Author Description

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List Of Figures -- List Of Abbreviations -- Note On Sources -- Prologue: Taking Hold Of Naked Thought -- The Shape Of The Book -- Introduction: Histories Of Attention -- Distracted In The Desert -- Flyaway Thoughts, Tonsure, And The Managed Mind -- Reading With And Against Distraction -- Reforming Attention -- 1 Chanting Lips And Wandering Minds: From Psalmic Overfamiliarity To Hermeneutic English -- Distraction And The Psalms -- Glossing For Attention With The Winchester Vocabulary -- In Clear Words 2 Living In Enigmate: Aldhelm's Enigmata And Hermeneutic Latin -- Aldhelmian Complexity -- Medieval Reading And Riddling -- Sustaining Attention With The Hermeneutic Style -- How To Pay Attention In An Enigma -- Silent, Obscure Words And Glossing Tongues -- 3 Concentrated Poems: Late Old English And The Poetics Of Attention -- Poetry To Occupy The Mind -- The Uses Of Difficulty -- Distraction, Defamiliarization, And Interpretation -- Personal Devotion And Literary Form -- 4 Lessons In Distraction -- Butan Hygeleaste (without Frivolity) -- Scripting Distraction Mid Scearpum Pricele (with A Sharp Point) -- 5 Welcome (in)attention: Focusing On Absence*-3pt -- How To Catch A Disappearing Christ -- Occult Crypts And Daedalian Wit -- Reading At The Gates Of Hell -- Coda: Distracting And Difficult Style -- Bibliography -- Index Erica Weaver. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Electronic Reproduction. Oxford Available Via World Wide Web.