God's Exiles and English Verse

On The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry

John D. Niles

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English

University of Exeter Press
12 July 2022

Literary studies: classical, early & medieval; Literary studies: poetry & poets; Medieval history; History of religion; The Early Church

Series: Exeter Medieval

This monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as 'The Exeter Book'. Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed'n 2006), has re-named the manuscript 'The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry'. The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology.

God's Exiles and English Verse is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture.

The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction.

Part One, consisting of three chapters, introduces certain of the book's main themes, addresses matters of date, authorship, audience, and the like, and evaluates hypotheses that have been put forth concerning the origins of the Exeter Anthology in the south of England during the period of the Benedictine Reform.

Part Two, the main body of the book, begins with a long chapter, divided into seven sections, that introduces the contents of the Exeter Anthology poem by poem in a more systematic fashion than before, with attention to the overall organization of the Anthology and certain factors in it that have a unifying function. The five shorter chapters that follow are devoted to topics of special interest, including the volume's possible use as a guide to vernacular poetic techniques, its underlying worldview, its reliance on certain thematically significant keywords, and its intertextual versus intratextual relations. The riddles, especially those of a sexual content, receive attention in a chapter of their own.

In addition, there is a translation of the popular poem The Wanderer into modern English prose, a folio-by-folio listing of the contents of the Exeter Anthology, and a listing of a number of the poems of the Anthology with notes on their genre, according to Latin generic terms familiar to educated Anglo-Saxons.

This book is the first of its kind - an integrative, book-length critical study of the Exeter Anthology.

By: John D. Niles
Imprint: University of Exeter Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 477g
ISBN: 9781804130698
ISBN 10: 1804130699
Series: Exeter Medieval
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 12 July 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

John D. Niles is Frederic G. Cassidy Professor of Humanities (Emeritus), University of Wisconsin - Madison AND Professor of English (Emeritus), University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the Modern Language Association of America, Medieval Academy of America, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and the American Folklore Society.

Reviews for God's Exiles and English Verse: On The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry

God's Exiles and English Verse is a volume that serious students of early medieval English poetry will want to have on their shelves. It treats anew the intellectual acumen and artistry of poets and all those who preserved the poetry in this marvelous book. For that, we are in Professor Niles's debt. -- Patrick W. Conner * Speculum * Niles's call for a more contextualized reading of the Exeter Book poems is a much-needed corrective to current literary critical methods, which too often ignore the religious and manuscript context of the Exeter Book poems... Niles's attentiveness to the whole of the collection enriches his approach to individual poems. -- Peter Ramey * Journal of English and Germanic Philology * Often reading individual poems within such a rigid frame work will lead to flat analyses... Niles carefully and successfully avoids this problem. His readings of the Exeter Anthology poems feel fresh, even when they adhere to traditional frameworks of analysis... It is likely that future work on Exeter Anthology poems will have to contend with Niles's thesis. -- Michael Matto * Anglia * Readers of this volume will come away from it with a much better understanding of this fascinating Anthology and the place it occupies in the history of English literature. Emulating the dedicated compilers' tour de force and Bishop Leofric's donation of the volume to Exeter Cathedral, Niles has provided us with a generous scholarly legacy that will no doubt be regarded as a landmark in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies. -- Mercedes Salvador-Bello, Universidad de Sevilla * Review of English Studies * ... an extremely useful resource for any investigation into the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. -- Tiffany Beechy * Modern Philology * Consistently insightful... Niles writes with authority and elegance. -- Hugh Magennis * English Studies * John Niles's book is groundbreaking and reveals outstanding literary-critical acumen developed over a long and distinguished career. It will be essential reading for those seeking explication of individual Exeter Book poems or groups of poems. -- Greg Waite * Parergon *