The Poetic Art of Aldhelm [Hardcover]

A substantial study of the Latin poetry of Aldhelm, 'the first English man of letters'.This is a book-length study of the poetic style of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, 'the first English man of letters' and one of the earliest Anglo-Saxons whose writings survive. Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for Aldhelm's Latin poetry and the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse.This is a book-length study of the poetic style of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, 'the first English man of letters' and one of the earliest Anglo-Saxons whose writings survive. Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for Aldhelm's Latin poetry and the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse.This is the first book-length study of the poetic style of Aldhelm of Malmesbury, the first English man of letters. Aldhelm is one of the earliest Anglo-Saxons whose writings survive, and the first to attempt to compose Latin metrical verse. Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for his idiosyncratic style and the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse. The book will not only interest Anglo-Saxonists, but more broadly those interested in the wider fields of Classics, medieval Latin, oral tradition and poetics.List of tables; Preface; List of short titles and abbreviations; Sigla of scholars cited; 1. Aldhelm's life and verse; 2. Aldhelm and the Anglo-Latin octosyllable; 3. Aldhelm's hexameter verse style and its origins; 4. Aldhelm's remembered reading in verse; Appendix 4.1: Parallel diction in Aldhelm's sources; 5. After Aldhelm: the Anglo-Latin legacy; Appendix 5.1: Parallel diction in Aldhelm's Anglo-Latin heirs; Appendix 5.2: a statistical survey of Anglo-Latin verse; Bibliography; Index. ...I found Orchard's arguments persuasive and his lists of lexical localizations impressive....Orchard's statistical tables represent an amazing amount of old-fashioned reading and remembering, very much in keeping with what we know of Aldhelm's and his lãÈ