Anglo-Saxon England (No. 31)

One of the most important manuscripts surviving from pre-Conquest England receives penetrating analysis by several scholars. The ‘Junius Manuscript’ is evaluated from a number of intersecting perspectives, including codicology, decoration, script and punctuation; the confluence of these permits a fresh and convincing dating of this crucially important witness to Old English poetry. This demonstration is strikingly corroborated by an independent analysis of the textual transmission of one of the poems contained in the manuscript – Daniel – which is analysed in connection with another poetic version of the same biblical text, here entitled Three Youths, preserved in the ‘Exeter Book’. Ælfric’s conception of the creation and fall of the angels is also studied, and this takes us back to a poem in the ‘Junius Manuscript’, that known as Genesis A. It is shown that Ælfric’s conception of the angels, which has no antecedent in the Bible itself, could possibly have been framed by his reading of Genesis A. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year’s publications is provided.

List of illustrations; 1. Record of the tenth conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, at the University of Helsinki, 6–11 August 2001; 2. The landscape of Beowulf Margaret Gelling; 3. Sceaf, Japheth and the origins of the Anglo-Saxons Daniel Anlezark; 4. The Anglo-Saxons and the Goths: rewriting the sack of Rome M. R. Godden; 5. The Old English Bede and the construction of Anglo-Saxon authority Nicole Guenther Discenza; 6. Daniel, the Three Youths fragment and the transmission of Old English verse Paul G. Remley; 7. An integrated re-examination of the dating of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11 Leslie Lockett; 8. Ælfric on the creation and fall of the angels Michael Fox; 9. The colophon of the Eadwig Gospels Richard Gameson; 10. Public penance in Anglo-Saxon England Brad Bedingfield; 11. The Bayeux ‘Tapestry’: invisible seams and visible boundaries Gale R. Owen-Crocker; 12. Bibliography for 2001 Debby Banham, Carole P. Biggam, Mark Blackburn, Carole Hough, Simon Keynes, Paul G. Remley and Teresa Webber.