Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England (Poetics of Orality and Literacy) - Softcover

Amodio, Mark C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268020248 ISBN 13: 9780268020248

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004

Synopsis

"This is a splendid, rewarding book destined to reshape critical thinking about medieval poetry in English. Amodio combines groundbreaking theory with a deep, wide-ranging command of relevant scholarship to offer a uniquely inclusive perspective on an enormous and disparate collection of Old and Middle English poetry." —John Miles Foley, University of Missouri, Columbia
 
“This is a well-conceived, well-structured, and well-written book that fills a significant gap in current scholarly discourse. Amodio is extremely well-informed about current oral theory, and presents a beautifully integrated thesis. This clear-sighted and provocative book both promises and delivers much.” —Andy Orchard, University of Toronto
 
Mark Amodio's book focuses on the influence of the oral tradition on written vernacular verse produced in England from the fifth to the fifteenth century. His primary aim is to explore how a living tradition articulated only through the public, performance voices of pre-literate singers came to find expression through the pens of private, literate authors. Amodio argues that the expressive economy of oral poetics survives in written texts because, throughout the Middle Ages, literacy and orality were interdependent, not competing, cultural forces. After delving into the background of the medieval oral-literate matrix, Writing the Oral Tradition develops a model of non-performative oral poetics that is a central, perhaps defining, component of Old English vernacular verse. Following the Norman Conquest, oral poetics lost its central position and became one of many ways to articulate poetry. Contrary to many scholars, Amodio argues that oral poetics did not disappear but survived well into the post-Conquest period. It influenced the composition of Middle English verse texts produced from the twelfth to the fourteenth century because it offered poets an affectively powerful and economical way to articulate traditional meanings. Indeed, fragments of oral poetics are discoverable in contemporary prose, poetics, and film as they continue to faithfully emit their traditional meanings.
 

About this title

From the Publisher

A 2005 Choice Outstanding Academic Book

About the Author

Mark C. Amodio is professor of English at Vassar College.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0268020248
• ISBN 13: 9780268020248
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320