Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England – serie

The Cynewulf Reader is a collection of classic and original essays presenting a comprehensive view of the elusive Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, his language, and his work.

With the decline of formalism and its predilection for Old English poetry, Old English prose is leaving the periphery and moving into the center of literary and cultural discussion. The extensive corpus of Old English prose lends many texts of various kinds to the current debates over literary theory and its multiple manifestations. The purpose of this collection is to assist the growing interest in Old English prose by providing essays that help establish the foundations for considered study and offer models and examples of special studies. Both retrospective and current in its examples, this collection can serve as a first book for an introduction to study, particularly suitable for courses that seek to entertain such issues as authorship, texts and textuality, source criticism, genre, and forms of historical criticism as a significant part of a broad, cultural teaching (and research) plan.

This volume offers comprehensive coverage of the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, bringing together essays on specifi fields, sites and objects, and offering the reader a representative range of both traditional and new methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to the subject.

Gathering some of the most important studies from the past 25 years of Beowulf scholarship, The Beowulf Reader offers essential insights both to scholars in the field and to readers coming to this Old English literary masterpiece for the first time. The carefully selected essays in this volume represent the various approaches that have dominated recent Beowulf studies and illustrate the evolution of Old English literary criticism, from New Critical formalism to recent trends in critical theory and a resurgent historicism.

Taken from the same manuscript as Cynewulf, the Junius 11 poems-Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan-comprise a series of redacted Old English works that have been traditionally presented as the work of Bede's Caedmon. Medieval scholars have concluded that the four poems were composed by more than one author and later edited by Junius in 1655. All of the poems are notable for their Christian content. Apart from its focus on the Junius 11 manuscript, this collection of essays is also important as a study of how to read, edit, and define any medieval literary text.

Gathering some of the most important studies from the past 25 years of Beowulf scholarship, The Beowulf Reader offers essential insights both to scholars in the field and to readers coming to this Old English literary masterpiece for the first time. The carefully selected essays in this volume represent the various approaches that have dominated recent Beowulf studies and illustrate the evolution of Old English literary criticism, from New Critical formalism to recent trends in critical theory and a resurgent historicism.

The Cynewulf Reader is a collection of classic and original essays presenting a comprehensive view of the elusive Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, his language, and his work.

With the decline of formalism and its predilection for Old English poetry, Old English prose is leaving the periphery and moving into the center of literary and cultural discussion. The extensive corpus of Old English prose lends many texts of various kinds to the current debates over literary theory and its multiple manifestations. The purpose of this collection is to assist the growing interest in Old English prose by providing essays that help establish the foundations for considered study and offer models and examples of special studies. Both retrospective and current in its examples, this collection can serve as a "first book" for an introduction to study, particularly suitable for courses that seek to entertain such issues as authorship, texts and textuality, source criticism, genre, and forms of historical criticism as a significant part of a broad, cultural teaching (and research) plan.