Reviews for Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English

The average rating for Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-10-10 00:00:00 JOSE PEREZ "What has happened is that the modern scholar, guided by the common sense of his own age, has cut the meanings up and rearranged its parts so that they answer to associations which make sense in his own cultural world. In doing so, as likely as not, he has obscured the very connections and unities that gave the word its Greek meaning in the first place." (pg. 33) A fascinating book on a perilous topic. Clarke is essentially after what Homer means by ψυχή (psuke), which now we associate with the soul. The core of his argument is that in Homer, this word is not part of a dualistically structured human being on the model of 'body-and-soul' but refers to the last breath as it leaves the dying man and can also be used in a mythical frame for a dead person in relation to Hades. The key point is that the thing which goes off to Hades is not a sort of immaterial core of human vitality during life. One way to note the difference is to see that for us, 'heart' can be either a physical organ which pumps blood and a non-physical feeling/prompting entity...but for Homer there was no 'either.' This is odd for us and essentially entails a contradiction. But to create space for such a move and show a precedent, Clarke uses the way that some words could either be an 'abstract' idea or a god functioning fully as a 'person' (for example: Θ/θάνατος: death). The topic takes Clarke through a wide range of words and ideas, including views of the afterlife. I think the strongest part of the book is Part II where he deals mostly with what he calls the θυμός (thumos) family of words. Here there is some wonderfully strong and deliberate thinking about taking Homer seriously for what he is actually saying without imposing modern categories on his thought. I don't feel qualified to really evaluate a lot of what Clarke argues, but I do have some misgivings. He seems to make a few linguistically unrealistic moves. One is a serious downplaying of polysemy. I agree that we cannot chop up word uses into tidy modern dictionary entries but it doesn't work to collapse a range of word uses into a "single field" (pg. 33). Further, he argues that the two senses of psuke are working in "distinct and unconnected" ways (pg. 205). He is trying to prevent modern categories from obscuring Homer here but seems to be working too hard. All in all this was a fantastic and thought provoking book. One of the key insights is actually that Homer needs to be dealt with on this topic as a separate entity from the ongoing history of Greek thought, so "Homeric words have Homeric meanings, and they belong in a separate lexicon" (pg. 25). I found this to be stimulating in much the same way as E.R. Dodds' "The Greeks and the Irrational." Highly recommended to understand Homer and for insights into how to go about lexicography in ancient languages.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-20 00:00:00 Isabelle Langer This book was not what I expected. I expected to read the medieval tales of the robbers with minimal discussion. Instead, the book was largely discussion with summaries and excerpts from the tales. The discussion was very good. Keen identified several patterns in the tales and made a good central argument of literature reflecting class struggles. The introduction to the second edition changes the thesis by stating the intended audience was the upper-lower class and the lower-middle class rather than the previously believed lower class. One of the most interesting observations was that the audiences glorified the robbers, rather than those who rose against the existing order and sought to use violence to bring about change. This observation led to a discussion that those who stood up on principle universally lost...their lives. Conversely, a large number of the robbers adapted to the system and succeeded...at least, that is how their epics ended. The moral for the audience was to give up ideals of a utopia and craft out your resistance by adapting to the system and using it to your advantage.