Unlikeness Is Us: Fourteen from the Exeter Book

by Christopher Patton

Description

"Unlikeness Is Us presents fourteen new translations of Old English poems preserved in the tenth-century Exeter Book, including well-known works like "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer," as well as others rarely seen in translation. Prioritizing their integrity as poetry, Patton's translations work the Anglo-Saxon alliterative line into a patterned, four-beat contemporary English form, retaining the relentless forward drive of the originals and adhering to sometimes idiosyncratic scribal show more punctuation. Through his critical introduction, notes and commentary, Patton presents the reader with the complex history of these texts' transcription, translation and interpretation, departing from long-dominant Augustinian premises in favour of an approach that embraces the materiality of text and "a world animate, alarming, marvellous, and weird.""--Provided by publisher. show less