Łukasz Neubauer | University of Szczecin, Poland (original) (raw)
Papers by Łukasz Neubauer
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, 2020
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digita... more This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact phillip.fitzsimmons@swosu.edu.
Journal of Inklings studies, Oct 1, 2022
Quaestiones Oralitatis, 2015
Miroirs Arthuriens entre images et mirages, 2020
George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" and the Medieval Literary Tradition, 2014
Acta Poloniae Historica, 2020
The Dream of the Rood constitutes one of the most intriguing products of Old English literature, ... more The Dream of the Rood constitutes one of the most intriguing products of Old English literature, both in terms of its highly imaginative, heroicised depiction of Christ and the Cross and on account of its numerous Christian and pre-Christian intersections. One of the most arresting issues in it, however, particularly as regards the poem's cultural background, is its mention of a sorhleoð (l. 67), the 'sorrow-song', or 'dirge' that the disciples begin to sing once they have placed the body of the Saviour in the sepulchre. Given that there is no mention of any songs being chanted at the time of Christ's burial in the canonical Gospels, it seems rational to suggest that the anonymous poet must have supplied this 'missing' information on the basis of his own, perhaps somewhat antiquarian, knowledge of the burial customs in Anglo-Saxon England.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Ne] com Unlaf mid scipum": A Summary of the Current State of Research with Regard to Olaf Tryggvason's Assumed Presence at the Battle of Maldon](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/99999734/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne, 2019
In the fourteenth year of King AEthelred's reign (978-1013 and 1014-1016), most likely on 10 th o... more In the fourteenth year of King AEthelred's reign (978-1013 and 1014-1016), most likely on 10 th or 11 th August 991, 1 a sizeable fleet of viking ships sailed into the tidal estuary of the river Pant (today known as the Blackwater) near the town of Maldon. There the host of seaborne attackers appears to have moored their vessels near or at Northey Island whence they proceeded to meet the hurriedly assembled forces of the English defenders. Their subsequent encounter turned out to be one of the most celebrated, best documented, and most frequently discussed battles fought in the British Isles during the Viking Age. Apart from the anonymous alliterative poem usually referred to as The Battle of Maldon, 2 the dramatic events of 991 are recounted in a significant number of more or less dependable sources including, first and foremost, the roughly contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the 11 th-century Vita sancti Oswaldi. Valuable, if not at all times dependable, reports of the said encounter might also be found in several later texts, such as John of Worcester's Chronicon 1 The dating uncertainty springs from the discrepancies in three contemporary obits of the ealdorman Byrhtnoth produced in the monastic houses in Winchester, Ramsey (both of which have 11 th August), and Ely (10 th August). 2 As a rule, the poetic works in Old English bear no titles. The Battle of Maldon is thus an editorial designation which has been seen in use since 1834, following Benjamin Thorpe's first English edition of the poem in Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. Other, now rarely used, titles include
Adapting Canonical Texts in Children's Literature
Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
Working on the hugely successful series of novels known collectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, G... more Working on the hugely successful series of novels known collectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin is known to have drawn much of his inspiration from real-life events, landmarks in the history of the Middle Ages, such as the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, and the Crusades. It is not known, however, to what degree he actually relies in his work on sources of genuinely medieval provenance, since he himself frequently admits that amongst those that made the biggest impact on his writing are modern works of fiction, such as Maurice Druon’s heptalogy Les Rois maudits (2019 [1955–1977]). It is not impossible, though, that at least some features of Martin’s series have more or less direct parallels in medieval literature. One such element may be so-called kennings, the highly-stylised circumlocutions found in plenty in the poetic works of early Germanic literature and whose diction appears to shine through some of the series’ titles.
Journal of Inklings Studies
J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination is invariably abundant in all sorts of peoples, races, and other for... more J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination is invariably abundant in all sorts of peoples, races, and other forms of intelligent life, including those whose prototypes could be encountered in the natural world and which found their way into Tolkien’s fiction with little alteration to their physical properties and only some modification of their often deep-rooted framework of cultural associations in Indo-European lore. This last group includes, amongst others, the Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains, Tolkien’s ‘dangerous machine’, whose two principal affiliations appear to be with, on the one hand, the pre-Christian beliefs of the Germanic peoples (via the so-called beasts of battle) and, on the other, the pneumatological soteriology of the Roman Catholic Church (via the eagle as a creative recasting of the evangelical ‘dove’). The present article is an attempt to demonstrate that these seemingly incompatible ingredients in fact came to be quite seamlessly unified in The Hobbit and, in particular...
"The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth" may not be the best known work of Tolkien, but it has nonetheless ... more "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth" may not be the best known work of Tolkien, but it has nonetheless managed to provoke a considerable amount of academic discussion, both on account of its literary merits and the critical light it sheds upon the concept of heroism. Apart from that, it is also unusual in that it came to be captured on tape twice within just a year of its publication, first by the author himself, and then, a few months later, by the BBC. The article seeks to examine only the first of these recordings (without, however, disregarding the latter), taking into consideration such performative traits as the use of distinct voices for each of the characters, sound effects produced by use of various domestic appliances and/or elements of furniture, chanting and declaiming funerary songs and prayers, as well as, no less significantly, different household and street noises which could be heard from time to time in the background.
Kamienna chrzcielnica z koszalińskiej katedry, 2013
The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-... more The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-awakened Balrog not only constitutes one of the turning points in the War of the Ring, but it also provides a glimpse of what Tolkien may have envisioned as a Christian reinterpretation of the traditional model of Germanic heroism. The two notions are, of course, at a clearly detectable ethical variance, the former being fundamentally defined by the self-sacrificial dedication to the cause, the latter by the self-centred pursuit of transient glory. Seen in the light of medieval literature, the bridge episode might also be read as a conceptual reimagining of the roughly analogous situation in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, where the far-too-confident ealdorman Byrhtnoth allows the enemy safe passage across the ford, thus placing himself and his people at a considerable strategic disadvantage. In The Lord of the Rings, the role of Byrhtnoth is obviously assigned (albeit inversely) to the character of Gandalf whose courageous efforts to protect his companions accentuate the wizard's sense of responsibility, upwards (the cause) as well as downwards (his companions).
Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, 2020
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digita... more This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact phillip.fitzsimmons@swosu.edu.
Journal of Inklings studies, Oct 1, 2022
Quaestiones Oralitatis, 2015
Miroirs Arthuriens entre images et mirages, 2020
George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" and the Medieval Literary Tradition, 2014
Acta Poloniae Historica, 2020
The Dream of the Rood constitutes one of the most intriguing products of Old English literature, ... more The Dream of the Rood constitutes one of the most intriguing products of Old English literature, both in terms of its highly imaginative, heroicised depiction of Christ and the Cross and on account of its numerous Christian and pre-Christian intersections. One of the most arresting issues in it, however, particularly as regards the poem's cultural background, is its mention of a sorhleoð (l. 67), the 'sorrow-song', or 'dirge' that the disciples begin to sing once they have placed the body of the Saviour in the sepulchre. Given that there is no mention of any songs being chanted at the time of Christ's burial in the canonical Gospels, it seems rational to suggest that the anonymous poet must have supplied this 'missing' information on the basis of his own, perhaps somewhat antiquarian, knowledge of the burial customs in Anglo-Saxon England.
Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne, 2019
In the fourteenth year of King AEthelred's reign (978-1013 and 1014-1016), most likely on 10 th o... more In the fourteenth year of King AEthelred's reign (978-1013 and 1014-1016), most likely on 10 th or 11 th August 991, 1 a sizeable fleet of viking ships sailed into the tidal estuary of the river Pant (today known as the Blackwater) near the town of Maldon. There the host of seaborne attackers appears to have moored their vessels near or at Northey Island whence they proceeded to meet the hurriedly assembled forces of the English defenders. Their subsequent encounter turned out to be one of the most celebrated, best documented, and most frequently discussed battles fought in the British Isles during the Viking Age. Apart from the anonymous alliterative poem usually referred to as The Battle of Maldon, 2 the dramatic events of 991 are recounted in a significant number of more or less dependable sources including, first and foremost, the roughly contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the 11 th-century Vita sancti Oswaldi. Valuable, if not at all times dependable, reports of the said encounter might also be found in several later texts, such as John of Worcester's Chronicon 1 The dating uncertainty springs from the discrepancies in three contemporary obits of the ealdorman Byrhtnoth produced in the monastic houses in Winchester, Ramsey (both of which have 11 th August), and Ely (10 th August). 2 As a rule, the poetic works in Old English bear no titles. The Battle of Maldon is thus an editorial designation which has been seen in use since 1834, following Benjamin Thorpe's first English edition of the poem in Analecta Anglo-Saxonica. Other, now rarely used, titles include
Adapting Canonical Texts in Children's Literature
Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia
Working on the hugely successful series of novels known collectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, G... more Working on the hugely successful series of novels known collectively as A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin is known to have drawn much of his inspiration from real-life events, landmarks in the history of the Middle Ages, such as the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, and the Crusades. It is not known, however, to what degree he actually relies in his work on sources of genuinely medieval provenance, since he himself frequently admits that amongst those that made the biggest impact on his writing are modern works of fiction, such as Maurice Druon’s heptalogy Les Rois maudits (2019 [1955–1977]). It is not impossible, though, that at least some features of Martin’s series have more or less direct parallels in medieval literature. One such element may be so-called kennings, the highly-stylised circumlocutions found in plenty in the poetic works of early Germanic literature and whose diction appears to shine through some of the series’ titles.
Journal of Inklings Studies
J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination is invariably abundant in all sorts of peoples, races, and other for... more J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination is invariably abundant in all sorts of peoples, races, and other forms of intelligent life, including those whose prototypes could be encountered in the natural world and which found their way into Tolkien’s fiction with little alteration to their physical properties and only some modification of their often deep-rooted framework of cultural associations in Indo-European lore. This last group includes, amongst others, the Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains, Tolkien’s ‘dangerous machine’, whose two principal affiliations appear to be with, on the one hand, the pre-Christian beliefs of the Germanic peoples (via the so-called beasts of battle) and, on the other, the pneumatological soteriology of the Roman Catholic Church (via the eagle as a creative recasting of the evangelical ‘dove’). The present article is an attempt to demonstrate that these seemingly incompatible ingredients in fact came to be quite seamlessly unified in The Hobbit and, in particular...
"The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth" may not be the best known work of Tolkien, but it has nonetheless ... more "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth" may not be the best known work of Tolkien, but it has nonetheless managed to provoke a considerable amount of academic discussion, both on account of its literary merits and the critical light it sheds upon the concept of heroism. Apart from that, it is also unusual in that it came to be captured on tape twice within just a year of its publication, first by the author himself, and then, a few months later, by the BBC. The article seeks to examine only the first of these recordings (without, however, disregarding the latter), taking into consideration such performative traits as the use of distinct voices for each of the characters, sound effects produced by use of various domestic appliances and/or elements of furniture, chanting and declaiming funerary songs and prayers, as well as, no less significantly, different household and street noises which could be heard from time to time in the background.
Kamienna chrzcielnica z koszalińskiej katedry, 2013
The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-... more The dramatic confrontation which ensues on the bridge of Khazad-dûm between Gandalf and the just-awakened Balrog not only constitutes one of the turning points in the War of the Ring, but it also provides a glimpse of what Tolkien may have envisioned as a Christian reinterpretation of the traditional model of Germanic heroism. The two notions are, of course, at a clearly detectable ethical variance, the former being fundamentally defined by the self-sacrificial dedication to the cause, the latter by the self-centred pursuit of transient glory. Seen in the light of medieval literature, the bridge episode might also be read as a conceptual reimagining of the roughly analogous situation in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, where the far-too-confident ealdorman Byrhtnoth allows the enemy safe passage across the ford, thus placing himself and his people at a considerable strategic disadvantage. In The Lord of the Rings, the role of Byrhtnoth is obviously assigned (albeit inversely) to the character of Gandalf whose courageous efforts to protect his companions accentuate the wizard's sense of responsibility, upwards (the cause) as well as downwards (his companions).
The Long Shadow of Fáfnir: Dragons in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. A Christian Perspective , 2003
Notwithstanding some notable differences which inevitably did exist between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.... more Notwithstanding some notable differences which inevitably did exist between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis with regard to their spiritual backgrounds, everyday habits, tastes in literature, attitudes to the institution of marriage, etc., the two Oxford scholars, colleagues, friends, and writers are often put side by side in order to capture the not-quite-definable quality of their complex friendship and the impact they certainly had upon one another's fiction. One of the first publications to tackle these intricate issues with a more methodical approach was J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), the in many ways pioneering book by Humphrey Carpenter, with an entire chapter (IV.4 'Jack') devoted to the relationship between the two great men (143-52).1 Two years later, Carpenter's second book, 1 Naturally, Lewis does not disappear from the pages of Carpenter's book after that. In fact, his presence in Tolkien's biography is more or less ongoing, with the numerous ups and downs of their friendship until the death of Lewis in 1963 (1977: 241) and even beyond (259). As for the primacy of critical insight into the lives and works of Tolkien and Lewis (as well as Charles Williams), with an entire subchapter devoted to the 'Common Elements" between them (78-9), the victor's laurels should, I think, go to Clyde S. Kilby and his book Tolkien and The Silmarillion (1976). Not without its merits, it is, however, significantly less complex in its analytic scope than those sections of Carpenter's Biography which deal with the relationship between Tolkien and Lewis.