Simon Keynes - Böcker

Widely acknowledged as the essential reference work for this period, this volume brings together more than 700 articles written by 150 top scholars that cover the people, places, activities, and creations of the Anglo-Saxons.  The only reference work to cover the history, archaeology, arts, architecture, literatures, and languages of England from the Roman withdrawal to the Norman Conquest (c.450 – 1066 AD)Includes over 700 alphabetical entries written by 150 top scholars covering the people, places, activities, and creations of the Anglo-SaxonsUpdated and expanded with 40 brand-new entries and a new appendix detailing "English Archbishops and Bishops, c.450-1066"Accompanied by maps, line drawings, photos, a table of "English Rulers, c.450-1066," and a headword index to facilitate searchingAn essential reference tool, both for specialists in the field, and for students looking for a thorough grounding in key topics of the period

Heathen gods are hard to find in Old English literature. Most Anglo-Saxon writers had no interest in them, and scholars today prefer to concentrate on the Christian civilization for which the Anglo-Saxons were so famous. Richard North offers an interesting view of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism and mythology in the pre-Viking and Viking age. He discusses the pre-Christian gods of Bede's history of the Anglo-Saxon conversion with reference to an orgiastic figure known as Ingui, whom Bede called 'god of this age'. Using expert knowledge of comparative literary material from Old Norse-Icelandic and other Old Germanic languages, North reconstructs the slender Old English evidence in a highly imaginative treatment of poems such as Deor and The Dream of the Rood. Other gods such as Woden are considered with reference to Odin and his family in Old Norse-Icelandic mythology. In conclusion, it is argued that the cult of Ingui was defeated only when the ideology of the god Woden was sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon church. The book will interest students interested in Old English, Old Norse-Icelandic and Germanic literatures, Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology.

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 themselves.

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.

Though best known today for his Old English homilies, the Anglo-Saxon scholar 'lfric also composed a Latin 'letter' to his fellow monks at Eynsham (Oxfordshire) containing a detailed outline of their daily and seasonal round of prayer and other duties. The document offers a rare glimpse of what ordinary monks in Anglo-Saxon England were expected to know and do. This 1999 book contains an edition of the Latin letters a textual commentary, and a complete English translation of the work. Dr Jones also provides substantial introductory chapters which establish the exceptional importance of the Eynsham letter for our understanding of late Anglo-Saxon monasticism and liturgy. The book will interest students of early medieval culture, monasticism and Church history.

This 1996 book provides a study and critical edition of the corpus of hymns sung by monks and canons in their services in England before the Norman Conquest. It assembles textual evidence, some of it hitherto unpublished, based on all extant manuscripts. Of these, an eleventh-century Latin manuscript known as the 'Durham Hymnal', with its accompanying Old English interlinear gloss, provides the core of the edition and its base manuscript. An introduction and commentary include descriptions of the manuscripts concerned and discussions of the sources, liturgical use, and music of the hymns, as well as the phonology and vocabulary of the Old English gloss. The text of the hymns is accompanied by a translation of the Latin into modern English prose.

This book provides an edition, with a facing translation and detailed commentary, of the three apocryphal gospels of Mary written in Old English. The gospels, which deal with Mary's birth, childhood, death and assumption, are found in manuscripts in Oxford and Cambridge, but have rarely been treated as a group before and in fact have been almost totally neglected by English scholars. An extensive introduction explains the origins and development of the apocrypha from the second to the eleventh century, discussing the Syriac, Greek, Coptic and Latin evidence. Clayton goes on to consider in detail the influence of these apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England by placing the Old English texts in a very broad context. Editions of Latin analogues from eleventh-century English manuscripts are also included in appendices.

This book argues that the formal art of the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped and determined by the poetic language which the poet inherited from the traditional, oral culture of Anglo-Saxon England. The patterns of metre and alliteration exhibited in the poem were not imposed by the poet on his language, but were part of the language which he spoke, the rules of which constituted his metrical grammar. Professor Kendall investigates the constraints of syntax, metre and alliteration which govern the formal art of Beowulf. He shows how the half-lines of the poem, which are the basic units of composition, are marked by the metrical grammar for placement in the verse clause; he also establishes conditions for the presence or absence of alliteration, which enable him to say whether in any given instance the alliterative device is a mandatory function of the rules of the metrical grammar or an option exercised by the poet. Professor Kendall alters traditional views of metre; he concludes the book with a complete index of scansion according to the rules he has established.

The early medieval Vulgate Bible had no fixed textual form - multiple copying resulted in a multitude of forms. This 1995 book tackles questions about the transmission of the Vulgate Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England. By tracing the history of the text in the surviving Latin manuscripts we can illuminate monastic and intellectual history. Following an introduction which explains the wider continental history in which the dissemination of the Latin scriptures occurred, Richard Marsden goes on to analyse twenty surviving manuscripts including the Codex Amiatinus, one of the greatest English books and the earliest surviving complete Vulgate Bible. The book provides a comprehensive listing and collation of surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the Old Testament, and it also establishes textual history as a dimension of wider Anglo-Saxon history.

This book explores ideas of community and 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. Magennis analyses a wide range of poems and examines the imagery on which they draw, concentrating particularly on depictions of hall (including feasting and drinking), stronghold, city and landscape. In a poetry in which communal structures are typically associated with male ideals of warriorship and fellowship, the position and treatment of women is also shown to merit close consideration.

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 Anglo-Saxon manuscript. The approach allows the reader to trace the early reception history of the texts and the way they developed over time, showing their significance as products of late Anglo-Saxon culture.

This study constructs a reading of Old English poetry which takes up issues in poststructuralist theory, including intertextuality, work versus text and the author. The modern reader knows this literature as a discrete number of poems, set up and printed in units punctuated as modern sentences and with titles inserted by modern editors. Carol Braun Pasternack offers an alternative approach which takes into account the format of the verse as it exists in the manuscripts, using the term 'inscribed' to define texts which are situated between oral inheritance and print. In a detailed examination of texts throughout the canon she explores the ways in which readers construct poems in the process of reading and in addition she extends her analysis to the question of authorship, arguing that the texts do not imply an author but rather imply tradition as the source of their authority.

This is an extended study of the Old Testament poems of the Junius collection as a group. The circumstances surrounding their composition and transmission are mysterious: none is ascribed to a named author and none situated even relatively within the development of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry. This book 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 that are most likely to have circulated in Anglo-Saxon centres, and sets out the full range of variants. He offers engaging exercises in hermeneutic and reader-response criticism. The introductory chapter reviews five centuries of Anglo-Saxon history. All citations of Old English, Latin, and Greek texts are accompanied by modern English translations, making the book accessible to general readers as well as specialists.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury has been described as 'the first English man of letters'. He was the first Germanic author to compose extensively in Latin metrical verse, and his Latin works were amongst the most influential in Anglo-Saxon England. Aldhelm can also be considered the best-read of Anglo-Saxon poets, in both senses of the phrase: he read most and was most read. In this first book-length study of Aldhelm's poetic art Andy Orchard traces the sources and models for Aldhelm's idiosyncratic style, as well as the nature and extent of his influence on later Anglo-Latin verse. Aldhelm's innovations in Latin verse technique are emphasized, in particular his special debt to the specific techniques of Old English vernacular verse.

This 1999 book is concerned with the pictorial language of gesture revealed in Anglo-Saxon art, and its debt to classical Rome. Reginald Dodwell was an eminent art historian and former Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In this, his last book, he notes a striking similarity of both form and meaning between Anglo-Saxon gestures and those in illustrated manuscripts of the plays of Terence. He presents evidence for dating the archetype of the Terence manuscripts to the mid-third century, and argues persuasively that their gestures reflect actual stage conventions. He identifies a repertory of eighteen Terentian gestures whose meaning can be ascertained from the dramatic contexts in which they occur, and conducts a detailed examination of the use of the gestures in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The book, which is extensively illustrated, illuminates our understanding of the vigour of late Anglo-Saxon art and its ability to absorb and transpose continental influence.

Peter Clemoes brings a lifetime's close study of Anglo-Saxon texts to this appreciation of Old English poetry, with an alternative interpretation which relates the poetry to both the entire Anglo-Saxon way of thinking and the structures of its society. Clemoes proposes a dynamic principle of Old English poetry, very different from the common notion of formulas slotted into poems for stylistic variation. In extended discussions of particular poems and images as well as of changes in language, he shows how the poetic medium became a vehicle for increasing transformation to Christian literacy and to that religion's conceptions of the natural world, morality, and individuality. Carefully thought out and elegantly written, this book is also accessible to students: its numerous quotations are accompanied by modern English translations.

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.

Among the diverse topics covered in this volume is a pioneer account of a unique group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries preserved on the continent and the publication of a previously unknown charter. Themes illuminated are as varied as the status of women, early urban history, the nature of medical collections, the standing of Marian feasts and the function of musical notation. The study of Old English poetry is advanced textually, codicologically, culturally, linguistically and critically. Innovation and established practice go hand-in-hand: a record of the first conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and versions of six papers read at conference are included. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Was Old English metre really based on stress and rhythm? Do we really know that a particular glossed manuscript of a Latin curriculum author was used in an Anglo-Saxon classroom and, if so, how? How were disputes about bookland dealt with? What happened to the last male representative of the West Saxon royal line after the Norman Conquest? And what are the implications of the Taylors' great work on Anglo-Saxon architecture for related studies? These are among the challenging questions taken up in this book. The publication of findings concerning a striking sculptured stone unearthed at Repton and an interpretation of a panel on the Ruthwell Cross bring us close to some distinctive Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking. So do two source studies of vernacular prose, a demonstration of Aldhelm's interest in how a name is related to its referent, and a searching enquiry into early Anglo-Saxon kingship. Textual criticism and phonology are put to good use too. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Areas of study pursued in this book include a revealing grammatical document from eighth-century Northumbria; renewed excavations at Sutton Hoo are reported; the existence of an unnoticed late Old English prose version of parts of Gregory's Dialogues is pointed out. Fresh thinking is directed to topics as interesting and diverse as a design on the Sutton Hoo purse lid; the origin of a little-considered English decorated manuscript containing lives of saints now in Paris; the enigmatic poem Wulf and Eadwacer; word order as an element on Old English poetic style; surviving traces of the teaching which Theodore and Hadrian delivered in England; the career of a Latin text much studied in English schools for its difficult vocabulary; the political aspects of relic cults during the last century and a half of Anglo-Saxon monarchy; and the organization of the invading armies led by Swein Forkbeard and Cnut. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book; there is also a comprehensive index to volumes 11-15.

This volume offers fundamental evidence and discussion illuminating a wide range of important subjects: possible influence of Cicero on Bede's attitude to rhetoric; the probability that Theodore and Hadrian brought a glossary from Italy to England; the traditional concept of the narrator in Old English poetry; the nationality of the author of the Old English poem Genesis B; the conceptions of history controlling the Old English Orosius; the establishment of Square minuscule as the standard English script of the tenth century; criteria for distinguishing between Anglo-Saxon script written in England and script written by Anglo-Saxons on the continent; the grounds for claiming that certain surviving pre-Conquest manuscripts were once at Glastonbury; the extent of the circulation of Prudentius's Psychomachia in Anglo-Saxon England; the regional distribution of names of different origins among the moneyers of the Anglo-Danish era. Early and late periods and north and south thus find a place in this searching treatment of intellectual, cultural and settlement issues. The usual comprehensive bibliography rounds off the book.

This volume explores many fundamental questions regarding Anglo-Saxon history. Among those considered is the question of did the earliest English prose really divide into a Mercian tradition and a separate West Saxon one? What is the full roll-call of extant texts containing late Old English 'Winchester' words? How far was Anglo-Saxon medicine hocus-pocus and how far the fruit of deliberate experimentation? How much Greek vocabulary was known in Anglo-Saxon England, and how was it known and how used? How did Anglo-Saxon land law work in practice? Advances in scholarship, application of modern scientific knowledge of a type not normally available, fresh directions of thought, original analysis, stricter criteria and additions to the stock of primary evidence all characterize this book. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

This volume makes important contributions to our stock of primary manuscript evidence: it recovers parts of six previously unrecorded charters and analyses two sets of fragments, each unique in its own way - two leaves of Old Testament text written in Mercia or Canterbury early in the ninth century and six leaves of a missal written at Worcester in the mid-eleventh century. Significant issues in both ecclesiastical and secular history are tackled too - the location of Lindsey, the fate of Rutland during the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, and the state of our knowledge of the archaeology of the Five Boroughs of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Lincoln. Vernacular literature receives its fair share of attention as well: the relationship between author and audience is examined in the cases of a biblical poem and of the prose homiliary which is still least well understood among the principle ones extant. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

The principal emphasis of this book is the relationship between England and its neighbours in the pre-Conquest period. It brings together fresh information of England's place in the early medieval world, with essays concentrating on finance and trade, travel, learning and education. A detailed analysis of the Old English vocabulary for money and wealth shows different usage over two centuries reflects a developing awareness, particularly on the part of 'lfric, of the relationship between wealth and power. Medical recipes in Bald's Leechbook, which stipulate the use of exotic spices from Arabia, have stimulated a fascinating essay on how these ingredients may have made their way from Arabia and the Mediterranean to England. Other essays in this wide-ranging book examine the Old English Rune Poem in the context of its two later Scandinavian analogues; the use in England of Jerome's Hebracium translation of the psalter; and the study in English schools of the difficult verse of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

This book illustrates some of the exciting paths of enquiry being explored in many different fields of Anglo-Saxon studies - archaeology, legal history, palaeography, Old English syntax and poetic, Latin learning with its many reflexes in Old English prose literature, and others. In all these fields it is clear that fresh perspectives may be achieved by examining even well-known objects and texts in the light of modern approaches and scholarship. Several studies concentrate on aspects of early Anglo-Saxon civilization: the settlement at Mucking, Essex; the iconography of the famous gold coin struck in the name of Bishop Liudhard; the early Anglo-Saxon law on adultery; and a reconstruction of an early Anglo-Saxon copy of the Heptateuch. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book, with a five-year index to volumes 16-20 (previous indexes being in volumes 5, 10 and 15).

The vitality of Anglo-Saxon studies is reflected in the continuing acquisition of fresh knowledge and perspectives gained from the combination of disparate but complementary skills and disciplines. Evidence presented in this book reveals unsuspected aspects of the influence of Aldhelm's Latin poetry in early medieval Spain. The many non-runic inscriptions which have been discovered since 1980 are catalogued and analysed. Comprehensive analysis of a little-understood Latin source of the Old English medical treatise known as Bald's Leechbook throws light not only on the English text but also, surprisingly, on the transmissional history of the Latin source. The decoration of an important manuscript from the early tenth century, the Tanner Bede, is set in the context of tenth-century developments in manuscript illumination, and the analysis of the Regularis concordia from an architectural point of view permits fresh understanding of the layout of monastic churches in the later Anglo-Saxon period. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

That Alcuin addressed to the monks of Lindisfarne the question, 'What has Ingeld to do with Christ?', is a much repeated dogma in Old English studies; but in this book close examination of the letter in question shows that it was addressed not to Lindisfarne nor to a monastic community, but to a bishop in Mercia. That 'Ultán the scribe' was responsible for some of the most lavishly illuminated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is shown to be another untenable dogma. Fresh perspectives from interdisciplinary study: the 'beasts-of-battle' typescenes which are characteristic of Old English poetry are studied in the wider context of other European literatures. The nasty Viking habit of murdering hostages by throwing bones at them (as happened to St 'lfeah) is illuminated by a wide-ranging study of analogues in Scandinavian literatures. Characteristic features of Aldhelm's enigmata are elucidated by the study of Byzantine riddles, thereby revealing a link between England and the Greek orient. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications rounds off the book.

One of the most important primary sources for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England is the charters and manuscripts which survive from the period before 1066. In the present book, two complementary essays treat the charters of mid tenth-century English kings, bringing previously unknown documents to light, establishing the circumstances in which they were produced, and demonstrating that changes in practice in the royal chancery had far-reaching effect on all aspects of Anglo-Saxon script and book production. The question of the medieval representation of women is illuminated by a study of the difficulties which a well-known monastic author, 'lfric, faced in characterizing an Old Testament heroine who used her body to achieve her ends, while a number of traditional assumptions about the property rights of divorced women in England are freshly challenged by close philological analysis of surviving law-codes. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.