Inside Old English Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell

by Walmsley, John

• ISBN13: 9781405114837
• ISBN10: 1405114835
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-24
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell gives readers a comprehensive insight into the world of Old English. Consists of a series of original essays written by prominent specialists in the field in honour of the eminent Oxford scholar, Bruce Mitchell (co-author of the best-selling textbook, A Guide to Old English, 6th edition, Blackwell, 2001). Encourages readers to engage with the literary, cultural, intellectual, religious and historical contexts of Old English texts. Explores the problems scholars face in interpreting and editing Old English texts. Highlights the essential secondary literature for each topic. Each of the contributors writes in a straightforward and authoritative style, drawing out connections between different contexts and pointing readers towards the essential secondary literature for each topic.

Author Biography

John Walmsley studied English Language and Literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and General Linguistics, and History of Education, at Edinburgh and Durham respectively. He held teaching posts at Hamburg University and St Mary’s College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before being appointed Professor of English at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His publications cover topics in linguistics, applied linguistics and foreign language teaching, and the history of linguistics. Current interests include the role of linguistics in education. From 1993 to 1994 he was Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL), Cambridge, UK.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	xiii
List of Abbreviations	xiv
Foreword	xvi
Bruce Mitchell	xviii
Fred C. Robinson
Introduction	1	(202)
John Walmsley
1 Eight Notes on the Beowulf Text	19	(19)
Alfred Bammesberger
2 A Point Well Taken: Manuscript Punctuation and Old English Poems	38	(21)
Daniel Donoghue
3 The Incomparable Wryness of Old English Poetry	59	(15)
Roberta Frank
4 Straining Words and Striving Voices: Polysemy and Ambiguity and the Importance of Context in the Disclosure of Meaning	74	(17)
Antonette diPaolo Healey
5 "Eala, geferan and gode wyrhtan": On Interjections in Old English	91	(26)
Risto Hiltunen
6 Speaking One's Mind in The Wanderer	117	(17)
Susan Irvine
7 Wulfstan's Scandinavian Loanword Usage: An Aspect of the Linguistic Situation in the Late Old English Danelaw	134	(19)
Tadao Kubouchi
8 An Aspect of Old English Poetic Diction: The Postpositioning of Prepositions	153	(28)
Michael Lapidge
9 Issues for Editors of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in Manuscript Form	181	(22)
Bernard J. Muir
10 Language and Style in Two Anonymous Old English Easter Homilies	203	(19)
Hiroshi Ogawa
11 Latin Influence on an Old English Idiom: "To Wit"	222	(20)
Matti Rissanen
12 Germanic *uargaz (OE wearh) and the Finnish Evidence	242	(6)
Fred C. Robinson
13 How the Leopard Got its Spots: English Grammatical Categories, Latin Terms	248	(20)
John Walmsley
A Bibliography of Writings by Bruce Mitchell 1956-2004	268	(11)
Select Bibliography	279	(3)
List of Editions Used	282	(5)
Index of Names	287	(3)
Index of Old English Words and Phrases	290	(1)
Index of Subjects	291