Multiple Scripts and Narrative

This book examines the use of multiple writing systems and scripts' role as a narrative feature. It evaluates the Old English context and mixed alphabet/rune Cynewulf poems. It oppugns the insularity of early English studies through contrasting assessment of the phenomenon in the radically distinct, living multiscript context of Modern Japanese.

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.

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

List of Figures - List of Tables - Acknowledgments - Introduction: The Semiotics of Script Choice - Early English Multiliteralism in Context - Cynewulf in the Exeter Book: Christ II, Juliana - Cynewulf in the Vercelli Book: The Fates of the Apostles, Elene - Perspective Shift: Contrasts with Modern Japanese Polygraphy - Contributive Literature: Transcribing Perceptions of Voice - Coda - Index.