Anglo-Saxon England (No. 33)

It is red-letter day in Anglo-Saxon studies when a previously unknown Old English text comes to light. In 2002, as the result of some outstanding scholarly detective work, a fragmentary homiliary, containing exegetical homilies for the Sundays after Pentecost, came to light in the Somerset County Records Office in Taunton. The manuscript apparently dates from the middle years of the eleventh century; but questions of when and where and by whom the homiliary was composed can only be answered by close philological study of the Old English text itself. The present volume of Anglo-Saxon England contains a printed edition of this interesting text, and detailed philological analysis leads to the extraordinary hypothesis that the text may have been composed by someone whose native language was not English, and who was apparently unfamiliar with the mainstream of English homiletic composition, best illustrated in the work of Ælfric. 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. St Aldhelm’s bees (De uirginitate prosa, cc. iv–vi): some observations on a literary tradition Augustine Casiday; 2. Poetic words, conservatism and the dating of Old English poetry Dennis Cronan; 3. The several compilers of Bald’s Leechbook Richard Scott Nokes; 4. Ælfric and late Old English verse Thomas A. Bredehoft; 5. Abbot Leofsige of Mettlach: an English monk in Flanders and Upper Lotharingia in the late tenth century Michael Hare; 6. The Taunton Fragment: a new text from Anglo-Saxon England Mechthild Gretsch; 7. Pre-Conquest manuscripts from Malmesbury Abbey and John Leland’s letter to Beatus Rhenanus concerning a lost copy of Tertullian’s works James P. Carley and Pierre Petitmengin; 8. A third supplement to Hand-List of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions Elisabeth Okasha; 9. Bibliography for 2003 Debby Banham, Carole P. Biggam, Mark Blackburn, Carole Hough, Simon Keynes, Paul G. Remley and Rebecca Rushforth.