Megan Cavell
Search for other papers by Megan Cavell in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
,
Jennifer Neville
Search for other papers by Jennifer Neville in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
, and
Victoria Symons
Search for other papers by Victoria Symons in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
General Introduction
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526133724.00009
Online Publication Date:
23 Mar 2020
Abstract only
Log-in for full text

This first chapter introduces how riddles work in the tradition of early medieval England and its neighbours. It argues that the balance between the communal and individual, struck by Aldhelm in the preface to his Enigmata, lies at the heart of the early medieval riddling tradition and underlies its current popularity. A brief reading of Heanmode Twa (Exeter Book Riddle 42) illustrates the interplay between the demand for solution and the other kinds of work—on value, literacy, sex, interpretation—that these texts initiate. An overview of scholarship, from 1857 to the present day, follows. The chapter notes particularly the past focus on solution-hunting, questions about genre, different contexts for interpretation, linguistic play, and categorisation. Above all it stresses the multifarious nature of the riddles themselves and the scholarship this has inspired. Finally the General Introduction summarises the book’s chapters, divided into three sections. Part I, ‘Words’, exemplifies interpretations based on close readings of texts. Part II, ‘Ideas’, engages with theory to examine how the riddles invite new ways of thinking about objects, relationships, and experiences. Part III, ‘Interactions’, showcases the ways in which the riddles lead us to make connections with other fields, languages, times, and places.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

All of MUP's digital content including Open Access books and journals is now available on manchesterhive.

 

eISBN:
9781526133724
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Subjects:
Literature and Theatre
Keywords:
Early medieval riddles; Old English poetry; Anglo-Latin enigmata; Exeter Book; Aldhelm; Symphosius; Bern riddles; Tatwine; Eusebius
Page Count:
344
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 158 40 9
Full Text Views 110 27 3
PDF Downloads 155 35 4
Cover Hartly House, Calcutta

Hartly House, Calcutta

Phebe Gibbes

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
13 Feb 2019
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

This novel is a designedly political document. Written at the time of the Hastings impeachment and set in the period of Hastings’s Orientalist government, Hartly House, Calcutta (1789) represents a dramatic delineation of the Anglo-Indian encounter. The novel constitutes a significant intervention in the contemporary debate concerning the nature of Hastings’s rule of India by demonstrating that it was characterised by an atmosphere of intellectual sympathy and racial tolerance. Within a few decades the Evangelical and Anglicising lobbies frequently condemned Brahmans as devious beneficiaries of a parasitic priestcraft, but Phebe Gibbes’s portrayal of Sophia’s Brahman and the religion he espouses represent a perception of India dignified by a sympathetic and tolerant attempt to dispel prejudice.
Cover Crossing borders and queering citizenship

Crossing borders and queering citizenship

Civic reading practice in contemporary American and Canadian writing

Author:
Zalfa Feghali

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
16 Apr 2019
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

Can reading make us better citizens? This book sheds light on how the act of reading can be mobilised as a powerful civic tool in service of contemporary civil and political struggles for minority recognition, rights, and representation in North America. Crossing borders and queering citizenship reimagines the contours of contemporary citizenship by connecting queer and citizenship theories to the idea of an engaged reading subject. This book offers a new approach to studying the act of reading, theorises reading as an integral element of the basic unit of the state: the citizen. By theorising the act of reading across borders as a civic act that queers citizenship, the book advances an alternative model of belonging through civic readerly engagement. Exploring work by seven US, Mexican, Canadian, and Indigenous authors, including Gloria Anzaldúa, Dorothy Allison, Gregory Scofield, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Erín Moure, Junot Díaz, and Yann Martel, the book offers sensitive interpretations of how reading can create citizenship practices that foreground and value recognition, rights, and representation for all members of a political system.
Cover Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson

Author:
David Brauner

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
12 Jan 2021
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
Redeem Token

This is a comprehensive and definitive study of the Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson. It offers lucid, detailed and nuanced readings of each of Jacobson’s novels, and makes a powerful case for the importance of his work in the landscape of contemporary fiction. Focusing on the themes of comedy, masculinity and Jewishness, the book emphasises the richness and diversity of Jacobson’s work. Often described by others as ‘the English Philip Roth’ and by himself as ‘the Jewish Jane Austen’, Jacobson emerges here as a complex and often contradictory figure: a fearless novelist; a combative public intellectual; a polemical journalist; an unapologetic elitist and an irreverent outsider; an exuberant iconoclast and a sombre satirist. Never afraid of controversy, Jacobson tends to polarise readers; but, love him or hate him, he is difficult to ignore. This book gives him the thorough consideration and the balanced evaluation that he deserves.