Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry
Strange Likeness provides the first full account of how Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) was rediscovered by twentieth-century poets, and the uses to which they put that discovery in their own writing. Chapters deal with Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney. Stylistic debts to Old English are examined, along with the effects on these poets' work of specific ideas about Old English language and literature as taught while these poets were studying the subject at university. Issues such as linguistic primitivism, the supposed 'purity' of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of 'Englishness' within the literary canon are discussed in the light of these poets and their Old English encounters. Heaney's translation of Beowulf is fully contextualized within the body of the rest of his work for the first time.
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Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry
Strange Likeness provides the first full account of how Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) was rediscovered by twentieth-century poets, and the uses to which they put that discovery in their own writing. Chapters deal with Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney. Stylistic debts to Old English are examined, along with the effects on these poets' work of specific ideas about Old English language and literature as taught while these poets were studying the subject at university. Issues such as linguistic primitivism, the supposed 'purity' of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of 'Englishness' within the literary canon are discussed in the light of these poets and their Old English encounters. Heaney's translation of Beowulf is fully contextualized within the body of the rest of his work for the first time.
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Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry

Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry

by Chris Jones
Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry

Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry

by Chris Jones

Hardcover

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Overview

Strange Likeness provides the first full account of how Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) was rediscovered by twentieth-century poets, and the uses to which they put that discovery in their own writing. Chapters deal with Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, Edwin Morgan, and Seamus Heaney. Stylistic debts to Old English are examined, along with the effects on these poets' work of specific ideas about Old English language and literature as taught while these poets were studying the subject at university. Issues such as linguistic primitivism, the supposed 'purity' of the English language, the politics and ethics of translation, and the construction of 'Englishness' within the literary canon are discussed in the light of these poets and their Old English encounters. Heaney's translation of Beowulf is fully contextualized within the body of the rest of his work for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780199278329
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 11/16/2006
Pages: 276
Product dimensions: 8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: Whose Poetry is Old English Anyway? 1. 'Ear for the sea-surge': Pound's Uses of Old English2. Anglo-Saxon Anxieties: Auden and 'the Barbaric Poetry of the North'3. Edwin Morgan: Dredging theWhale-Roads4. Old English Escape Routes: Seamus Heaney - the Caedmon of the NorthConclusion: Old English - A Shadow Poetry? Appendix on Old English Metre
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