{"product_id":"gods-exiles-and-english-verse-on-the-exeter-anthology-of-old-english-poetry-9781905816095","title":"God's Exiles and English Verse: On The Exeter","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as ‘The Exeter Book’.  Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed’n 2006), has re-named the manuscript ‘The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry’.  The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eGod’s Exiles and English Verse\u003c\/em\u003e is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture.\u003cbr\u003e The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction.\u003cbr\u003e Part One, consisting of three chapters, introduces certain of the book’s main themes, addresses matters of date, authorship, audience, and the like, and evaluates hypotheses that have been put forth concerning the origins of the Exeter Anthology in the south of England during the period of the Benedictine Reform.\u003cbr\u003e Part Two, the main body of the book, begins with a long chapter, divided into seven sections, that introduces the contents of the Exeter Anthology poem by poem in a more systematic fashion than before, with attention to the overall organization of the Anthology and certain factors in it that have a unifying function. The five shorter chapters that follow are devoted to topics of special interest, including the volume’s possible use as a guide to vernacular poetic techniques, its underlying worldview, its reliance on certain thematically significant keywords, and its intertextual versus intratextual relations. The riddles, especially those of a sexual content, receive attention in a chapter of their own.\u003cbr\u003e In addition, there is a translation of the popular poem \u003cem\u003eThe Wanderer \u003c\/em\u003einto modern English prose\u003cem\u003e, \u003c\/em\u003ea folio-by-folio listing of the contents of the Exeter Anthology, and a listing of a number of the poems of the Anthology with notes on their genre, according to Latin generic terms familiar to educated Anglo-Saxons.\u003cbr\u003e This book is the first of its kind - an integrative, book-length critical study of the Exeter Anthology.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eNiles’s call for a more contextualized reading of the Exeter Book poems is a \u003cstrong\u003emuch-needed\u003c\/strong\u003e corrective to current literary critical methods, which too often ignore the religious and manuscript context of the Exeter Book poems... Niles’s attentiveness to the whole of the collection enriches his approach to individual poems.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Peter Ramey * Journal of English and Germanic Philology *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eOften reading individual poems within such a rigid frame work will lead to flat analyses... Niles carefully and successfully avoids this problem. His readings of the Exeter Anthology poems feel fresh, even when they adhere to traditional frameworks of analysis... It is likely that future work on Exeter Anthology poems will have to contend with Niles’s thesis.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Michael Matto * Anglia *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eReaders of this volume will come away from it with a much better understanding of this fascinating Anthology and the place it occupies in the history of English literature. Emulating the dedicated compilers’ tour de force and Bishop Leofric’s donation of the volume to Exeter Cathedral, Niles has provided us with a generous scholarly legacy that will no doubt be regarded as a landmark in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Mercedes Salvador-Bello, Universidad de Sevilla * Review of English Studies *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e… an extremely useful resource for any investigation into the Exeter Book of Old English poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Tiffany Beechy * Modern Philology *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePart One: Reading the Anthology in its Historical Context                                                         \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Monastic Poetics                                                                                                                  Scribes, Authors, Compilers, and Readers                                                                        \u003cbr\u003e Exeter, Glastonbury, and the Benedictine Reform                                                         \u003cbr\u003e \u003cstrong\u003ePart Two: Reading the Anthology as a Codicological Whole\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e An Overview of the Book’s Contents\u003cbr\u003e Principles of order                                                \u003cbr\u003e The book’s opening parts, \u003cem\u003eAdvent Lyrics\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eJuliana\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eVoices of wisdom: \u003cem\u003eThe Wanderer\u003c\/em\u003e and related poems                     \u003cbr\u003e The voice of the sage: \u003cem\u003eA Father’s Precepts\u003c\/em\u003e and related poems     \u003cbr\u003e Voices from the Germanic past: \u003cem\u003eWidsith\u003c\/em\u003e and related poems        \u003cbr\u003e Diversity within unity: the role of simulated speech                       \u003cbr\u003e The book’s closing parts, \u003cem\u003eThe Panther\u003c\/em\u003e to the end                             \u003cbr\u003e Teaching the Tools of the Poet’s Trade\u003cbr\u003e The Enigmas — a Special Problem?                                                                Poetry and Worldview                                                                             Keywords\u003cbr\u003e Intratextual Hermeneutics\u003cbr\u003e Summary and Conclusions\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 1: A translation of \u003cem\u003eThe Wanderer\u003c\/em\u003e                                       \u003cbr\u003e Appendix 2: Folio-by-folio contents of the Exeter Anthology                             \u003cbr\u003e Appendix 3: Latin genre terms and the poems of the Exeter Anthology   \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Exeter Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51360238403927,"sku":"9781905816095","price":71.25,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/gods-exiles-and-english-verse-on-the-exeter-anthology-of-old-english-poetry-9781905816095","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}