First published in 1900, this Reader uses four manuscripts from the British Museum and Corpus Christi College Cambridge to present a thorough introduction along with a dual-language edition of the text. The original manuscripts, as Herzfeld demonstrates, are of varying qualities and comprise of the Anglian, West Saxon, Kentish and Mercian dialects. The re-edited text is presented alongside historical remarks, criticism of the manuscript, the text’s ultimate date and place of origin and an exploration of its potential sources.
Bringing together some of the most important poetic texts of the Anglo-Saxon period, Anne Klinck presents the poems both as discrete entities and as members of an elegiac group, all inspired by the sense of separation from one's desire that is at the hear
This book is a major reader of Old English, the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons before the Norman Conquest. Designed both for beginning and for more advanced students, it broke new ground in two ways, first in its range of texts, and second in the degree of annotation it offers. The fifty-six prose and verse texts include the established favourites such as The Battle of Maldon and King Alfred's Preface to his Pastoral Care, but also others which have not before been readily available, such as a complete Easter homily, Aelfric's life of Saint Aethelthryth and all forty-six Durham proverbs. Headnotes establish the literary and historical contexts for the works that are represented, and reflect the rich cultural variety of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern English word glosses and explanatory notes are provided on the same page as the text. Other features include a reference grammar and a comprehensive glossary.
Using a comparative and broad perspective, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 800-1066 draws on archaeology, art history, material culture, texts from charms to chronicles, from royal law-codes to sermons to poems, and other evidence to demonstrate the centrality of Christianity and the Church in Britain 800-1066. It delineates their contributions to the changes in politics, economy, society and culture that occurred between 800 and 1066, from nation-building to practicalities of government to landscape. The period 800-1066 saw the beginnings of a fundamental restructuring of politics, society and economy throughout Christian Europe in which religion played a central role. In Britain too the interaction of religion with politics and society was profound and pervasive. There was no part of life which Christianity and the Church did not touch: they affected belief, thought and behaviour at all levels of society. This book points out interconnections within society and between archaeological, art historical and literary evidence and similarities between aspects of culture not only within Britain but also in comparison with Armenian Christendom. A. E. Redgate explores the importance of religious ideas, institutions, personnel and practices in the creation and expression of identities and communities, the structure and functioning of society and the life of the individual. This book will be essential reading for students of early medieval Britain and religious and social history.
Throughout the centuries of its existence, Anglo-Saxon society was highly, if not widely, literate: it was a society the functioning of which depended very largely on the written word. All the essays in this volume throw light on the literacy of Anglo-Saxon England, from the writs which were used as the instruments of government from the eleventh century onwards, to the normative texts which regulated the lives of Benedictine monks and nuns, to the runes stamped on an Anglo-Saxon coin, to the pseudorunes which deliver the coded message of a man to his lover in a well-known Old English poem, to the mysterious writing on an amulet which was apparently worn by a religious for a personal protection from the devil. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
