Anglo-Saxon England

by Edited by Michael Lapidge , Malcolm Godden , Simon Keynes

• ISBN13: 9780521558457
• ISBN10: 052155845X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-01-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England depends wholly on the precise and detailed study of the texts that have come down to us from pre-Conquest times. The present book contains pioneering studies of some of these sources which have been neglected or misunderstood. A comprehensive study of a group of lavish gospelbooks written under the patronage of a late Anglo-Saxon countess, Judith of Flanders (sometime wife of the Earl Tostig who was killed at Stamford Bridge in 1066) shows the importance of these artefacts and provides fresh understanding of the transmission of the gospels in late eleventh-century England. Close analysis of the Libellus 'thelwoldi, a neglected Latin translation of a late tenth-century documentary record of the estates acquired by the redoubtable Bishop 'thelwold for Ely Abbey, throws significant light on the operations of the laws of land tenure in the late tenth century. These and other more traditional lines of enquiry are the focus of this book. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
An Anglo-Saxon mass for St Willibroard and its later liturgical uses	1	(10)
Nicholas Orchard
Some difficulties in Beowulf, lines 874-902: Sigemund reconsidered	11	(32)
M. S. Griffith
The Metrical Epilogue to the Alfredian Pastoral Care: a postscript from Junius	43	(8)
Peter J. Lucas
Sociolinguistic aspects of Old English colour lexemes	51	(16)
C. P. Biggam
The interchangeability of Old English verbal prefixes	67	(28)
Michiko Ogura
The Regularis Concordia and its Old English gloss	95	(36)
Lucia Kornexl
Law and litigation in the Libellus Æthelwoldi episcopi	131	(54)
Alan Kennedy
A unique Old English formula for excommunication from Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303	185	(28)
E. M. Treharne
The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia	213	(38)
Lesley Abrams
The Anglo-Saxon gospelbooks of Judith, countess of Flanders: their text, make-up and function	251	(58)
Patrick McGurk
Jane Rosenthal
Bibliography for 1994	309	(1)
Lesley J. Abrams
Carl T. Berkhout
Mark Blackburn
Sarah Foot
Alexander Rumble
Simon Keynes
Abbreviations listed before the bibliography	309