The Poetic Art of Aldhelm

by Andy Orchard

Overview

This is the first book-length study of the poetic style of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, "the first English man of letters." Aldhelm is one of the earliest Anglo-Saxons whose writings survive, and the first to attempt to compose Latin metrical verse. Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for his idiosyncratic style and the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse. The book will not only interest Anglo-Saxonists, but more broadly those interested in the wider fields of Classics, medieval Latin, oral tradition and poetics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521450904
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/07/1994
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England , #8
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

List of tables; Preface; List of short titles and abbreviations; Sigla of scholars cited; 1. Aldhelm's life and verse; 2. Aldhelm and the Anglo-Latin octosyllable; 3. Aldhelm's hexameter verse style and its origins; 4. Aldhelm's remembered reading in verse; Appendix 4.1: Parallel diction in Aldhelm's sources; 5. After Aldhelm: the Anglo-Latin legacy; Appendix 5.1: Parallel diction in Aldhelm's Anglo-Latin heirs; Appendix 5.2: a statistical survey of Anglo-Latin verse; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...I found Orchard's arguments persuasive and his lists of lexical localizations impressive....Orchard's statistical tables represent an amazing amount of old-fashioned reading and remembering, very much in keeping with what we know of Aldhelm's and his fellow poets' practices." Modern Philology

"Andy Orchard has written a penetrating, eloquent, and original volume on Aldhelm of Malmesbury's Latin poetry." Scott Gwara, Speculum

From the Publisher