Some of the most celebrated passages of Old English poetry are speeches: Beowulf and Unferth's verbal contest, Hrothgar's words of advice, Satan's laments, Juliana's words of defiance, etc. Yet Direct Speech, as a stylistic device, has remained largely under-examined and under-t…
An examination of what dialogues and direct speech in Old Norse literature can convey and mean, beyond their immediate face-value.
An examination of what dialogues and direct speech in Old Norse literature can convey and mean, beyond their immediate face-value.
Critics have traditionally treated the Old English poems about saints as individual, autonomous works, relating but little to one another except in a broadly generic way. Bjork challenges the traditional view with an examination of the major structural feature that all the poems…