This study theorizes how Old English poetry functioned for readers of tenth-century manuscripts. Coupling the rigour of formalist analysis with the innovations of post-structuralist concepts, Professor Pasternack maps the codes and conventions that guided readers in their construction of poems. She defines the verse as 'inscribed', situated between oral and written discourse. Altering our vision of individual poems, which to date has been based on modern printed editions, she coins the terms 'movement' and 'verse sequence' to reconceptualize the poetry according to its presentation in...

The modern reader knows Old English poetry as a discrete number of poems, set up and printed in units punctuated as modern sentences, and with titles inserted by modern editors. Carol Braun Pasternack constructs a reading of the poetry that takes into account the format of the verse as it exists in the manuscripts. In a detailed analysis, which takes up issues current in poststructuralist theory, she argues that the idea of "verse sequences" should replace the "poem" and "implied tradition" should replace the idea of "the author."

Nothing less than a rethinking of what we mean when we talk about "men" and "women" of the medieval period, this volume demonstrates how the idea of gender -- in the Middle Ages no less than now -- intersected in subtle and complex ways with other categories of difference. Responding to the insights of postcolonial and feminist theory, the authors show that medieval identities emerged through shifting paradigms -- that fluidity, conflict, and contingency characterized not only gender, but also sexuality, social status, and religion. This view emerges through essays that delve into a wide...