Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Donoghue does not shy away from asking the unanswerable questions, and his book is all the better for it . . . [He] engagingly and persuasively shows us that cognitive psychology has something to contribute to Old English prosody (and vice versa), and that not just Latin and Old Saxon but also medieval Arabic and modern Thai might change our perspective on Anglo-Saxon approaches to reading. Such a reappraisal of how the earliest texts in English were first experienced is a major contribution to the scholarship." *
Times Literary Supplement *
"By putting into productive dialogue what have until now remained largely discrete schools of thought within Anglo-Saxon studies,
How the Anglo-Saxons Read Their Poems offers an important and compelling reading both of the complex, interlocking, and interdependent constellation of cultural forces and graphic practices out of which Old English poetry emerges and of the means by and the degree to which its first, intended readers were so ably equipped to read it." *
Speculum *
"A brilliant and daring achievement, one that ventures beyond most medievalists' scholarly experience." * John D. Niles, University of Wisconsin-Madison *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. How to Read
Chapter 2. From Orality to Punctuation
Chapter 3. Verse Syntax
Chapter 4. Eye Movement
Less a Conclusion than an Opening Up
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
