Lori Ann Garner
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To persuade a plant
Hybridity of rhetoric in Harley 585
in Hybrid healing
Chapter DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526158505.00011
Online Publication Date:
13 Dec 2022
Abstract only
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Chapter 4 examines ways that herbs are sometimes invoked as actual sentient beings in early medieval medical texts. Bringing studies in medieval rhetoric to bear on orally performed incantations required by Old English healing recipes, this chapter offers a close analysis of the direct address employed in two medical texts within the Harley 585 manuscript in order to communicate with a wide range of plants, specifically mugwyrt (mugwort), wegbrade (waybread), attorlaðe (identified as cockspur grass or possibly betony), and mægðe (mayweed or chamomile) as they appear in the Lacnunga within the so-called ‘Nine Herbs Charm’ and the herbs ricinum (castor-oil plant) and peruica (periwinkle) as treated in the Herbarium. While the charms in the Herbarium and the Lacnunga both involve direct address in soliciting the respective herbs’ assistance, the specific manner in which the herbs are addressed – and, consequently, the relationships implied between healer and herb – differ markedly from each other. Such variation in the two types of address and the attendant methods of persuasion reflect distinct cultural differences between Latinate and Germanic modes of expression and conceptions of herbal healing, yet their juxtaposition within a single manuscript devoted to healing practice nonetheless suggests that these variant strains of thought were not seen as competing or mutually exclusive. As with many aspects of early medieval culture, such variation in the rhetorical devices employed for the persuasion of plants reflects the productive hybridity emerging from Germanic and Latinate influences and helps us better understand healers’ complicated conceptions of herbal power.
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Hybrid healing

Old English remedies and medical texts

eISBN:
9781526158505
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Cover Hybrid healing
Subjects:
Literature and Theatre
Keywords:
medieval medicine; oral tradition; folklore; hybridity; old English; Bald’s Leechbook; Lacnunga; Herbarium; medical lore; oral theory
Page Count:
344
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

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Phebe Gibbes

Book

Publication History:

Online Publication Date:
13 Feb 2019
Subjects:
  1. Literature and Theatre
Available In:
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Cover Crossing borders and queering citizenship

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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:
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Cover Howard Jacobson

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Author:
David Brauner

Book

Publication History:

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