John Niles (scholar)

Last updated

John D. Niles (born 1945) is an American scholar of medieval English literature best known for his work on Beowulf and the theory of oral literature.

Contents

Career

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his higher degrees (B.A. in English, 1967; PhD in Comparative Literature, 1972), Niles taught for an initial four years as Assistant Professor of English at Brandeis University. He then was invited to join the faculty of the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained for twenty-six years until taking early retirement. In 2001 he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for ten years in the Department of English, was named the Frederic G. Cassidy Professor of Humanities, and was a Senior Fellow at the UW Institute for the Humanities. After his retirement from UW-Madison in 2011 he has remained active in research as Professor Emeritus at both UC Berkeley and UW-Madison. [1]

Niles is the author of nine books on Old English literature and related topics. He has edited or co-edited another eight books, in addition to upwards of sixty scholarly articles and other publications. During the 1980s he conducted fieldwork into singing and storytelling traditions in Scotland, particularly among Scottish Gypsy and Traveller Groups, including the noted storyteller Duncan Williamson. This research resulted in his book Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature (1997), as well as his later study Webspinner: Songs, Stories and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller (2022). In 2005 he taught a seminar at the Newberry Library, Chicago, on the early history of Old English studies. [2] This became the kernel of his 2015 book The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England 1066-1901, a sustained account of the history of Anglo-Saxon studies. His researches into the archaeology and prehistory of early Northwest Europe led to the joint publication Beowulf and Lejre (2007). This is about the prehistoric Danish site (at the present-day hamlet of Lejre, Zealand) where much of the imagined action of Beowulf is set. His 2019 book God’s Exiles and English Verse: On the Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry is the first integrative book-length critical study of the earliest anthology of English-language poetry, a late-tenth-century collection that includes such poems as The Wanderer and The Seafarer.

In 2022, Niles was the honorand of a collection of articles, first published as a special issue of the journal Humanities, and subsequently as the book Old English Poetry and Its Legacy. [3]

Selected publications

Monographs

Edited collections

Related Research Articles

<i>Beowulf</i> Old English epic poem

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.

Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lejre</span> Town in Region Zealand, Denmark

Lejre is a railway town, with a population of 3,097, in Lejre Municipality on the island of Zealand in east Denmark. It belongs to Region Zealand. The town's Old Norse name was Hleiðr or Hleiðargarðr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scop</span> Poet as represented in Old English poetry

A scop was a poet as represented in Old English poetry. The scop is the Old English counterpart of the Old Norse skald, with the important difference that "skald" was applied to historical persons, and scop is used, for the most part, to designate oral poets within Old English literature. Very little is known about scops, and their historical existence is questioned by some scholars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heorot</span> Location in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf

Heorot is a mead-hall and major point of focus in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. The hall serves as a seat of rule for King Hrothgar, a legendary Danish king. After the monster Grendel slaughters the inhabitants of the hall, the Geatish hero Beowulf defends the royal hall before subsequently defeating him. Later Grendel's mother attacks the inhabitants of the hall, and she too is subsequently defeated by Beowulf.

"Widsith", also known as "The Traveller's Song", is an Old English poem of 143 lines. It survives only in the Exeter Book, a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the late-10th century, which contains approximately one-sixth of all surviving Old English poetry. "Widsith" is located between the poems "Vainglory" and "The Fortunes of Men". Since the donation of the Exeter Book in 1076, it has been housed in Exeter Cathedral in southwestern England. The poem is for the most part a survey of the people, kings, and heroes of Europe in the Heroic Age of Northern Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Junius manuscript</span> Tenth century illustrated manuscript in the collections of the Bodleian Library

The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.

<i>Beowulf</i>: The Monsters and the Critics 1936 lecture by J. R. R. Tolkien that transformed Beowulf criticism

"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections.

Michael D. C. Drout is an American Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College. He is an author and editor specializing in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction and fantasy, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Andreas is an Old English poem, which tells the story of St. Andrew the Apostle, while commenting on the literary role of the "hero". It is believed to be a translation of a Latin work, which is originally derived from the Greek story The Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the City of Anthropophagi, dated around the 4th century. However, the author of Andreas added the aspect of the Germanic hero to the Greek story to create the poem Andreas, where St. Andrew is depicted as an Old English warrior, fighting against evil forces. This allows Andreas to have both poetic and religious significance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Brunanburh (poem)</span> Old English poem

The "Battle of Brunanburh" is an Old English poem. It is preserved in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a historical record of events in Anglo-Saxon England which was kept from the late ninth to the mid-twelfth century. The poem records the Battle of Brunanburh, a battle fought in 937 between an English army and a combined army of Scots, Vikings, and Britons. The battle resulted in an English victory, celebrated by the poem in style and language like that of traditional Old English battle poetry. The poem is notable because of those traditional elements and has been praised for its authentic tone, but it is also remarkable for its fiercely nationalistic tone, which documents the development of a unified England ruled by the House of Wessex.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Saxon riddles</span> Part of Anglo-Saxon literature

Anglo-Saxon riddles are a significant genre of Anglo-Saxon literature. The riddle was a major, prestigious literary form in early medieval England, and riddles were written both in Latin and Old English verse. The pre-eminent composer of Latin riddles in early medieval England was Aldhelm, while the Old English verse riddles found in the tenth-century Exeter Book include some of the most famous Old English poems.

Nicholas Howe (1953–2006) was an American scholar of Old English literature and culture, whose Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (1989) was an important contribution to the study of Old English literature and historiography.

Stephen O. Glosecki was a scholar of Old English language and literature. Glosecki was raised in Springfield, Illinois, and educated at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School. He received his undergraduate degree from Beloit College, and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from University of California, Davis. A professor of Old English at University of Alabama at Birmingham, he was the author of books and articles on Old English literature, particularly on shamanism and folklore, and was notable for his contributions to the anthropological study of early Germanic literature. He died of cancer in 2007, aged 55. A collection he edited, Myth in Early Northwest Europe, was published posthumously; his introduction was called "lively and, in places, poetic", and his translations of some of the Anglo-Saxon metrical charms were praised as "fluent, vigorous".

Helen Damico was a Greek-born American scholar of Old English and Old English literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Robert Chase</span> American academic (1935–1984)

Colin Robert Chase was an American academic. An associate professor of English at the University of Toronto, he was known for his contributions to the studies of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. His best-known work, The Dating of Beowulf, challenged the accepted orthodoxy of the dating of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf—then thought to be from the latter half of the eighth century—and left behind what was described in A Beowulf Handbook as "a cautious and necessary incertitude".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gevninge helmet fragment</span> 6th or 7th century artefact

The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.

Marijane Osborn is an American academic. Her research spans literary disciplines; she is a specialist in Old English and Norse literature and is known as an early pioneer of ecocriticism. Osborn has published on runes, Middle English, Victorian and contemporary poets and writers, and film, and is a translator and fiction writer. She is Professor Emerita at UC Davis.

Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe is an American medievalist specializing in Old English. Her work focuses on orality and literacy, manuscript cultures, and questions of embodiment and agency in Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. She is Professor Emerita of English at UC Berkeley.

References

  1. ↑ "John Niles". University of California, Berkeley . Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  2. ↑ "Graduate Seminar: John D. Niles". Newberry Library. 2005. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Old English Poetry and Its Legacy, ed. by Robert E. Bjork (Basel: MDPI, 2023), ISBN   978-3-0365-6233-9, ISBN   978-3-0365-6234-6, doi : 10.3390/books978-3-0365-6234-6.
  4. ↑ Robinson, Fred C. (1999). "Rev. of Bjork & Niles (eds.), A Beowulf Handbook". Speculum . 74 (3): 696–98. doi:10.2307/2886769. JSTOR   2886769.
  5. ↑ Williams, David J. (2000). "Rev. of Bjork & Niles (eds.), A Beowulf Handbook". The Yearbook of English Studies . 30 (Time and Narrative): 271–72. doi:10.2307/3509264. JSTOR   3509264.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.