Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	1701
Title	Riddling in Anglo-Saxon England and Beyond, III: Marvellous Metaphors
Date/Time	Thursday 9 July 2015: 14.15-15.45
Sponsor	The Riddle Ages: An Anglo-Saxon Riddle Blog
Organiser	Megan Cavell, Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham
	Jennifer Neville, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London
Moderator/Chair	Pirkko Koppinen, Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London
Paper 1701-a	'Wundor' and 'Wrætlice': Wondrous Wordplay in the Old English Riddles (Language: English) Sharon Rhodes, Independent Scholar, Massachusetts Index Terms: Daily Life; Language and Literature - Old English
Paper 1701-b	Warriors and Their Battle Gear: Conceptual Blending in Riddles 5, 17, and 20 of the Exeter Book (Language: English) Karin Olsen, Department of English Language & Culture, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Index Terms: Language and Literature - Old English; Rhetoric
Paper 1701-c	Enigmatic Discourses in Riddle 49 (and Another New Solution) (Language: English) Jennifer Neville, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London Index Terms: Daily Life; Language and Literature - Old English
Abstract	Session III interrogates literary techniques employed by a range of the Exeter Book Riddles, including Riddles 5, 17, 20, 44, and 49, focusing in particular on metaphor. These techniques range from the use of high poetic language to defamiliarise the familiar, to conceptual blending, to the deliberately deceptive deployment of familiar discourses. Together these papers reveal the rhetorical sophistication of these apparently casual, humorous texts and thus justify the serious issues that have been raised in all three of the sessions.