Multiple Scripts and Narrative

Medieval English in Conversation with Modern Japanese
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-63667-413-1
Verlag: Peter Lang

Buch, Englisch, Band 13, 210 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 462 g

Reihe: Medieval Interventions

This book investigates the practice of mixing writing systems while composing a literary text. Through assessment of highly distinct writing contexts, it explores how the choice of script, in its own right, plays a fascinating role as a prominent narrative feature. The book’s primary focus is on the context of Old English and the ‘signed’ Cynewulf poems as examples of vernacular verse transcribed in the Latin alphabet, but which also employ textual runes. However, the book challenges the confines of conventional medievalist scholarship by presenting a parallel perspective shift analysis of the same phenomenon as witnessed in the radically different cultural environment of Modern Japanese and in the globally bestselling fiction of a contemporary writer, Haruki Murakami. Through a comparative focus on people and on reception, the author breaks the problematic seal on early English studies and invites medieval texts to join in an intrinsically interdisciplinary conversation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Runner, Jacob

Über Autor(innen)

Jacob W. Runner is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Kanazawa University in Japan, where he teaches English, Latin, and Comparative Literature. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Nottingham and an MLitt in Mediaeval English from the University of St Andrews.