Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology [Hardcover]

If a literary movement arises but no one notices, is it still a movement? InSpeculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A Critical Anthology, Dennis Wilson Wise argues that the answer is yes. Over the last ten decades, poets working in fantasy, science fiction, and horror have collectively brought forth a revival in alliterative poetics akin to what once happened in the mid-fourteenth century. Altogether, this anthology collects for the first time over fifty speculative poetsseveral of whom are previously unpublishedfrom across North America and Europe. Alongside such established names as C. S. Lewis, Patrick Rothfuss, Edwin Morgan, Poul Anderson, Jo Walton, P. K. Page, and W. H. Auden, this anthology includes representative texts from cultural movements such as contemporary neo-Paganism and the Society for Creative Anachronism. A lengthy critical introduction by the editorwritten accessibly for a general audienceexplains and contextualizes the Modern Revival for critics and readers alike, and extensive footnotes offer aids to anyone new to medieval history or Norse mythology. Overall, this indispensable anthologythe first major academic book to focus on speculative poetryestablishes where the medieval meets the modern in the hitherto unrecognized Modern Alliterative Revival.Dennis Wilson Wiseis professor of practice and director of undergraduate studies for the English Department at the University of Arizona.

The phrase alliterative poetry immediately connotes archaism, and a literary tradition almost moribund since the mid-fifteenth century. University of Arizona academic Dennis Wilson Wise suggests that the form has been revived almost unnoticed over the last hundred years, and subtly shapes some modern literature, despite the indifference or even opposition of arbiters of taste... Wises dogged truffle-hunting across this redolent if sometimes rubbish-strewn terrain has uncovered some real prizes, at least some of which arel��