Rune Games

Literature & Fiction

Osborn, Marijane

Longland, Stella

Mythology & Folk Tales

Penguin??Books

Romancing the Goddess: Three Middle English Romances about Women

Poetry

University of Illinois Press

Take three exciting medieval romances, translate them - two for the first time - into modern English verse, and you'll have only part of Marijane Osborn's Romancing the Goddess. Osborn introduces and translates the three tales, all dealing with women cast adrift upon the northern and Mediterranean seas, then shows how the stories forge a hitherto missing link with worship of a savior goddess in the distant past.

History & Criticism

Beowulf, the primary epic of the English language, is a powerful heroic poem eloquently expressive of the Anglo-Saxon culture that produced it. In this beautiful book a designer, a poet, and a specialist in Anglo-Saxon literature recreate Beowulf for a modern audience. Interweaving evocative images, a new interpretation in verse, and a running commentary that helps clarify the action and setting of the poem as well as the imagery, the book brings new life to this ancient masterpiece. Randolph Swearer’s oblique and allusive images create an archaic, mysterious atmosphere by depicting in forms and shadows the world of Germanic antiquity―Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon art, artifacts, and scenery. At the same time, Raymond Oliver gives Beowulf a world in which to live, filling in the cultural gaps not with a thick matrix of footnotes but with poetry itself. Unlike many translations of Beowulf in existence, Oliver’s retelling of the epic uses modern verse forms for poetic effect and includes a wealth of historically authentic descriptions, characterizations, and explanations necessary for modern readers. Marijane Osborn completes the process of restoring context to the poem by supplying a commentary to clarify the historical and geographical dimensions of the story as well as the imagery that accompanies it. All three work together to bring a likeness of an old and elusive tale to today’s reader. “The book’s design and the commentary on it provide a unique visual complement to Oliver’s poem… A strange and moving story, compellingly told and seriously interesting to any serious reader of books.”―Fred C. Robinson, from the Introduction

Beowulf: A Likeness

Oliver, Raymond

Swearer, Randolph

British & Irish

Yale University Press

A vivid verse translation with an Introduction by Fred C. Robinson, with 85 reproductions of ancient artifacts from England and Scandinavia.

Beowulf: A verse translation with treasures of the ancient North

Robert Springer/Pentangle Press

Marijane Osborn demonstrates that Chaucer structured the Canterbury Tales after the astrolabe, an Arabic Islamic time-keeping device. Chaucer’s fascination with this device also accounts for the sense of time and astronomy in the Tales.

Time and the Astrolabe in the Canterbury Tales (Series for Science and Culture)

University of Oklahoma Press

Beowulf: A Guide to Study

Wipf and Stock

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Books by Osborn, Marijane