Robert E. Bjork. The Old English Verse Saints' Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style. (McMaster Old English Studies and Texts 4.) Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press. 1985. Pp. x, 180. $25.00.

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-638
Author(s):  
Alexandra Hennessey Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Direct Discourse ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
English Verse

Daniel, the Three Youths fragment and the transmission of Old English verse

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 81-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Remley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Formulaic Language ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Multiple Copies

The theories of oral-formulaic composition advanced by Albert B. Lord, his mentor and collaborator Milman Parry, and their later twentieth-century followers have been adduced frequently in studies of Old English verse, elements of whose language must go back ultimately to an oral tradition. After decades of research, however, scholars have yet to find conclusive answers to some basic questions: did literate Anglo-Saxons continue to practise techniques of extemporaneous versification? If so, did they continue to develop the mnemonic skills attributed to oral poets? It is clear that the monuments of Old English verse reveal many examples of formulaic language (for example, se mæra maga Healfdenes, se mæra mago Healfdenes and se mæra maga Ecgðeowes); but should we regard this language as a reliable witness to oral-formulaic versification or, perhaps, as a hybrid, ‘literary-formulaic’ idiom? Finally, if we accept the synchronic (or achronic) models of the formulaic ‘word-hoard’ that inform many Old English studies, is it pointless even to speculate about poetic influence, direction of borrowing and similar concerns? If so, how should we regard, say, two parallel uses of the unusual phrase enge anpaðas, occurring verbatim in Beowulf and the poetic Exodus but nowhere else among the surviving monuments? Must we view these parallels as isolated outcroppings in the trackless expanse of the Old English poetic corpus? Largely as a result of the scarcity of verse preserved in multiple copies, such questions have remained debatable into the present century.

The Old English Verse Saints' Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style

1989 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 431
Author(s):  
N. F. Blake ◽  
Robert E. Bjork ◽  
Else Fausboll
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Direct Discourse ◽  
English Verse

The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 334-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry D. Benson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary History ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
Exciting Development

Perhaps the most fruitful and exciting development in Old English studies in recent years has followed from F. P. Magoun's discovery that the Parry-Lord theory of oral verse-making can be applied to Old English poetry. This theory has caught the imagination of critics and has produced a “kind of revolution in scholarly opinion” not simply because it shows us that the style of this poetry is traditional—that has been known for many years—but because it offers a new and useful way of approaching the problems raised by this style, because it provides a new way of considering some of the relations between these poems, and because it casts light on an area that we thought was forever darkened, the pre-literary history of Germanic and Old English verse.

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