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Full Description
In the first book-length study of the whole lifespan in Old English verse, Harriet Soper reveals how poets depicted varied paths through life, including their staging of entanglements between human life courses and those of the nonhuman or more-than-human. While Old English poetry sometimes suggests that uniform patterns shape each life, paralleling patristic traditions of the ages of man, it also frequently disrupts a sense of steady linearity through the life course in striking ways, foregrounding moments of sudden upheaval over smooth continuity, contingency over predictability, and idiosyncrasy over regularity. Advancing new readings of a diverse range of Old English poems, Soper draws on an array of supporting contexts and theories to illuminate these texts, unearthing their complex and fascinating depictions of ageing through life. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Contents
Introduction: The Poetics of the Life Course; 1. Taking Shape: Early Life in the Exeter Book Riddles; 2. Becoming Useful: Young and Mature Adulthood in Three Verse Saints' Lives and Judith; 3. Outliving Others: Old Age in Beowulf and Cynewulfian Epilogues; 4. Getting Wasted: Deathly Conditions in Wisdom Catalogues and Doomsday Poetry; Conclusion: The Rhyming Poem.
