Poetry : Ancient, Classical & Medieval

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving European manuscript dating to circa 1010. At 3183 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland (modern southern Sweden) and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retainers. [Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf under the terms of the GNU-FDL] more...

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Dick Ringler's deceptively simple translation captures the rhythm, movement, and power of the original Old English poem while employing a fluid modern English style and a relatively spare vocabulary. more...

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This volume on the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE - 17 CE) contains articles by 14 international scholars. Contributions cover a wide range of topics, including a biographical essay, a survey of the major manuscripts and textual traditions, and a comprehensive discussion of Ovid's style more...

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An engaging and informative way to start studying and understanding one of America's most popular poets. more...

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Does what is true depend on where you are? Or can we speak of a British culture which varies gradually over the 600 miles from one end of the island to the other, with currents gradually mutating and turning into their opposites as they cross such a distance? Any account of the matter must rapidly disclose the fact that where group A proclaims idea X, group B swiftly proclaims X to be untrue. Assimilation and dissimilation are the exuberant flows which make the mill of culture turn. The unbalanced local energies which gave birth to the central horror of possessive individualism, the Empire, and the State as war-machine, do not sound their triumphalist self-praises without conjuring up a reaction in favour of collective values, pacifism, equity and the languages of the periphery. Poetry has to offer more than the illusion of being in the few rooms where a metropolitan elite solemnly engages in the circularity of authentication. In Centre and Periphery in Modern British Poetry, a polemic tour of Scotland, Wales and the North of England exposes the possibility that the finest poets of the last fifty years have lived in the outlands, not networking and neglecting to acquire linguistic signs of status. We contemplate the sublime through the works of Sorley Maclean, Glyn Jones, Colin Simms and Michael Haslam. But a second look at poetry in the South jettisons the shallow tricks favoured by High Street cultural managers to reveal a hidden stratum of intellectually sophisticated poets, even in Babylon. more...

Price: $85.00