A feast of creatures : Anglo-Saxon riddle-songs / edited and translated by Craig Williamson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Williamson, Craig.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

Middle Ages series

Standardized Title:

Exeter book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Riddles, English (Old).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (242 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In A Feast of Creatures, Craig Williamson recasts nearly one hundred Old English riddles of the Exeter Book into a modern verse mode that yokes the cadences of Aelfric with the sprung rhythm of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like the early English riddlers before him, Williamson gives voice to the nightingale, plow, ox, phallic onion, and storm-wind. In lean and taut language he offers us mead disguised as a mighty wrestler, the sword as a celibate thane, the silver wine-cup as a seductress, the horn transformed from head-warrior to ink-belly or battle-singer. In his notes and commentary he gives us possible and probable solutions, sources, and analogues, a shrewd sense of literary play, and traces the literary and cultural contexts in which each riddle may be viewed. In his introduction, Williamson traces for us the history of riddles and riddle scholarship.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

CREDITS

INTRODUCTION

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Riddles

NOTES AND COMMENTARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR NOTES AND COMMENTARY

INDEX OF SOLUTIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Notes:

Original ed. issued in series: Belles-lettres series. Section I. English literature.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781283897068

1283897067

9780812204452

081220445X

OCLC:

833582334