The Textuality of Old English Poetry

Book excerpt: The modern reader knows Old English poetry as a discrete number of poems, set up and printed in units punctuated as modern sentences, and with titles inserted by modern editors. Carol Braun Pasternack constructs a reading of the poetry that takes into account the format of the verse as it exists in the manuscripts. In a detailed analysis, which takes up issues current in poststructuralist theory, she argues that the idea of "verse sequences" should replace the "poem" and "implied tradition" should replace the idea of "the author".