The Grounds of English LiteratureThe centuries just after the Norman Conquest are the forgotten period of English literary history. In fact, the years 1066-1300 witnessed an unparalleled ingenuity in the creation of written forms, for this was a time when almost every writer was unaware of the existence of other English writing. In a series of detailed readings of the more important early Middle English works, Cannon shows how the many and varied texts of the period laid the foundations for the project of Englishliterature. This richness is for the first time given credit in these readings by means of an innovative theory of literary form that accepts every written shape as itself a unique contribution to the history of ideas. This theory also suggests that the impoverished understanding of literature we nowcommonly employ is itself a legacy of this early period, an attribute of the single form we have learned to call 'romance'. A number of reading methods have lately taught us to be more generous in our understandings of what literature might be, but this book shows us that the very variety we now strive to embrace anew actually formed the grounds of English literature-a richness we only lost when we forgot how to recognize it. |
Contents
A Theory of Form | 3 |
The Grounds of English Literature ΙΟ | 10 |
1066 | 17 |
Copyright | |
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1st published 2nd edn actually anchorite Ancrene Wisse Anglo-Saxon anima Aristotle Bayeux Tapestry birds body Britain called Cambridge University Press castle century chapter Chaucer Clarendon Press D. S. Brewer Deerfold described Dobson Domesday Book early Middle English England English literature example extent fact Floris and Blancheflour Geoffrey Geoffrey of Monmouth God's Godess Havelok the Dane Hegel hologram idea immateriality John John of Salisbury kind King Horn land Lazamon's Lazamon's Brut literary lond London manuscript Marcher Marx material means Medieval Middle English Middle English Romance narrative nature Nightingale Norman Conquest Old English Origins of Ancrene Orm's Ormulum Oxford University Press particular Pearsall poem poem's precisely romance form Routledge Saxon shape soul spellen spelling spirit story structure Studies term thing thought tion tradition trans translation vols Wace William Worcester Fragment words þat Þatt þet þis