This book argues that the formal art of the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped and determined by the poetic language that the poet inherited from the traditional, oral culture of Anglo-Saxon England. The patterns of meter and alliteration exhibited in the poem were not imposed by the poet on his language, but were part of the language that he spoke, the rules of which constituted his metrical grammar. Professor Kendall investigates the constraints of syntax, meter and alliteration that govern the formal art of Beowulf. He shows how the half-lines of the poem, which are the basic units of...

This is the first book to make a comprehensive study of Old English medical texts. Professor Cameron compares Anglo-Saxon medical practice with that of the Greeks and Romans from whom the Anglo-Saxons borrowed freely. He analyses the position of physicians in society, the conditions under which their patients lived and the effectiveness of their remedies. He examines the ingredients of Anglo-Saxon prescriptions, their therapeutic efficacy and availability. The role of magic in medicine is dealt with in depth, but found to have played less part in medical practice than has sometimes been...

The early medieval Vulgate Bible had no fixed textual form - multiple copying resulted in a multitude of forms. Examination of the complex patterns of variation may illuminate important aspects of monastic, ecclesiastical and intellectual history. This book is the first to tackle questions about the transmission of the Vulgate Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England. Following an introduction which explains the wider continental context in which the dissemination of the Latin scriptures occurred, Richard Marsden goes on to analyse twenty surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts including the Codex...

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 manuscripts of the late Anglo-Saxon period were received, a time when concerns about community appear to have been of special urgency. The book identifies key features of the audience or readership of Old English poetry in this period, and relates the interests of these groups of people to themes reflected in the poetic texts.

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (668SH90), shaped the English Church into a structure it has retained for a millennium. Yet until recently he has remained a shadowy figure, whose early career in the Near East and at Rome has been unknown. In this book, which builds on the 1994 publication of previously unprinted Biblical commentaries from Theodore's Canterbury school, internationally distinguished scholars provide a fresh account of the career and writings of a unique personality who brought to Anglo-Saxon England the cultural heritage of Syria, Byzantium and Rome.

Irish monks and missionaries played a crucial role in the conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons and in the formation of Christian culture in England, but the nature and extent of Irish influence on Old English poetry has remained largely undefined. Charles Wright identifies the characteristic features of Irish Christian literature which influenced Anglo-Saxon vernacular authors. Professor Wright traces the Irish background of the distinctive contents of Vercelli Homily IX and its remarkable exemplum, 'The Devil's Account of the Next World', and traces the dissemination of related stylistic and...

This book throws light on the debate about the 'orality' or 'literacy' of Old English verse.

This book presents the two Old English versions of the colourful legend of the virgin martyr, St Margaret of Antioch, who became one of the most widely celebrated of medieval saints and the patron saint of childbirth. The two extant vernacular lives are published together, edited with a facing translation and commentary and introduced by extensive coverage of background sources, the state of the manuscripts, their language and the growth of the cult of St Margaret in Anglo-Saxon England. In addition there are printed fragments of a third version of the life and a Latin text from an...

This study theorizes how Old English poetry functioned for readers of tenth-century manuscripts. Coupling the rigour of formalist analysis with the innovations of post-structuralist concepts, Professor Pasternack maps the codes and conventions that guided readers in their construction of poems. She defines the verse as 'inscribed', situated between oral and written discourse. Altering our vision of individual poems, which to date has been based on modern printed editions, she coins the terms 'movement' and 'verse sequence' to reconceptualize the poetry according to its presentation in...

This is the first extended study of the Old Testament poems of the Junius collection as a group. The circumstances surrounding their composition and transmission are mysterious: none has been ascribed to a named author and none attributed reliably to the period of the development of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry, from the seventh to tenth centuries. Old English Biblical Verse seeks to breach this critical impasse by allowing the biblical content of the Junius poems to tell its own story. Paul G. Remley compares them with genuine early medieval texts, of the books of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel,...