Oral-Formulaic Diction in the Middle English Verse Romance – PDF

Oral-Formulaic Diction in the Middle English Verse Romance analyses the use of oral formulae in the Middle English verse romance between the 13th and 14th centuries. The methodological basis for the conducted analysis has been constituted by the classic studies of conventional language structures of literary works which were created in the context of cultures dominated by oral models of social interaction and defined by the interaction of oral and literate modes of aesthetic expression. The argument stems from the Lord and Parry methodological tradition, in the form augmented by recent developments in oral-formulaic studies. By applying close reading to a number of romance texts, it seeks to define the precise nature of the poems’ reliance on the techniques of composition, transmission and delivery characteristic of oral literary cultures. The parallel aim of the book is to describe and partially retrieve the mental grids governing formulaic distribution within those particular literary works.

Keywords: English chivalric romance, 13th and 14th century poetry.

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Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz (born 1972) – graduated in 1996 from Lublin’s M. Curie-Skłodowska University with an MA degree in English. He received his PhD from the University of Warsaw in 2000. Since then he has been teaching at Warsaw University’s Institute of English Studies. His main academic interests are: Medieval and Renaissance English literature, the poetics and cultural context of oral literature, the folk and literary ballad, modern poetry, the refl ection of literature’s historical and cultural background, especially the function of time and space in poetic imagery, scansion and metre, literature and music, science fiction and fantasy. He is the author of over twenty academic publications, which include studies of Geoffrey Chaucer, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.