Anglo-Saxon England (No. 12)

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.

List of illustrations; 1. The settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle Patrick Sims-Williams; 2. The study of Latin grammar in eighth-century Southumbria Vivien Law; 3. Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part II, Bede’s Explanatio Apocalypsis and related works Peter Kitson; 4. A fragment of Bede’s De Temporum Ratione in the public record office Michael Roper; 5. A fragment of an early-tenth-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript and its significance M. B. Parkes; 6. Neumed Boethian metra from Canterbury: a newly recovered leaf of Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5.35 (the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript) M. T. Gibson, M. Lapidge and C. Page; 7. Bald’s Leechbook: its sources and their use in its compilation M. L. Cameron; 8. Literary art and oral tradition in Old English and Serbian poetry John Miles Foley; 9. A reading of Andreas: the poem as poem Edward B. Irving Jr; 10. The formative stages of Beowulf textual scholarship: part II Birte Kelly; 11. Bibliography for 1982 Carl T. Berkhout, Martin Biddle, Mark Blackburn, T. J. Brown, C. R. E. Coutts and Simon Keynes.