Anglo-Saxon England

by Edited by Michael Lapidge , Malcolm Godden , Simon Keynes

• ISBN13: 9780521813440
• ISBN10: 0521813441
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Throughout the centuries of its existence, Anglo-Saxon society was highly, if not widely, literate: it was a society the functioning of which depended very largely on the written word. All the essays in this volume throw light on the literacy of Anglo-Saxon England, from the writs which were used as the instruments of government from the eleventh century onwards, to the normative texts which regulated the lives of Benedictine monks and nuns, to the runes stamped on an Anglo-Saxon coin, to the pseudorunes which deliver the coded message of a man to his lover in a well-known Old English poem, to the mysterious writing on an amulet which was apparently worn by a religious for a personal protection from the devil. 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
On argumentation in Old English philology, with particular reference to the editing and dating of Beowulf	1	(26)
R. D. Fulk
Knowledge of the writings of John Cassian in early Anglo-Saxon England	27	(16)
Stephen Lake
The earliest manuscript of Bede's metrical Vita S. Cudbercti	43	(12)
Helmut Gneuss
Michael Lapidge
Beowulf and some fictions of the Geatish succession	55	(24)
Frederick M. Biggs
An Anglo-Saxon runic coin and its adventures in Sweden	79	(10)
Margaret Clunies Ross
The sources of the Old English Martyrology	89	(22)
Christine Rauer
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 57: a witness to the early stages of the Benedictine reform in England?	111	(36)
Mechthild Gretsch
The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men	147	(42)
Rohini Jayatilaka
The trick of the runes in The Husband's Message	189	(36)
John D. Niles
A late Saxon inscribed pendant from Norfolk	225	(6)
Elisabeth Okasha
Susan Youngs
Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts	231	(16)
Sarah Semple
The use of writs in the eleventh century	247	(46)
Richard Sharpe
Addenda and corrigenda to the Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts	293	(14)
Helmut Gneuss
Bibliography for 2002	307
Debby Banham
Carole P. Biggam
Mark Blackburn
Carole Hough
Simon Keynes
Paul G. Remley
Rebecca Rushforth