Constructing the Poet’s ‘Now’: “Deor’s” Modernist Temporalities
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Andrew James Johnston
Abstract
In comparison with other Old English poems, “Deor” is unusual both for its stanzaic structure and its refrain. Furthermore, close to the end of the poem, the narrative voice shifts from one that appears to be comfortably heterodiegetic to a homodiegetic voice giving expression to a deep sense of loss. It is through that sense of loss, the article claims, that we witness the construction of an anguished sense of the ‘Now’. This article investigates the poem’s remarkable narrative, aesthetic and temporal features through the prism of a ‘global modernisms/global modernities’-approach as has been developed in the context of the world literature debate. The central argument unfolding here is that by opening itself up to the notion of an unknown future, “Deor” stages a complex, ‘modern’ entanglement of different temporalities. “Deor’s” specific modernism consists in the way in which it performs aesthetically, through an act of poetry, the mutually constitutive relationality of a past and a radical present.1
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Constructing the Poet’s ‘Now’: “Deor’s” Modernist Temporalities
- Beaumont and Fletcher Rewrite Cervantes: Love’s Pilgrimage, a Farcical Representation of Spain and a Subversion of Jacobean Patriarchy
- The Textual Apparatus of Empire in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
- Narrative Conflict and Implied Value Conflict: An Analysis of Aspects of the Implied Worldview of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002) and Hanif Kureishi’s The Body (2002)
- Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and the Element of Playfulness in Emily Dickinson
- Climate Change and the Ironies of Omniscience in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind
- Reviews
- John Gallagher. 2019. Learning Languages in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 286 pp., 19 illustr., £ 63.00.
- Review
- Michael D. J. Bintley. 2020. Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 45. Turnhout: Brepols, 231 pp., 13 illustr., € 75.00.
- Anthony Bale and Sebastian Sobecki (eds.). 2019. Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xviii + 498 pp., 4 figures, 3 maps, £ 95.00 (hb)/£ 20.00 (pb).
- A. W. Strouse. 2021. Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision. New York: Fordham University Press, 165 pp., $ 90.00 (hc)/$ 25.00 (pb).
- Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl (eds.). 2019. Cultural Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Routledge Environmental Humanities. Abingdon: Routledge, xiv + 268 pp., 19 figures, 3 tables, £ 120.00.
- Ina Habermann (ed.). 2020. The Road to Brexit: A Cultural Perspective on British Attitudes to Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, xvi + 256 pp., 7 figures, 1 table, £ 80.00.
- Corinna Lenhardt. 2020. Savage Horrors: The Intrinsic Raciality of the American Gothic. American Culture Studies 29. Bielefeld: transcript, 288 pp., 1 figure, € 45.00.
- Timo Müller. 2018. The African American Sonnet: A Literary History. Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, x + 172 pp., $ 99.00
- Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius (eds.). 2019. Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century. Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature. New York/Abingdon: Routledge, xiii + 209 pp., £ 120.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Constructing the Poet’s ‘Now’: “Deor’s” Modernist Temporalities
- Beaumont and Fletcher Rewrite Cervantes: Love’s Pilgrimage, a Farcical Representation of Spain and a Subversion of Jacobean Patriarchy
- The Textual Apparatus of Empire in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
- Narrative Conflict and Implied Value Conflict: An Analysis of Aspects of the Implied Worldview of Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002) and Hanif Kureishi’s The Body (2002)
- Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and the Element of Playfulness in Emily Dickinson
- Climate Change and the Ironies of Omniscience in Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind
- Reviews
- John Gallagher. 2019. Learning Languages in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 286 pp., 19 illustr., £ 63.00.
- Review
- Michael D. J. Bintley. 2020. Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture. Studies in the Early Middle Ages 45. Turnhout: Brepols, 231 pp., 13 illustr., € 75.00.
- Anthony Bale and Sebastian Sobecki (eds.). 2019. Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xviii + 498 pp., 4 figures, 3 maps, £ 95.00 (hb)/£ 20.00 (pb).
- A. W. Strouse. 2021. Form and Foreskin: Medieval Narratives of Circumcision. New York: Fordham University Press, 165 pp., $ 90.00 (hc)/$ 25.00 (pb).
- Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl (eds.). 2019. Cultural Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Routledge Environmental Humanities. Abingdon: Routledge, xiv + 268 pp., 19 figures, 3 tables, £ 120.00.
- Ina Habermann (ed.). 2020. The Road to Brexit: A Cultural Perspective on British Attitudes to Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press, xvi + 256 pp., 7 figures, 1 table, £ 80.00.
- Corinna Lenhardt. 2020. Savage Horrors: The Intrinsic Raciality of the American Gothic. American Culture Studies 29. Bielefeld: transcript, 288 pp., 1 figure, € 45.00.
- Timo Müller. 2018. The African American Sonnet: A Literary History. Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, x + 172 pp., $ 99.00
- Verena Laschinger and Sirpa Salenius (eds.). 2019. Neglected American Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century. Routledge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature. New York/Abingdon: Routledge, xiii + 209 pp., £ 120.00.
