Daniel Remein | University of Massachusetts, Boston (original) (raw)

Papers by Daniel Remein

"And when it comes to neglecting fundamentals, I think I have nothing to learn, and indeed I conf... more "And when it comes to neglecting fundamentals, I think I have nothing to learn, and indeed I confuse them with accidentals." (Beckett, Molloy).

The refrain-words of Fitt IV of Pearl play on the varyingly pitched semantic valences of the word... more The refrain-words of Fitt IV of Pearl play on the varyingly pitched semantic valences of the word pyȝt, often in alliteration with the phrase precios perle(ȝ), and-in two of the five stanzas-also with the word pyece. Attention to the function of pyȝt in the language of this section-especially in relation to the dynamics of a proliferation of ornament and desire as played out within the spatial dynamics of place or site-will provide the main conceptual thread of this commentary.

This essay explores the encounter of mid-twentieth-century Berkeley Renaissance poets Jack Spicer... more This essay explores the encounter of mid-twentieth-century Berkeley Renaissance poets Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser with the criticism and pedagogy of philologist Arthur Brodeur in order to (re)activate a trajectory not yet taken in the study of the aesthetics of Old English poetry. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2015) 6, 174-190.

This essay attempts to write variety with a variety of whales. It is an experiment in attempting ... more This essay attempts to write variety with a variety of whales. It is an experiment in attempting to think and write with Anglo-Saxon poesy concerning whales in Anglo-Saxon England in interface with recent archaeological studies and the remains of actual whales from Anglo-Saxon England. Two notions from Charles Olson's recently edited notes on 'Projective Verse II' are particularly guiding: (1) that 'The poem's job is to be able to attend, and to get attention to, the variety of order in creation'; and (2) that 'A poem is a "line" between any two points in creation (a poem's beginning and its end). In its passage it includes -in the meaning here it passes through -the material of itself. Such a material is the "field" ' (Olson, 2010, 15, 16).

This essay addresses the state of the translation of poetry from Anglo-Saxon and Old English in A... more This essay addresses the state of the translation of poetry from Anglo-Saxon and Old English in Anglo-Saxon and Old English studies. As an alternative to a conservative tendency in the state of translation from Old English the essay points to the usefulness of thinking about Old English poetry and its translation from the position of the more radical moments of 20th and 21st century poetics. Translation from Old English poetry tends to result in or follow the direction of dominant and conservative poetics. The essay first examines this conservative tendency as it can be made legible by relatively recent theoretical languages from translation theory with reference to deconstruction. The essay then turns to a philologically minded reading of W.

Conference Presentations by Daniel Remein

In the growing corpus of scholarship on Ashmole 61, the relationship between the overtly didactic... more In the growing corpus of scholarship on Ashmole 61, the relationship between the overtly didactic, or "conduct" texts, and the variety of romances preserved in the manuscript has emerged as a rich site of critical attention. Myra J. Seaman cites the relationship between the romances and the conduct texts as "cohabitants of a given volume," reframing conduct literature as "not so much restricting as enabling" within the context of the late medieval commodification and marketing of bourgeois traits and manners. 1 At the same time, Rory G.

My premise today is simple: the bulk of speech acts (written or oral) that translate Old English ... more My premise today is simple: the bulk of speech acts (written or oral) that translate Old English poetry into PDE occur not within the translations printed for classrooms, scholars, or more general readerships, but in the pages of student notebooks, and even more primarily, in the patchwork of talk around the seminar table as a class goes over a given reading together. How might we think about, teach, and practice translation from OE differently when theorized from the point of view of these provisional and pedagogical modes of translation? This paper is largely an account of how two such translations point to this question as part of an effort to ground our thinking about more adventurous translation from OE in concrete pedagogies, and social-formations. Along the way, I'll borrow a bit from semiotician C.S. Peirce, to help make sense of it all. I came to these questions in part because of two translations and their particular relationship to the OE classroom: 1) the near-complete working or classroom translations of Beowulf by mid-century avant-garde west-coast poets Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer, whose work with philologist Arthur G. Brodeur at UC Berkeley constitutes the central node of my current book project. And, 2) a remarkable translation of the approach to the Grendel-mere passage in Beowulf produced by Aditi Machado-a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Denver and editor for the translation journal Asymptote, who I met in February 2015 when Anglo-Saxonist Donna Beth Ellard invited me to give a translation workshop for her Beowulf seminar of that quarter.

Talks by Daniel Remein

Harvard Medieval Colloquium, 18 Februrary, 2016

Book Reviews by Daniel Remein

Interviews by Daniel Remein

"And when it comes to neglecting fundamentals, I think I have nothing to learn, and indeed I conf... more "And when it comes to neglecting fundamentals, I think I have nothing to learn, and indeed I confuse them with accidentals." (Beckett, Molloy).

The refrain-words of Fitt IV of Pearl play on the varyingly pitched semantic valences of the word... more The refrain-words of Fitt IV of Pearl play on the varyingly pitched semantic valences of the word pyȝt, often in alliteration with the phrase precios perle(ȝ), and-in two of the five stanzas-also with the word pyece. Attention to the function of pyȝt in the language of this section-especially in relation to the dynamics of a proliferation of ornament and desire as played out within the spatial dynamics of place or site-will provide the main conceptual thread of this commentary.

This essay explores the encounter of mid-twentieth-century Berkeley Renaissance poets Jack Spicer... more This essay explores the encounter of mid-twentieth-century Berkeley Renaissance poets Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser with the criticism and pedagogy of philologist Arthur Brodeur in order to (re)activate a trajectory not yet taken in the study of the aesthetics of Old English poetry. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2015) 6, 174-190.

This essay attempts to write variety with a variety of whales. It is an experiment in attempting ... more This essay attempts to write variety with a variety of whales. It is an experiment in attempting to think and write with Anglo-Saxon poesy concerning whales in Anglo-Saxon England in interface with recent archaeological studies and the remains of actual whales from Anglo-Saxon England. Two notions from Charles Olson's recently edited notes on 'Projective Verse II' are particularly guiding: (1) that 'The poem's job is to be able to attend, and to get attention to, the variety of order in creation'; and (2) that 'A poem is a "line" between any two points in creation (a poem's beginning and its end). In its passage it includes -in the meaning here it passes through -the material of itself. Such a material is the "field" ' (Olson, 2010, 15, 16).

This essay addresses the state of the translation of poetry from Anglo-Saxon and Old English in A... more This essay addresses the state of the translation of poetry from Anglo-Saxon and Old English in Anglo-Saxon and Old English studies. As an alternative to a conservative tendency in the state of translation from Old English the essay points to the usefulness of thinking about Old English poetry and its translation from the position of the more radical moments of 20th and 21st century poetics. Translation from Old English poetry tends to result in or follow the direction of dominant and conservative poetics. The essay first examines this conservative tendency as it can be made legible by relatively recent theoretical languages from translation theory with reference to deconstruction. The essay then turns to a philologically minded reading of W.

In the growing corpus of scholarship on Ashmole 61, the relationship between the overtly didactic... more In the growing corpus of scholarship on Ashmole 61, the relationship between the overtly didactic, or "conduct" texts, and the variety of romances preserved in the manuscript has emerged as a rich site of critical attention. Myra J. Seaman cites the relationship between the romances and the conduct texts as "cohabitants of a given volume," reframing conduct literature as "not so much restricting as enabling" within the context of the late medieval commodification and marketing of bourgeois traits and manners. 1 At the same time, Rory G.

My premise today is simple: the bulk of speech acts (written or oral) that translate Old English ... more My premise today is simple: the bulk of speech acts (written or oral) that translate Old English poetry into PDE occur not within the translations printed for classrooms, scholars, or more general readerships, but in the pages of student notebooks, and even more primarily, in the patchwork of talk around the seminar table as a class goes over a given reading together. How might we think about, teach, and practice translation from OE differently when theorized from the point of view of these provisional and pedagogical modes of translation? This paper is largely an account of how two such translations point to this question as part of an effort to ground our thinking about more adventurous translation from OE in concrete pedagogies, and social-formations. Along the way, I'll borrow a bit from semiotician C.S. Peirce, to help make sense of it all. I came to these questions in part because of two translations and their particular relationship to the OE classroom: 1) the near-complete working or classroom translations of Beowulf by mid-century avant-garde west-coast poets Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer, whose work with philologist Arthur G. Brodeur at UC Berkeley constitutes the central node of my current book project. And, 2) a remarkable translation of the approach to the Grendel-mere passage in Beowulf produced by Aditi Machado-a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Denver and editor for the translation journal Asymptote, who I met in February 2015 when Anglo-Saxonist Donna Beth Ellard invited me to give a translation workshop for her Beowulf seminar of that quarter.

Harvard Medieval Colloquium, 18 Februrary, 2016

by Ármann Jakobsson, Mariusz Mayburd, Andrea Maraschi, Marion Poilvez, Sarah Bienko Eriksen, Anna Katharina Heiniger, Sean Lawing, Daniel Remein, Andrew McGillivray, Sandra Straubhaar, Arngrímur Vídalín, Zuzana Stankovitsova, Rebecca Merkelbach, Christopher Crocker, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir, Ingibjörg Eyþórsdóttir, Martina Ceolin, Védís Ragnheiðardóttir, and Yoav Tirosh

Published in March 2020, in the series Northern Medieval World: on the Margins of Europe. This... more Published in March 2020, in the series Northern Medieval World: on the Margins of Europe.

This anthology of 23 articles by Old Norse scholars from 10 countries offers new critical approaches to the study of the many manifestations of the paranormal in the Middle Ages. The guiding principle of the collection is to depart from symbolic or reductionist readings of the subject matter in favor of focusing on the paranormal as human experience and, essentially, on how these experiences are defined by the sources. The authors work with a variety of medieval Icelandic textual sources including family sagas, legendary sagas, romances, poetry, hagiography and miracles, exploring the diversity of paranormal activity in the medieval North.

This volume questions all previous definitions of the subject matter, most decisively the idea of saga realism, and opens up new avenues in saga research.