Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context

Summary

In Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context, editor Joyce Tally Lionarons has developed a multifaceted collection examining the issues facing the textual transmission of Anglo-Saxon writings. Eight established scholars consider the ideas of textual identity, authorship and translation, and editorial standards and obligations. This work also features a scholarly exchange of ideas and photographs of the original Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, making this essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Old English literature. The essays published in this text were originally composed at an NEH summer seminar conducted by Paul Szarmach and Timothy Graham at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 1997.

Contents

• Foreword
    Paul E. Szarmach & Timothy Graham
• Introduction
    Joyce Tally Lionarons
• Nostalgia and the Rhetoric of Lack: The Missing Exemplar for Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript 41
    Sharon M. Rowley
• Anglo-Saxon Orthodoxy
    Nancy M. Thompson
• Textual Appropriation and Scribal (Re)Performance in a Composite Homily: The Case for a New Edition of Wulfstan’s De Temporibus Anticristi
    Joyce Tally Lionarons
• Multilingual Glosses, Bilingual Text: English, French, and Latin in Three Manuscripts of Ælfric’s Grammar
    Melinda J. Menzer
• Three Tables of Contents, One Old English Homiliary in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 178
    Paul Acker
• The Boundaries Between Verse and Prose in Old English Literature
    Thomas A. Bredehoft
• Glastonbury and the Early History of the Exeter Book
    Robert M. Butler
• Parker’s Purposes Behind the Manuscripts: Matthew Parker in the Context of his Early Career and Sixteenth-Century Church Reform
    Nancy Basler Bjorklund
• Index of Manuscripts
• General Index

Author

Joyce Tally Lionarons is a professor in the Department of English at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. She has been the president of the Delaware Valley Medieval Association and has served on the Executive Board of the Southeastern Medieval Association. She has also been a bibliographer in Studies in the Age of Chaucer and a member of the Editorial Board for Journal of Patristric, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies.

Reviews

“This volume makes a considered contribution to scholarship in the areas of textual and manuscript studies.”
Elaine Treharne, Florida State University