New Books from Dr. Megan Hartman
The Department of English is pleased to announce the publication of two books this past fall by Dr. Megan Hartman, Chair of the Department of English.
Dr. Hartman’s monograph, titled Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon, was published by the Medieval Institute Publications of Western Michigan University.
Book Summary: This book traces the development of hypermetric verse in Old English and compares it to the cognate traditions of Old Norse and Old Saxon. The study illustrates the inherent flexibility of the hypermetric line and shows how poets were able to manipulate this flexibility in different contexts for different practical and rhetorical purposes. This analysis shows what degree of control the poets had over the traditional alliterative line, what effects they were able to produce with various stylistic choices, and how attention to poetic style aids literary analysis.
For more information, visit https://wmich.edu/medievalpublications/books/rawlinson-series
Dr. Hartman also published a co-edited collection of essays with Peter Grund, titled Studies in the History of the English Language VIII: Boundaries and Boundary-Crossings in the History of English
Book Summary: This volume collects essays that approach notions of creating, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in the history of the English language. The concept of boundaries is variously defined within linguistics depending on the theoretical framework, from formal and theoretical perspectives to specific fields and more empirical, physical, and perceptual angles. The contributions to this volume do not take one particular theoretical or methodological approach but, instead, explore how examining various types of boundaries—linguistic, conceptual, analytical, generic, physical—helps us illuminate and account for historical use, variation, and change in English. In their exploration of various topics in the history of English, contributions ask a range of questions: what does it mean to set up boundaries between time periods? When do language varieties have distinct boundaries and when do they overlap? Where do language users draw up clausal, constructional, semantic, phonetic/phonological boundaries? Thus, the chapters explore not only how boundaries illustrate synchronic and diachronic features in the history of the English language but also what we can discover by questioning perceived or actual boundaries.
For more information visit https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110643282/html
For more Faculty News from the Department of English at UNK, visit https://englishunk.substack.com/p/faculty-news-2020-2021