Myth in Early Northwest Europe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9801190 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carolyne Larrington (0000-0003-2491-0597, St. John's College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 124 |
| Issue | 506 |
| Pages | 114-116 |
| Publication date | 2009-02-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The English Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ehr/cen376 |
| OpenAlex | W1989144121 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
This volume takes its origins from the Fifth Brook Symposium on ‘Language and Myth’, held at Manchester University in 2001. Among its dedicatees is Phill Pulsiano, a scholar in early Germanic literature, who died young, some years ago, and it is sobering to note the publishers’ back-cover tribute to Stephen Glosecki, the editor of this volume, who did not live to see its publication. The book starts with Glosecki's lively and, in places, poetic introduction both to the history of mythological theory over the last two hundred years and to the individual contributions here. Thickly qualified by long footnotes, this is an exemplary introduction, emphasising that, while myth and ritual are ‘elementally intertwined’ (p. xv), one is not the source of the other. Glosecki suggests that myths are essentially ‘shifting micro-stories’ (p. xxvii), a chain of motifs rather than narratives, always refracting an unreconstructable, and perhaps never existent, prior version. John Niles's chapter argues that myths tell truth through lies, linking the individual and the social. Craig Davis continues the general discussion of myth as a cultural phenomenon, defining myth as ‘patterns of eventuality’ and arguing, controversially, that Beowulf must be seen as a dead end; the Anglo-Saxon epitome of a pagan past, now put aside for ever. Glosecki's own article gives an account of the OE metrical charms, ‘thorny little patches of verse, bristling with recipes’ (p. 47). Following Niles, he deploys the striking parallelism: myth is to truth as metaphor is to language. The charms evoke ‘micro-stories’, bringing mythic time into intersection with normal time. Fluent, vigorous translations of some charms are included here; the final lines on ‘the invisible little beasts’, thought by the Anglo-Saxons to bring illness, strike a poignant note
Art · Art history · Aside · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Mythology · Narrative · Poetry · Tribute · Classics · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.31 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2010 - 2025 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |