Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mortal Forms: Affect and Temporality in Early English Poetry

Mortal Forms: Affect and Temporality in Early English Poetry

Reynolds, Evelyn

Hardcover

Series: Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture

Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism

ISBN10: 0814216064
ISBN13: 9780814216064
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: Feb 17 2026
Pages: 212
Weight: 1.00
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In Mortal Forms, Evelyn Reynolds introduces the concept of the absorption-denial dynamic to explore how medieval English poetic forms simultaneously invite and resist imaginative and affective engagement. She thus offers a model for understanding how language engages audiences with that which is beyond language. This new methodology helps us understand how poetic forms communicate the unspeakable-especially of loss and grief, pain and disgust, joy and eternity-without circumscribing it. Connecting medieval English poetics to modern aesthetic theory and broader questions about the limits of representation, Reynolds considers Old and Middle English poems alongside one another and reads texts achronologically, thus revising standard histories of English poetics that insist on dramatic change from Old to Middle English. Overall, Reynolds deftly deploys her innovative theoretical framework to attend to how medieval poems, from Beowulf to Piers Plowman, navigate the limits of the unspeakable-and thus to develop an understanding of poetics that can enrich our capacity to meet the losses of our own time.

Also from

Reynolds, Evelyn

View All

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All