Vulnerable bodies: the poetics of protection in the Old English Metrical Charms

<p>This thesis offers the first complete metrical and stylistic analysis of the twelve Old English metrical charms. The verse found in these texts is rife with apparent irregularities, and scholars have historically labeled them poor verse, or have neglected discussions of style in favour of a...

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Detaylı Bibliyografya
Yazar: Batten, C
Diğer Yazarlar: Leneghan, F
Materyal Türü: Tez
Dil:English
Baskı/Yayın Bilgisi: 2020
Konular:
Diğer Bilgiler
Özet:<p>This thesis offers the first complete metrical and stylistic analysis of the twelve Old English metrical charms. The verse found in these texts is rife with apparent irregularities, and scholars have historically labeled them poor verse, or have neglected discussions of style in favour of anthropological and source studies. Those who have addressed the poetics of the charms have largely dismissed them as meaningless features meant only to hypnotise the listener. Yet this thesis argues the metrical charms are not arbitrary sound, but narrative verse, containing powerful imagery that invokes themes appearing elsewhere in the Old English literary corpus. They also feature significant rhetorical and ornamental features lauded as aesthetic achievements in other Old English verse.</p> <p>Drawing on past scholarship on Old English style and merging close reading with rigorous metrical analysis, this thesis argues that the unusual metrical and stylistic features of the charms are not defects but a function of their genre, the substance of a meaningfully different Old English poetic style. This study explores the ways in which the charms’ stylistic ornamentation, imagery, and word choice highlight their central ideologies and anxieties, and the ways in which supposed metrical ‘irregularities’ in fact serve aesthetic purposes and accommodate prescribed magical formulae. It invites us to reconsider the criteria by which we judge Old English verse, and to challenge dichotomies of ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ metre, rigorous ‘classical’ verse and ‘decayed’ late verse.</p> <p>Stylometric analysis and close reading offer literary insight into the charms as well, and this thesis explores the ways in which the charms safeguard human individuals and communities against invasive agents. I argue that the charms equate disease, physical and spiritual dangers, and even falling victim to theft, with submission, defeat, or loss of control in intimate conflict with the Other. These texts seek to reinstate boundaries that have been violated — civilization and wilderness, inside and outside — by maintaining or restoring human bodies and spaces as inviolate wholes.</p>