Anglo-Saxon England

ISBN-13: 9780521038348 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 348 str.

Simon Keynes; Michael Lapidge; Peter Clemoes

Opis

Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede??'s Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle yields insights into the processes of Anglo-Saxon learned historiography and oral tradition. A thorough-going analysis of an under-studied major work, Bald??'s Leechbook, demonstrates that the compiler, perhaps in King Alfred??'s reign, translated selections from a wide range of Latin texts in composing a well-organized treatise directed against the diseases prevalent in his time. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year??'s publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.