Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture publishes monographs and essay collections comprising new research informed by current critical methodologies on the literary cultures of the Middle Ages. We are interested in all periods, from the early Middle Ages through to the late, and we include post-medieval engagements with and representations of the medieval period (or 'medievalism'). 'Literature' is taken in a broad sense, to include the many different medieval genres: imaginative, historical, political, scientific, religious. While we welcome contributions on the diverse cultures of medieval Britain and are happy to receive submissions on Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Latin and Celtic writings, we are also open to work on the Middle Ages in Europe more widely, and beyond.

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Spo/za-Inflected Poetics Old English Andreas by Denis Ferhatovic Throughout this essay, I focus on the spolium, a fragment crosses several boundaries, in order to illuminate the poeti cratic Anglo-Saxon text, the poem now called Andreas. A several literal and metaphorical instances of recycling of ob Ages, on the Continent, and in England, I discuss in detail which animated artifacts appear as both results of and par angel sculpture from a temple set in motion by Jesus and t umn from the Mermedonian dungeon activated by Andrew But it is all too easy to look at the Hampi ruin and fashion only two images of the past. One as a testimonial to imperial grandeur, the oth as a testimonial to the human capacity for d struction. Surely the past is more than a mere fossil? ... Shiv feels a sudden rush of ambition: he would like to ... take this fragment from the medieval past and reconstruct an entire range of possibilities.1

The Old English Exodus, a vigorous poetic retelling of the most exciting parts of the eponymous book, stands out from its immediate context, Junius 11, a manuscript of Biblical verse, and, indeed, from the rest of the Anglo-Saxon literature. One of the distinct features of its poetics is its self-conscious handling of two unexpected evocative objects to explore the larger themes of connection and disruption, tradition and innovation. The first, surprising for a poem taking place in and around the desert and the sea, is the burh, ''city, fortification, enclosure,'' that emerges, on a horizontal axis, in various permutations throughout the epic voyage of the Israelites, and shows continuity within discontinuity. The second crucial artifact, the shape-shifting pillar separates Moses' troop from their surroundings while connecting them vertically to the biblical past and the Christian and eschatological future. Through my investigation of these two evocative objects I hope not only to illuminate a new aspect of an Old English poetics, but also to make an earlymedievalist contribution to recent discussions of fusions between the human and the artifactual in ''thing theory.''Keywords The Old English Exodus Á Poetics Á Evocative objects Á Thing theory Scholars ranging from anthropologists to psychologists have always looked to the role that things play in human lives to reveal deeper interactions at heart of the structures that interest them, be they societies or psyches. The relatively recent trend called ''thing theory'' draws on and extends these critical endeavors. Thing theory argues that we use objects for many purposes, among them to ''help us make our