Product Description: Mark Amodio’s book focuses on the influence of the oral tradition on written vernacular verse produced in England from the fifth to the fifteenth century. His primary aim is to explore how a living tradition articulated only through the public, performance voices of pre-literate singers came to find expression through the pens of private, literate authors...read more

Product Description: The Anglo-Saxons placed a great deal of importance on wisdom and learning, something Beowulf makes dramatically clear when he uses his 'wordhord' to command respect and admiration from his friends and foes alike. Modern day scholars no longer have recourse to the living language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons, and as a result must turn to their 'wordhords' - the literary, historical, and cultural artefacts that have survived in various degrees of intactness - to learn about life in Anglo-Saxon England...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Explores the influence of oral tradition on Middle English poetry from Layamon's 12th-century Brut to Chaucer. Approaching from a number of theoretical perspectives, the 11 essays challenge some fundamental assumptions about the context, composition, and reception of English literature at what (i...read more

Product Description: The papers in this volume contribute to a more precise assessment of the interconnections between England and Scandinavia during the period from the establishment of the Danelaw to the Norman Conquest. The essays fall into three groups of concern: history, myth, and the language of poetry...read more