Early English Poetic Culture and Meter : The Influence of G. R. Russom

Festschriiten, Occasional Papers, and Lectures Medieval institute Publications publishes occasional volumes in honor of significant scholars in fields where MIP has a longstanding interest: vernacular languages, literatures, and cultures; social history and prosopography; popular beliefs and their expression. This series also includes texts of significant public lectures or lecture series in the same fields. This volume develops Geoffrey Richard Russom's contributions to early English meter and style, including his fundamental reworkings and rethinkings of accepted and oft-repeated mantras. Tom Bredehoft and Megan Hartman take up his word-foot theory to offer a radical but very logical restructuring of the relationship between prose and poetry. Jun Terasawa and R. D. Fulk address specific issues in Old English and Old Norse meter, while Eric Weiskott picks up Russom's current concern, the late medieval context for alliterative meter. Dan Donoghue and Hal Momma investigate the linguistics of punctuation and translation as applied to Old English texts. Lindy Brady uses a stylistic detail in Beowulf to rethink the role of the Geats in the poem, and Jane Toswell proffers another dimension of poetic style in the early medieval context-polyptoton in vernacular texts. Tom Cable offers a contextualizing foreword to the collection. Book jacket.