Reading Old English Texts

This 1997 book focuses on the critical methods being used and developed for reading and analysing writings in Old English.

Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (Edited by)

9780521469708, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 August 1997

244 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.33 kg

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.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]