa, Richard Wilbur, and many others—The Word Exchange is a landmark work of translation, as fascinating and multivocal as the original literature it translates.

    

    An account of the earliest Englishwomen; the part they played in the making of England, what they did in peace and war, the impressions they left in Britain and on the continent, how they were recorded in the chronicles and how they came alive in heroic verse and riddles.

     Parry began recording and studying a live tradition of oral narrative poetry in order to find an answer to the age-old Homeric Question: How had the author of the Iliad and Odyssey composed these two monumental epic poems at the very start of Europe's literary tradition? Parry's, and with him Lord's, enduring contribution--set forth in Lord's The Singer of Tales--was to demonstrate the process by which oral poets compose. Now reissued with a new Introduction and an invaluable audio and visual record, this widely influential book is newly enriched to better serve everyone interested in the art and craft of oral literature.

    Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien’s work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953.Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien’s approach to the whole genre.The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique ‘academic’ lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

    A pioneering introduction to Old English designed for a new generation of students. Assumes no expertise in other languages or in traditional grammar. Opening chapters and 'Quick Start' sections cover the basics. 'Minitexts' give students practice in reading Old English. Includes two chapters on syntax and three on reading poetry. Anthologises fourteen readings, including 'The Wanderer', 'The Dream of the Rood' and 'Judith'. The accompanying 'Old English Aerobics' website features additional readings and exercises.

    The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing." – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (from Amazon)

    This updated sixth edition retains the structure and style of the popular previous editions, and includes two new, much-requested texts: Wulf and Eadwacer and Judith.The book consists of two parts. Part One comprises an introduction to the Old English language, including orthography and pronunciation, inflexions, word formation, an authoritative section on syntax. This is followed by an introduction to Anglo-Saxon studies, which discusses language, literature, history, archaeology, and ways of life. Sound changes are treated as they become relevant in understanding apparent irregularities in inflexion. Part Two contains verse texts, most of them complete, which fully reveal the range that Old English poetry offers in mood, intensity, humor, and natural observation. Full explanatory notes accompany all the texts, and a detailed glossary is provided.The new edition of this highly-acclaimed Guide will be welcomed by teachers and by anyone wanting to gain a greater understanding and enjoyment of the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons.

    There are enormous differences between the two in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and a monolingual speaker of one cannot understand the other at all. Yet modern English and German have many points in common, and if we go back to the earliest texts available in the two languages, the similarities are even more notable.How do we account for these similarities? The generally accepted explanation is that English and German are divergent continuations of a common ancestor, a Germanic language now lost. This book surveys the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the earliest kown Germanic languages, members of what has traditionally been known as the English family tree: Gothic, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Low Franconian, and Old High German.For each language, the author provides a brief history of the people who spoke it, an overview of the important texts in the language, sample passages with full glossary and word-by-word translations, a section on orthography and grammar, and discussion of linguistic or philological topics relevant to all the early Germanic languaes but best exemplified by the particular language under consideration. These topics inclued the pronunciation of older languages; the runic inscriptions; Germanic alliterative pietry; historical syntax, borrowing, analogy, and drift; textual transmission; and dialect variation.

    For decades, people have been studying Shakespeare's life and times, and in recent years there has been a renewed surge of interest into aspects of his language. So how can we better understand Shakespeare? How did he manipulate language to produce such an unrivaled body of work, which has enthralled generations both as theater and as literature? David Crystal addresses these and many other questions in this lively and original introduction to Shakespeare's language. Covering in turn the five main dimensions of language structure - writing system, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and conversational style - the book shows how examining these linguistic 'nuts and bolts' can help us achieve a greater appreciation of Shakespeare's linguistic creativity.

    Variant dialectic forms are given, together with variant forms found in the same dialect. Purely poetic words and words not common in prose are indicated, and references are given to the passages in which they occur. First published in 1894, this is a reprint of the fourth edition (Cambridge University Press, 1960).

    But, besides this, chronicles, laws and letters, charters and charms are also incorporated in the anthology. Kevin Crossley-Holland places poems and prose in context with his own interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon world, in addition to translate them into modern English.