What scientific observations is Bede likely to have brought to bear on the Easter controversy? What interest did the Anglo-Saxons take in precious stones and what did they know about them? Are heroic values rejected in one of Cynewulf's poems? What was Anglo-Saxon carpentry like? These are among the questions taken up in this volume. Observations to determine the day of the equinox in Bede's Northumbria; Anglo-Saxon lapidary knowledge (particularly in the Old English Lapidary); lists of saints' resting-places as an aspect of the cult of saints in the intellectual and social life of Anglo-Saxon England; the symbolism of the Pacx/Pax/Paxs coin legend; the construction of some wooden roofs, walls, floors, window-frames, doors and, especially, the frame of a spire: these topics are subjected to keen examination – the last an often neglected line of enquiry. In the field of vernacular poetry there are analyses of the Beowulf poet's artistic point of view when treating his hero's
Work in this volume offers insights into the Anglo-Saxons' literature, both Latin and vernacular, their study of Latin, their documents, art and artefacts, agricultural practices, their cognizance of Roman predecessors, and later Icelandic knowledge of them. The literary contributions include a major study of Aldhelm's Latin prose style, arguing against its supposed 'Irishness' and placing it firmly in the main tradition of rhetorical amplification coming through from ancient times. In the field of vernacular poetry a prevalent, but illogical, interpretation of a thematically significant obscurity in Beowulf is challenged, and Cynewulf's penitential concern is emphasized. The physical remains of the eighth-century watermill at Tamworth and a compiled survey of early medieval mill terminology are correlated. Old English place-names containing Latin loan words are reconsidered. The sources of a fourteenth-century Icelander's knowledge of late Anglo-Saxon history are further delineated
This volume mostly deals with manuscripts, directly or indirectly. Of outstanding importance is the first ever attempt to list all the surviving manuscripts that were written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England. There are studies of particular manuscripts: three Latin poems are added to the very few known to have been composed in the time of Athelstan the first; the damaged page in the Exeter Book of Old English poetry is made to yield a better text than before; the distinctive sense of scholarship and literary style that went into a late Old English editing of one of King Alfred's prose works is revealed. Another study assembles the widely scattered evidence for slave raiding and slave trading in England from the Anglo-Saxon settlement to the advent of the Normans. Other interpretative contributions examine word order in Beowulf and make further advances in the critical appreciation of The Seafarer.
Through close analysis and careful weighing of evidence the authors of this volume tackle a wide range of questions in Anglo-Saxon history and culture and often arrive at opinions different from those generally accepted. Contributions are made on subjects as diverse as the Anglo-Saxon settlement, early Northumbrian history, the 'weapon' vocabulary of Beowulf, world history in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a woman's stock of clothes in the mid-tenth century and vernacular preaching before Ælfric. Historical studies are represented by an examination of the position of the ætheling in matters of royal succession, by a refutation of the doctrine of muddle in the records of earliest Northumbria and by an identification of the sources of the Chronicle's knowledge of world history, showing in particular that the compilation of the Chronicle and the composition of the Old English Orosius are not likely to have been closely connected, as has often been thought. The usual comprehensive
The forty-third volume of Anglo-Saxon England contains three contributions on Latin learning in the early part of the period, two focusing on texts being studied at Canterbury, and a third discussing the recording of Cuthbert's cult at Lindisfarne. Old English poetry is well represented by three contributions which exemplify new approaches towards poetic diction and its sources, and reinterpret Cynewulf's use of runes. Old English prose meanwhile receives further attention through a reassessment of its intended audience, and in an analysis of Andreas. There is also a discussion of an unusual prayer first attested in the Leofric Missal. The theme of kingship is addressed in an article on different representations of King Cnut in Old English, Latin and Old Norse texts, and in an extended review of demonstrably or arguably 'royal' books in the Anglo-Saxon period. Each article is preceded by a short abstract.
The fortieth volume of Anglo-Saxon England reflects the vitality of work in this field across the usual wide range of disciplines. Poetry and prose in Old English and in Latin are well represented, complemented here by studies of Anglo-Saxon legislation and coinage, in their respective historical contexts. Also included is a second series of addenda and corrigenda to Helmut Gneuss's indispensable handlist of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Each article is preceded by a short abstract. The volume concludes with the annual bibliography of publications for the year 2010, in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies.
The contents of the forty-first volume of Anglo-Saxon England range across the period from the seventh century to the eleventh, and across the disciplines from Old English and Insular Latin literature to monetary history, ecclesiastical history, manuscript studies, sculpture, and cookery. Collectively, the articles represent the vitality of Anglo-Saxon studies not only in Britain but also in Ireland, France, Germany and the United States of America. Each article is preceded by a short abstract.
Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture – linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic – and which promotes the more unusual interests – in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 39 include: 'Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about kings?' by Nicholas Brooks, 'The Old English Life of St Neot and the legends of King Alfred' by Malcolm Godden, 'The Edgar poems and the poetics of failure in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' by Scott Thompson Smith and an article focusing on the new discovery of an eighteenth Agnus Dei penny of King Æthelred the Unready by Simon Keynes and Mark Blackburn. A comprehensive bibliography concludes the volume, listing publications on Anglo-Saxon England during 2009.
The forty-second volume of Anglo-Saxon England begins with an article which introduces a 'new' Anglo-Latin poet to a modern audience, and ends with an article exploring the activities of a Norman archbishop of Canterbury when exiled from England in the early 1050s. Other disciplines well represented here are palaeography, philology, Old English language and literature, tenth-century diplomacy, and numismatics. Extended treatment is given to the reception in Anglo-Saxon England of a Latin life of St Ægidius, which lies behind the Old English Life of St Giles in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 303. It is also a privilege for the journal to include the first scholarly publication of the recently discovered seal-matrix of a certain Ælfric, presumed to have been a layman who flourished in the late tenth century; the object itself has been acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Each article is preceded by a short abstract.
The forty-fifth volume of Anglo-Saxon England focusses on various aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and history from the seventh to the seventeenth century. In the field of Old English literature, contributions examine a ninth-century homily fragment, The Dream of the Rood, The Seafarer, and the Old English translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae. A contribution which explores references to the senses in a wide range of vernacular texts is complemented by another which reconsiders the iconography of the Fuller Brooch. The network of fortifications recorded in the Burghal Hidage is re-interpreted here as a product of political developments in the later 870s; and a new edition of the 'Ely memoranda' reminds us that the religious houses of the tenth and eleventh centuries functioned also as major agricultural estates. Finally, the contribution of seventeenth-century antiquaries to the development of Anglo-Saxon studies is remembered in a study of an early Anglo-Saxon Grammar.
The forty-fourth volume of Anglo-Saxon England contains three contributions on religious culture in eighth-century Northumbria, one discussing the conception of church buildings, one linking Bede and John of Beverley, and a comparison of Miracula Nynie episcopi and Arator. A discussion of the historical context of the battle of the Winwœd is complemented by a reconsideration of a literary work which influenced modern perceptions of King Edward the Confessor. Old English prose is represented by an analysis of the preface of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and an examination of Ælfric's treatment of the apostles. Old English poetry is covered by a contribution making the case for a new approach to the texts, and one addressing the riddles in the Exeter Book. This volume also covers military organization throughout the period, the practice of penance in the late eleventh century, and the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon hoard near Buckingham in 2014.
This book explores ideas of community and of the relationship of individuals to communities widely evident in Old English poetry. It pays particular attention to the context in which major poetic manu
This book is a study of the theology of the Trinity as expressed in the literature and art of the late Anglo-Saxon period. It examines the meaning of the representations of the Trinity in tenth- and
This book reveals the interrelationship of text and picture in the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. It locates the manuscript within the broader cultural contexts in which it
This book is a study of the theology of the Trinity as expressed in the literature and art of the late Anglo-Saxon period. It examines the meaning of the representations of the Trinity in tenth- and eleventh-century English manuscripts and their relationship to Anglo-Saxon theology, and to earlier debates about the legitimacy of representations of the divine. The book's unifying theme is that of the image: the image of the Trinity in the human soul; Christ, the perfect image and visible form of the invisible God; redemption as the restoration of the imperfect human image to its original likeness through contemplation of its divine archetype; prayer as an anticipation of the contemplation of heaven, and art as a form of contemplation. The book, which contains a selection of black and white illustrations, will be of interest to art historians, theologians and literary scholars alike.
This book examines descriptions of the natural world in a wide range of Old English poetry. Jennifer Neville describes the physical conditions experienced by the Anglo-Saxons - the animals, diseases, landscapes, seas and weather with which they had to contend. She argues that poetic descriptions of these elements were not a reflection of the existing physical conditions but a literary device used by Anglo-Saxons to define more important issues: the state of humanity, the creation and maintenance of society, the power of individuals, the relationship between God and creation and the power of writing to control information. Examples of contemporary literature in other languages are used to provide a sense of Old English poetry's particular approach, which incorporated elements from Germanic, Christian and classical sources. The result of this approach was not a consistent cosmological scheme but a rather contradictory vision which reveals much about how the Anglo-Saxons viewed
This book explores the foundations of the intellectual renaissance in tenth-century England, including both the English Benedictine reform and the establishment by Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester (963–84), of the most influential school in late Anglo-Saxon England. The vital early stages of Æthelwold's scholarly career are explored for the first time, particularly his formative years in King Æthelstan's entourage and his period of study at Glastonbury. Light is shed on the contribution which Æthelstan's cosmopolitan court made to intellectual and spiritual life. Based on a wide range of evidence Dr Gretsch assigns to Æthelwold two influential texts: an interlinear translation of the psalter and a vast corpus of Old English glosses to Aldhelm's prose De virginitate. These glosses are shown to have played a pivotal role in the development of the vernacular as a medium for scholarly discourse.
In the course of this book Professor Cross presents the discovery of the actual manuscript source for the Old English versions of two biblical apocrypha, The Gospel of Nichodemus and The Avenging of the Saviour. In collaboration with four other scholars, Professor Cross explores the implications of this discovery. Here, parallel editions of the relevant Latin and Old English texts are given, together with modern English translations, and detailed discussion outlines the background to the Latin texts, and to the manuscript which contains them. The assembled material provides an insight not simply into the transmission of two apocryphal texts, but also into the mind of the single Anglo-Saxon translator who, it is argued, struggled in his own idiosyncratic fashion to make two badly spelt and incomplete Latin originals his own.
For many years there has been lively debate about the 'orality' or 'literacy' of Old English verse: about whether the Old English verse which has come down to us is primarily the product of oral composition or primarily written, insofar as it is transmitted only in manuscript. The present book throws light on this question by drawing our attention to a largely unexplored body of evidence, namely the graphic realization of Old English verse in the surviving manuscripts - how it is set out spatially, how it is marked up for reading with punctuation of various kinds. Professor O'Keeffe shows that by the late tenth century scribes had apparently ceased to alter the poems which they were transcribing by recourse to residual orality, and had begun to copy verbatim the poetic text before them. The entire orality-literacy debate has been lifted on to a new plane; the book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the way Old English verse has come down to us.
