Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: 'Beowulf' as Metaphor [Hardcover]

Alvin A. Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 1998

The aim of Gold-Hall and Earth -Dragon is to re-create as fully as possible for modern readers the original force of the poetic language of Beowulf. Lee makes use of a wide, archetypal literary context for Beowulf to provide illuminating parallels and contrasts with poems and fictions from other times and places. He demonstrates how the poem's symbolic system reveals itself through the metaphorical workings of the Old English words, patterns of imagery, and more general narrative structures, and how the poem might have been experienced and interpreted by the Anglo-Saxons in the light of other Old English poems. The critical tools that Lee uses - combining certain techniques of New Criticism and close reading with postmodern theories of the self-referentiality of language and with Northrop Frye's conceptions of structure and polysemy in literature - make possible a fresh new account of Beowulf as a work that is very much alive in its poetic language, a finely wrought symbolic work of imagining, still resonant with meanings old and new.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alvin A. Lee is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at McMaster University, a research associate at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, and general editor of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division; 1 edition (December 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080204378X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802043788
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,583,480 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kennings and the Christian Context, May 24, 2000

By 

Victoria H. Deen (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon: 'Beowulf' as Metaphor (Hardcover)

The book is divided into two major sections.

The first section's greatest contribution is its perspective on individual Old English words. If you are intrigued by kennings, then there are two or three interesting chapters in this book which seem to offer a novel treatment of the subject. This work has a comprehensive bibliography and seems solidly based in text.

The Christian context, in structure, language, character, etc. is the overarching theme of the second half of the book, which is divided into chapter length essays. This section would be most useful to someone investigating the pagan/Christian juxtaposition in Beowulf. At times I disagreed with various points/premises, but the overall argument was compelling.