A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature

by Pulsiano, Phillip; Treharne, Elaine

• ISBN13: 9781405176095
• ISBN10: 1405176091
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-06-09
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This stimulating Companion brings together leading scholars from America, the Antipodes, and Europe to point the way ahead for Anglo-Saxon studies. The scope of the volume is unparalleled, embracing not only the literature of the period, but also the cultural background and the discipline of Anglo-Saxon studies: past, present and future.The chapters are linked into five sections covering contexts, readings, genres, intertextualities and debates. The combination of the discussion of primary material and manuscript sources with critical analysis and readings breaks new ground: fresh approaches are offered, genres of writing not normally studies are opened up, and readers are shown how texts can be read in their particular cultural milieu. The complete volume is essential reading for upper-level students or faculty who want a current and challenging overview of the field.

Author Biography

Phillip Pulsiano is late Professor of English at Villanova University. He authored numerous articles on Old and Middle English poetry and prose, and co-edited the Garland Encyclopaedia of Medieval Scandinavia (with Paul Acker and Kirsten Wolf). He had completed the first volume of The Old English Psalters (for Toronto University Press), and had undertaken significant research on Latin female saints' lives from the medieval period, and (with Joseph P. McGowan) the prose texts in the Beowulf-manuscript: work that will be published posthumously.

Elaine M. Treharne is Professor of Early English at Florida State University. She is author of The Old English Life of St Nicholas with the Old English Life of St Giles (1997), co-editor of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage (with Philip Pulsiano), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century (with Mary Swan), and Readings in Medieval Texts (with David Johnson). She is the author of Old and Middle English: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2003) and an editor for Review of English Studies and Literature Compass. She currently works on the ideology of early English texts and their physical contexts.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Contexts and Perspectives

An Introduction to the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Vernacular English

An Introduction to the Corpus of Anglo-Latin Literature

Transmission of Literature and Learning: Anglo Saxon Scribal Culture

Authorship and Anonymity

Audience(s), Reception, Literacy

Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Production: Issues of Making and Using

Readings: Cultural Framework and Heritage

The Germanic Background

Religious Context: Pre-Benedictine Reform Period

The Benedictine Reform and Beyond

Legal and Documentary Writings

Scientific and Medical Writings

Prayers, Glosses and Glossaries

Genre and Modes

Religious Prose

Religious Poetry

Secular Prose

Secular Poetry

Anglo-Latin Prose

Intertextualities: Sources and Influences

Biblical and Patristic Learning

The Irish Tradition

Germanic Influences

Scandinavian Relations

Debates and Issues

English in the Post-Conquest Period

Anglo-Saxon Studies: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Nineteenth Century: England, Denmark, America

Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Nineteenth Century: Germany, Austria, Switzerland

By the Numbers: Anglo-Saxon Scholarship at the Century's End

The New Millennium

Selected Further Reading

Index

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