Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry

Pauline E. Head

feb 1997 · State University of New York Press

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Representation and Design examines Old English poetry from the point of view of its interpretation, beginning with the assumption that Anglo-Saxon concepts of reading were probably very different from those that dominate our own literary culture. The book insists on the semantic interaction of representation and design, two aspects of Old English poetry that traditionally have been examined separately, and draws on Anglo-Saxon pictorial art as a model throughout. It disputes the conventional dichotomy that interpretation makes between content and form; redefines content as a particular mode of representation—a reflection of texts and ideologies; and recognizes form as complex and meaningful design so that the "two" no longer can be distinguished in the process of interpretation.

The author examines a range of texts—Beowulf, The Wanderer, the Exeter Book riddles, manuscript illuminations, and the sculpture of the Ruthwell cross—in order to consider the place of the reader, the frame, and the past in Anglo-Saxon representation. Through this process, she traces a fluidity of signification and suggests that an Anglo-Saxon aesthetic would be both complex and enigmatic.

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Pauline E. Head is Associate Professor of English at York University.