Search results for ""author marijane osborn""

In this book, Marijane Osborn translates into modern English nine lively medieval verse romances, in a form that both reflects the original and makes the romances inviting to a modern audience. All nine tales contain elements of magic: shapeshifters, powerful fairies, trees that are portals to another world, and enchanted clothing and armor. Many of the tales also feature powerful women characters, while others include representations of “Saracens.” The tales address issues of enduring interest and concern, and also address sexuality, agency, and identity formation in unexpected ways.

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An exhilarating journey across a distant literary landscape, this book takes us to those places described, evoked, or invented in "Beowulf" and the sagas of Iceland. Chronicling their own travels in Scandinavia, charting the geography of medieval history and fiction, the authors negotiate the complex territory where past and present meet. In this encounter, medieval and modern viewpoints converge, forming a new way into the northern world of medieval literature. The authors use a variety of approaches, borrow from different disciplines, and employ an array of styles to discover and "reinvent" the landscape of these texts. In scholarly appraisals and personal encounters, in maps and photographs, we accompany them on a voyage along Beowulf's route and follow them along the road to Drangey. Here and at many other legendary sites, we see how the past is made up of divergent stories told in the present, and how our own histories and desires influence the shape and purpose of those stories. This book should appeal to medievalists, historians, cultural geographers, critical theorists, and those who like to travel, whether in literature or their own good time.

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Beowulf, the primary epic of the English language, is a powerful heroic poem eloquently expressive of the Anglo-Saxon culture that produced it. In this beautiful book a designer, a poet, and a specialist in Anglo-Saxon literature recreate Beowulf for a modern audience. Interweaving evocative images, a new interpretation in verse, and a running commentary that helps clarify the action and setting of the poem as well as the imagery, the book brings new life to this ancient masterpiece. Randolph Swearer’s oblique and allusive images create an archaic, mysterious atmosphere by depicting in forms and shadows the world of Germanic antiquity—Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon art, artifacts, and scenery. At the same time, Raymond Oliver gives Beowulf a world in which to live, filling in the cultural gaps not with a thick matrix of footnotes but with poetry itself. Unlike many translations of Beowulf in existence, Oliver’s retelling of the epic uses modern verse forms for poetic effect and includes a wealth of historically authentic descriptions, characterizations, and explanations necessary for modern readers. Marijane Osborn completes the process of restoring context to the poem by supplying a commentary to clarify the historical and geographical dimensions of the story as well as the imagery that accompanies it. All three work together to bring a likeness of an old and elusive tale to today’s reader.“The book’s design and the commentary on it provide a unique visual complement to Oliver’s poem… A strange and moving story, compellingly told and seriously interesting to any serious reader of books.”—Fred C. Robinson, from the Introduction

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