Forms of devotion in early English poetry : the poetics of feeling / Jennifer A. Lorden.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lorden, Jennifer A., 1986- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in medieval literature.

Cambridge studies in medieval literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--Old English, ca. 450-1100--History and criticism.

English poetry.

English poetry--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

Devotional poetry, English--History and criticism.

Devotional poetry, English.

Devotion in literature.

Affect (Psychology) in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 226 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Jennifer Lorden reveals the importance of deeply-felt religious devotion centuries before it is commonly said to arise. Her ground-breaking study establishes the hybrid poetics that embodied its form for medieval readers, while obscuring it from modern scholars. Working across the divide between Old and Middle English, she shows how conventions of earlier English poetry recombine with new literary conventions after the Norman Conquest. These new conventions-for example, love lyric repurposed as devotional song-created hybrid aesthetics more familiar to modern scholars. She argues that this aesthetic, as much as changing devotional practice, rendered later affective piety recognizable in a way that earlier affective devotional conventions were not. Forms of Devotion reconsiders the roots and branches of poetic topoi, revising commonplaces of literary and religious history. 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

Displaced passions: sympathy and suffering in poems on Christ and the saints

Paradise and the problem of beauty in Old English poetry

Poetics at the end of the world

The poetics of the speaking soul from Old to Middle English

Luue and lyric in England across the Conquest

Epilogue.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 23 Oct 2023).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009390286

1009390287

9781009390309

1009390309

9781009390279

1009390279