JANIE STEEN. Verse and Virtuosity: The Adaptation of Latin Rhetoric in Old English Poetry.

Abstract

Verse and Virtuosity is a study of the adaptation of the rhetoric of Christian Latin poetry by practitioners of Old English verse. Steen rightly steers clear of the temptation to see the transmission of rhetorical techniques as resting only in the reception of classical rhetorical manuals (Cicero, Quintilian, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, progymnasmata, etc.). Instead, she sees the reception of classical rhetoric as resting in—and being recoverable through—Old English poets' informed reading of the patterning and articulation of meaning in Latin verse. The core of Verse and Virtuosity consists of readings of Old English poems against their Latin models: The Phoenix and Lactantius’s Carmen de ave phoenice, of which it is a version with exegesis; the OE Judgment Day II with De die iudicii; Exeter Book riddles 35 and 40 with ‘Lorica’ (no. 33) and ‘Creatura’ (no. 100) from Aldhelm’s Enigmata. These are capped with a chapter on Cynewulf’s union of the Latinate and native rhetorical traditions. A very brief conclusion summarises what the author has tried to accomplish.