|
English Poetry
This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language. The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, including the Republic of Ireland after December 1922. The earliest surviving English poetry, written in Old English language, Anglo-Saxon, the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. The earliest English poetry The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cædmon (floruit, fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Old English poetry, Anglo-Saxon poetry. Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange chronologically; for example, estimates for the date of the great epic ''Beowulf'' range from A.D. 608 right through to A.D. 1000, and there has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Battle Of Maldon
"The Battle of Maldon" is the name given to an Old English Old English literature, poem of uncertain date celebrating the real Battle of Maldon of 991, at which an Anglo-Saxon army failed to repulse a Viking raid. Only 325 lines of the poem are extant; both the beginning and the ending are lost. The poem The poem is told entirely from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons, and names many individuals that scholars Bruce Mitchell (scholar), Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson''A Guide to Old English'', 5th ed. by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, Wiley-Blackwell (publisher), Blackwell, 1999 reprint believe were real Englishmen. Mitchell and Robinson conjecture that the lost opening of the poem must have related how Byrhtnoth, an Anglo-Saxon ealdorman, hearing of the Viking raid, raised his troops and led them to the shore. The part of the poem that survives today begins with the Anglo-Saxon warriors dismounting to prepare for battle. A Viking force is encamped on an island tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Rhyming Poem
"The Rhyming Poem", also written as "The Riming Poem", is a poem of 87 lines found in the Exeter Book, a tenth-century collection of Old English poetry. It is remarkable for being no later than the 10th century, in Old English, and written in rhyming couplets. Rhyme is otherwise virtually unknown among Anglo-Saxon literature, which used alliterative verse instead. The poem is found on folios 94r-95v, in the third booklet of the Exeter Book, which may, or may not, be an indication of composition. Many scholarly attempts have been made to decipher the collation of the Exeter Book and to determine if works were placed in the manuscript by date or theme. Unlike the ''Monstrarum Librum'' of the ''Beowulf'' manuscript, the Exeter Book appears to be a self-consciously archival collection. The poem concerns the troubles and transience of life. It contrasts the life of a ruler, from the time of his birth to his prosperous rule and life at court (lines 1-42), with his life after his fall, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spell (paranormal)
An incantation, spell, charm, enchantment, or bewitchery is a magical formula intended to trigger a magical effect on a person or objects. The formula can be spoken, sung, or chanted. An incantation can also be performed during ceremonial rituals or prayers. In the world of magic, wizards, witches, and fairies are common performers of incantations in culture and folklore. In medieval literature, folklore, fairy tales, and modern fantasy fiction, enchantments are charms or spells. This has led to the terms "enchanter" and "enchantress" for those who use enchantments. The English language borrowed the term "incantation" from Old French in the late 14th century; the corresponding Old English term was '' gealdor'' or '' galdor'', "song, spell", cognate to ON galdr. The weakened sense "delight" (compare the same development of "charm") is modern, first attested in 1593 ( OED). Words of incantation are often spoken with inflection and emphasis on the words being said. The t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riddle
A riddle is a :wikt:statement, statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or Allegory, allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and ''conundra'', which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer. Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, and Filipino sources amongst many others. Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread. In the assessment of Elli Köngäs-Maranda (originally writing about Malaita, Malaitian riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, "riddles make a point of playing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bath, Somerset
Bath (Received Pronunciation, RP: , ) is a city in Somerset, England, known for and named after its Roman Baths (Bath), Roman-built baths. At the 2021 census, the population was 94,092. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, west of London and southeast of Bristol. The city became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and was later added to the transnational World Heritage Site known as the "Great Spa Towns of Europe" in 2021. Bath is also the largest city and settlement in Somerset. The city became a spa with the Latin name ' ("the waters of Sulis") 60 AD when the Romans built Roman Baths (Bath), baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although List of geothermal springs in the United Kingdom, hot springs were known even before then. Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century and became a religious centre; the building was rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of water ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ruin
"The Ruin of the Empire", or simply "The Ruin", is an elegy in Old English, written by an unknown author probably in the 8th or 9th century, and published in the 10th century in the '' Exeter Book'', a large collection of poems and riddles. The poem evokes the former glory of an unnamed ruined ancient city that some scholars have identified with modern Bath, juxtaposing the grand, lively past with the decaying present. The manuscript The extant poem consists of forty-nine lines in the ''Exeter Book,'' on folios 123b-124b between "Husband's Message" and 34 preceding riddles. It is written near the end of the manuscript, on both sides of the leaf. A large diagonal burn in the centre of the page has rendered part of the script illegible. Contents The unknown poet compares the ruins that were extant at the time of writing with the mighty structures, since destroyed by fate, that had once stood there. The desolate and lichen-grey stones of the poet's time are linked to their long-g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Seafarer (poem)
''The Seafarer'' is an Old English poem giving a first-person account of a man alone on the sea. The poem consists of 124 lines, followed by the single word "Amen". It is recorded only at folios 81 verso – 83 recto of the tenth-century Exeter Book, one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry. It has most often, though not always, been categorised as an elegy, a poetic genre commonly assigned to a particular group of Old English poems that reflect on spiritual and earthly melancholy. Summary Much scholarship suggests that the poem is told from the point of view of an old seafarer who is reminiscing and evaluating his life as he has lived it. The seafarer describes the desolate hardships of life on the wintry sea. He describes the anxious feelings, cold-wetness, and solitude of the sea voyage in contrast to life on land where men are surrounded by kinsmen, free from dangers, and full on food and wine. The climate on land then begins to resemble that of the wint ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wanderer (Old English Poem)
''The Wanderer'' is an Old English poem preserved only in an anthology known as the Exeter Book. It comprises 115 lines of alliterative verse. As is often the case with Anglo-Saxon verse, the composer and compiler are anonymous, and within the manuscript the poem is untitled. Origins The date of the poem is impossible to determine, but scholarly consensus considers it to be older than the Exeter Book itself, which dates from the late 10th century. The inclusion of a number of Norse-influenced words, such as the compound ''hrimceald'' (ice-cold, from the Old Norse word ''hrimkaldr''), and some unusual spelling forms, has encouraged others to date the poem to the late 9th or early 10th century. As is typical of Old English verse, the metre of the poem is alliterative and consists of four-stress lines, divided between the second and third stresses by a caesura. Each caesura is indicated in the manuscript by a subtle increase in character spacing and with full stops, but modern pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finnesburg Fragment
The "Finnesburg Fragment" (also "Finnsburh Fragment") is a portion of an Old English heroic poem in alliterative verse about a fight in which Hnæf and his 60 retainers are besieged at "Finn's fort" and attempt to hold off their attackers. The surviving text is tantalisingly brief and allusive, but comparison with other references in Old English poetry, notably ''Beowulf'' (''c.'' 650 to 750 AD), suggests that it deals with a conflict between Danes and Frisians in Migration-Age Frisia (circa 400 AD). Transmission The extant text is a transcript of a loose manuscript folio that was once kept at Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. This manuscript was almost certainly Lambeth Library MS 487. A British scholar, George Hickes, made the transcript some time in the late 17th century, and published it in an anthology of Anglo-Saxon and other antiquities in 1705. (This anthology also contains the first reference to the sole manuscript of ''Beowulf''.) Si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waldere
"Waldere" or "Waldhere" is the conventional title given to two Old English fragments, of around 32 and 31 lines, from a lost epic poem, discovered in 1860 by E. C. Werlauff, Librarian, in the Danish Royal Library at Copenhagen, where it is still preserved. The parchment pages had been reused as stiffening in the binding of an Elizabethan prayer book, which had presumably come to Europe following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England in the 16th century. Overview The portion that was found was a part of a much larger work. What remains of the poem comes in two parts, written on two separate single leaves, usually called “fragment I” and “fragment II”, and generally dated about 1000. The date of the poem's composition is unknown. The fragments can be situated in the epic of which they formed part because the subject, adventures surrounding the hero Walter of Aquitaine, is known in other texts: a Latin epic poem '' Waltharius'' by Ekkehard of the Abbey of St. Ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nowell Codex
The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English literature#Extant manuscripts, Old English poetic manuscripts. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem ''Beowulf''. In addition to this, it contains first a fragment of ''The Life of Saint Christopher'', then the more complete texts ''Wonders of the East'' and ''Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, Letter of Alexander to Aristotle'', and, after ''Beowulf'', Judith (poem), a poetic translation of ''Judith''. Due to the fame of ''Beowulf'', the Nowell Codex is also sometimes known simply as the ''Beowulf'' manuscript. The manuscript is located within the British Library with the rest of the Cotton library, Cotton collection. Name and date The current codex is a composite of at least two manuscripts. The main division is into two totally distinct books which were apparently not bound together until the 17th ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
