Old English Poetics: The Aesthetics of the Familiar in Anglo-Saxon England. By Elizabeth M. Tyler. York: York Medieval Press, 2006. Pp. xvi + 194. $85. By Thomas A. Bredehoft. Toronto Old English Series. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 183. $67.95.

Old English Poetics is an important publication which offers a fresh and convincing perspective on the subject of the workings of Old English traditional poetry and of how poets related to the tradition in which they participated. this is a subject that has exercised scholars over a long period, particularly since the advent of oral-formulaic theory, though, as Tyler observes, it has received less attention in recent years—partly, she argues, because modern expectations of poetic style are at odds with those reflected in Old English poetry, and partly because the style of Old English poetry resists historicization, "a particular problem in a critical environment increasingly engaged with the ideological significance of texts situated in specific historical contexts" (p. 2). The poetics of Old English verse has continued to interest some leading researchers, however, and Tyler thoughtfully engages in this new study with significant contributions produced over the past twenty years or so by Karl Reichl, John Niles, M. S. Griffith, Anita Riedinger, Andy Orchard, Thomas Bredehoft and others. In this critical context, she takes up the challenging problem of what we might refer to as "tradition and the Individual talent" in Old English poetry. What price originality in a tradition that is inherently formulaic? Can a concept of style be reconciled with formulaicity, bearing in mind that formulaic theorists insist that "[t]he prime function of the formula must be utilitarian rather than aesthetic" (p. 111)? How do we read Old English poetry "with the poet in view"?

Hugh Magennis
Queen's University Belfast