Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1982
Published In
A Feast Of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs
Abstract
In "A Feast of Creatures," Craig Williamson recasts nearly one hundred Old English riddles of the Exeter Book into a modern verse mode that yokes the cadences of Aelfric with the sprung rhythm of Gerard Manley Hopkins.Like the early English riddlers before him, Williamson gives voice to the nightingale, plow, ox, phallic onion, and storm-wind. In lean and taut language he offers us mead disguised as a mighty wrestler, the sword as a celibate thane, the silver wine-cup as a seductress, the horn transformed from head-warrior to ink-belly or battle-singer. In his notes and commentary he gives us possible and probable solutions, sources, and analogues, a shrewd sense of literary play, and traces the literary and cultural contexts in which each riddle may be viewed. In his introduction, Williamson traces for us the history of riddles and riddle scholarship.
Published By
University of Pennsylvania Press
Editor(s)
Craig Williamson
Recommended Citation
Craig Williamson, translator. (1982). A Feast Of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-english-lit/70
Comments
This work features an introduction by Craig Williamson.
The introduction of this work is freely available courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Press.