Mortal Forms: Affect and Temporality in Early English Poetry (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814216064)

In Mortal Forms, Evelyn Reynolds introduces the concept of the "absorption-denial dynamic" to explore how medieval English poetic forms simultaneously invite and resist imaginative and affective engagement. She thus offers a model for understanding how language engages audiences with that which is beyond language. This new methodology helps us understand how poetic forms communicate the unspeakable--especially of loss and grief, pain and disgust, joy and eternity--without circumscribing it. Connecting medieval English poetics to modern aesthetic theory and broader questions about the limits of representation, Reynolds considers Old and Middle English poems alongside one another and reads texts achronologically, thus revising standard histories of English poetics that insist on dramatic change from Old to Middle English. Overall, Reynolds deftly deploys her innovative theoretical framework to attend to how medieval poems, from Beowulf to Piers Plowman, navigate the limits of the unspeakable--and thus to develop an understanding of poetics that can enrich our capacity to meet the losses of our own time.

Author: Evelyn Reynolds
ISBN-10: 0814216064
ISBN-13: 9780814216064
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Language: English
Published: 02/17/2026
Pages: 212
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs