The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford World's Classics)

Book Description

Crossley-Holland--the widely acclaimed translator of Old English texts--introduces the Anglo-Saxons through their chronicles, laws, letters, charters, and poetry, with many of the greatest surviving poems printed in their entirety.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating Reading.......2005-07-10

I'm a homeschooled student (in 10th grade). I read this book as part of a course on early European history, and have also referred to it while studying the history of the English language. Most of the translations are very accessible to the modern reader on their own, and Mr. Crossley-Holland's insightful commentary clears up those which are more difficult or obscure. Anyone who has a serious interest in the literature and culture of the Anglo-Saxons will not be disappointed in this book.

beautiful renderings of the elegies.......2003-06-01

I bought this book in an old edition paperback form in Dublin because it contained the major elegies such as the Wanderer and the Seafarer. I ended up being extremely satisifed not only with the beautiful translation of the Wanderer, but with all of the selections and with Crossley-Holland's comments. I was very thrilled to meet him recently at a reading in Seattle, where he was promoting his Arthur trilogy. I'll have to check that out.

A Fine Sampler.......2000-05-27

Another gem of the Oxford World's Classics series, Crossley-Holland's anthology presents a generous selection of poetry and prose covering the major genres of Anglo Saxon Lit. All the famous stuff is here -- Seafarer, Wanderer, Battle of Maldon,etc -- including a very fine Beowulf translation that's highly readable without straying far from the literal meaning of the original. Plus riddles, laws, sections of the Chronicle -- quite enough to get a rounded picture of this fascinating literature, and all well translated. The scholarly notes are sparse but adequate for an intro-level text. If I could make one suggestion for improvement, it would be to add the Anglo-Saxon versions in a bilingual edition, so readers could have the sound and structure of the originals.

The Novel of Purpose: Literature And Social Reform in the Anglo-American World

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The Novel of Purpose: Literature And Social Reform in the Anglo-American World
Amanda Claybaugh
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

ASIN: 0801444802

Book Description

In The Novel of Purpose, Amanda Claybaugh demonstrates that Great Britain and the United States shared a single literary marketplace in the Victorian era that linked the reform movements in both nations. Nineteenth-century novelists learned new strategies of verisimilitude, as well as new modes of authorial self-presentation, from the writings of social reformers. The result was a distinctively Anglo-American realism, in which novelists, conceiving of themselves as reformers, sought to act upon their readers-and, through their readers, the world. The significance of reform for the nineteenth-century novel is most clear, Claybaugh discovers, in the work of novelists who borrow from reformist writings even though they are skeptical of or uninterested in reform itself: Anne Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Mark Twain.

Customer Reviews:

Handy little book........2003-06-12

Good Book, but you need to know French, German, and Latin to follow it.

Indispensible for an Old English Student.......2001-01-28

It is an indispensible resource for anyone willing (or made) to learn Old English. Besides providing some texts for reading together with the glossary (rather typical for a primer, eh?) it also has a section (comprising HALF of the whole volume!) on grammar, which I find especially good. It is on par with a classic such as Quirk's "Old English Grammar", the major difference being only in the phonology section. Overall, a very good buy - my only reservation is that there could be more texts... I am hard to satisfy.

The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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An excellent guide for anyone interested in Old English

The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521377943

Book Description

This book introduces students to the literature of Anglo-Saxon England, the period from 600-1066, in a collection of fifteen specially commissioned essays. The chapters are written by experts, but designed to be accessible to students who may be unfamiliar with Old English. The emphasis throughout is on placing texts in their contemporary context and suggesting ways in which they relate to each other and to the important events and issues of the time. With the help of maps and a chronological table of events the first chapters describe briefly the political, social and ecclesiastical history of the period and how poetry and prose in Latin and in the vernacular developed and flourished. A succinct account of Old English provides beginners with a handy guide to the rules of spelling, grammar and syntax. Subsequent chapters explore the range of Anglo-Saxon writing under different thematic headings. A final bibliography gives guidance on further reading.

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Customer Reviews:

An excellent guide for anyone interested in Old English.......2001-04-28

Like the vast majority of people nowadays I discovered Old English as an undergraduate, rather than as a casual reader in my spare time. Initially I was bored and sceptical. "Oh my God this is like German, why do I have to study it?" I thought. However, the Anglo-Saxons began to grow on me after a while and one gains a valuable insight into their culture using this book. As well as treating of heroic themes in poems like Beowulf and the Christian ethos which inspired such poems as The Dream of the Rood, it also offers general overviews such as "Fatalism and the Millennium" (something very relevant!) and the role of saints in Anglo-Saxon England. This makes the poetry and prose of this alien society more accessible.

Nor is this book overly technical, so it is not daunting to approach. Although I read it in the context of a textbook, it could equally be appreciated by those merely reading Old English as a hobbie.

Book Description

The legend of Beowulf and Grendel is one of the founding works of modern Western literature. It tells the story of the monster-slaying hero, Beowulf, who frees the feasting hall of a Danish king from the 12-year tyranny of the hideous creature Grendel. For decades, scholars have assumed that the warrior Beowulf was based on an actual historic person, but that Grendel was the work of imagination. In Beowulf and Grendel, John Grigsby reveals the true basis for Grendel's battle with Beowulf. Grigsby explains how a cult migrated to England from Denmark and Germany, bringing with it a practice of human sacrifice. It is the violent suppression of this cult in the fifth century that underlies Beowulf's fantastic deeds. Fusing historical research with literary study, Grigsby presents a compelling case for the true-life roots of a classic work of art.

Customer Reviews:

This is a fascinating idea..........2007-05-14

I'm a medical researcher with special interests in neuroscience, and Grogsby's thesis is fascinating. Neuroscientists, especially the bench scientists, like to play with historical events. One example was the rise of both flagellation and tarantella, which has been linked to humid warm weather and therefore mold on the rye harvest. So, it's a believable idea.

I am less familiar with the cultures that slew the king on a yearly basis - that sounds as though it wouldn't sustain itself very well. There may be other books on that subject, whether Fraser or others, that I should look into to see how this could work.

Finally, either I missed it or Grigsby didn't mention the dragon part of the Beowulf legend in any depth. One wonders how that links up with the religious shift theme.

Interesting read.......2007-05-13

The book reads a little like a college essay. Some of the author's points are better supported than others. In several cases he assumes the reader must agree with him and no further proof is needed. In some cases no real proof is available because the lack of historical data. However, the author discusses some very interesting topics and writes in an accessible style. If you have any interest in Beowulf or Germanic, Norse, or Celtic cultural roots, this book is certainly worth a look. I enjoyed reading it and was motivated to further explore the topic when I finished the book.

Some Interesting Insights but No Overall Unity of Vision.......2007-04-18

This book makes the interesting case that the Beowulf poem is less a dim recollection of a particular historical incident or of a strictly mythological tale, than it is a veiled recounting of a religious change that overwhelmed the cultural lives of the ancestors of the English. John Grigsby brings archeological and ethnological studies to bear on this effort to reconstruct the actual circumstances and practices of the peoples who were to become the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (who in turn became the Anglo-Saxons who became today's English). In so doing he suggests that the Norse mythos and pantheon, as we have it from later times, was, in fact, relatively late on the scene and that the proto-English, whom he identifies with the Ingaevones of Roman times, were agriculturalists with a religion that reflected agriculturalist predilections long before they worshipped Woden and Thunor (Odin and Thor in later Viking times).

According to Grigsby, the Beowulf myth is a dim echo of the era in which latecomers in the area, worshippers of the sky gods identifiable with large segments of the later Norse pantheon, overthrew the old ways, ways that required the annual sacrifice of a king to a fearsome goddess and her son. Grigsby makes many connections with the triple goddess worshipping neolithic age that apparently once predominated in the Mediterranean and European areas, with the old myths of the Nile valley and with the old faiths which suffused the area in which Rome arose. But in the end his argument boils down to this: that the Beowulf story is a somewhat corrupted and confused recollection of some events which altered forever the older beliefs and practices of these peoples, traditions that the Angles, Saxons et al brought with them out of the old country (today's southern Denmark) when they conquered the British Isles. They were not yet sky god worshippers, not yet Wodenists, Grigsby maintains, but came from a backwater part of Scandia which had remained more primitive than other parts of Germania and Scandinavia in the Dark Ages that followed Rome's fall. Thus, the story of Beowulf is as native to the early Germanic English as to the land from which they hailed.

It's an interesting claim and there's a lot to chew on in the information Grigsby brings forward. But the book, itself, lacks cohesion or a clearcut thesis as to the actual events which underly the famous Old English poem set in Denmark's Heorot. The parallels he draws with other traditions (including the Hrolf Kraki saga which deals with many of the same personalities, in a roughly comparable time, albeit from the perspective of the much later Norse tradition) are intriguing. But there really isn't that much new here and the failure to offer a firm conclusion or really unravel the story behind the story mar this book. Good for scholars, I think, and for those with a strong interest in the area, but not really right for laymen and not ultimately as satisfying as I had hoped it would be.

An awesome yet frustrating book........2006-10-23

This is an inspiring work. John Grisby has brought a wide array of factors concerning early northern culture together to make his point. His understanding of culture and myth and his obvious enthusiasm for these subjects make this one of the more interesting (and fresh) books to appear on the subject in a long time. Before I go further, I would like to point out that I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Norse/Germanic Mythology. If you are not greatly interested in Germanic and Indo-European linguistics you will enjoy the book greatly, and needn't read the rest of this review. If you are interested in linguistics, please read on.

Be very careful when reading this book. As he is enthusiastic, he is also academically reckless. There are a lot of passages starting with "some have been led to believe..." or "some claim that..." that end with no citation or note - My question to these passages is always "Who believes that, and how do I know that "they" offering an opinion that can be trusted as objective?". Furthermore, he makes it obvious on several occasions that he is no linguist. He offers Indo-European etymologies that don't conform to any known transcription standard, and on several occasions he seems to have trouble discerning Indo-European forms from Proto-Germanic (there is a big difference).

My intention here is not to be harsh, disapproving, or unduly critical. The subject matter of this book resides in a field that has all too often fallen prey to misunderstanding. To exemplify the type of error I am talking about, and to add credence for my objectivity here, I would like to point out two linguistic oversights that can be illustrated without excess circumlocution.

On page 69 Grisby raises the issue of a double meaning in the phrase "beow waes breme blad wide sprang" "Beow was renowned, far and wide his glory spread", arguing that this was a metaphor for the spread of agriculture throughout the north. The indication, he claims, is that the name Beow means "barley". That's true. In Anglo-Saxon the word "beow" does in fact mean barley. But that isn't the name that appears in the manuscript. The sentence he's referring to appears on the first leaf of the manuscript, (which he included as the first photographic plate in the book, just after page 118). The original manuscript reads "Beowulf waes breme blad wide sprang" - The name Beowulf here belonging to another character by the name of Beowulf. The only place that I can recall ever seeing this name appear printed in the poem as "Beow" and not "Beowulf" is in Seamus Heany's translation where he intentionally removes the sequence "-ulf" from the name to avoid confusion between this character and the hero of the poem. Scholars have posited that "Beowulf" was written here due to scribal misunderstanding, and that the name was in fact originally "Beo", but again, that is not what appears in the manuscript, and Grisby makes no mention of the fact that this point is an educated theory and not an attested fact.

Also on p. 156 Grisby makes reference to an Indo-European root "inguz" as the source of Germanic theonym Yngvi/Ingui/Ing. "*Inguz" is a Proto-East-Germanic word not an Indo-European root. Furthermore there is no consensus as to where the early Germanic speakers got this word and what its original meaning was. The name Yngvi, Ingui, Ing, etc. has no universally agreed upon etymology and very few linguists posit an Indo-European origin for the name. Further, the meaning of the word which Grisby offers "son" is not directly attested in any of the languages. The Old Irish name, Oengus/Angus by which Grisby claims an etymological connection to "Yngvi/Ingui", is similar in appearance but it is not related etymologically. The old Irish name is compound form, from Oen-gus; literally "one-strength" the meaning being "having solitary strength" these "-strength" names are very common in Old Irish and Modern Gaelic.

Hopefully without turning this into a term paper my sources are:
Vladimir Orel "A Handbook of Germanic Etymology", Winfred P. Lehman "A Gothic Etymological Dictionary", J.P. Mallory and Douglas Adams "An Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture", and Calvert Watkins "The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots" all works that are available (to my knowledge) from Amazon.com.

There are quite a few more problems, those are just two that I found the hardest to swallow, but by now I hope I've made my point clear: be careful when reading this book and looking for solid answers. The author jumps to a lot of conclusions - linguistically and otherwise.

All that said, I still give it four stars. The book is highly readable, enjoyable and insightful. I wish the author followed through more thoroughly on many of his claims with more citation and less speculation, but it is overall a very inspired work. Despite it's weak details, I still support many of the author's overall conclusions. This could be a seminal work redefining how the general reader, rather than just the scholar, views the Old North. If the author's love of the subject were the only judgement criteria, I would give him ten stars.

I apologise for the lack of brevity.

Earlier roots of the English Founding Myth - in Turkey?.......2006-07-31

Mr. Grigsby's book is supplemental material for me as a historian exploring genealogy. A (fee-based) genealogy website that I use has detailed entries of the "Anglo/Swedes" back to a possibly semi-mythological figure named "Yngvi King In Turkey" b. 193 in Noatun, Sweden. Going further back, his antecedants are in fact listed as originating from Turkey, Macedonia, Persia and Mesopotamia, and many of them closely related to ruling families in those nations. I have been reviewing the history of this region and period, and there certainly were some displacements of large groups of peoples, especially with the expansion of Roman hegemony. Is it possible that some of these peoples migrated north along already known trade routes to Scandinavia, to become the parent group of the Anglo-Saxons?
Mr. Grigsby makes several references to Scandinavian/Anglo-Saxon rituals, e.g. references to a barley god, which he believes shares some similarities to rituals from the Middle East. Another comparison is to the depiction of a solar disk above a boat, which is clearly reminiscent of Egyptian artwork.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the earliest known history of the English-speaking peoples, and possibly a few others as well.

Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England)

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The most vital book on the subject in fifty years
good Heathen stuff

Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England)
Richard North
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0521551838

Book Description

Richard North offers a complete revision of our view of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism and mythology in the pre-Viking and Viking age. He discusses the pre-Christian gods of Bede's history of the Anglo-Saxon conversion with reference to a god known as Ingui. Using expert knowledge of comparative literary material from Old Norse-Icelandic and other Old Germanic languages, North reconstructs the slender Old English evidence in an imaginative and original treatment of poems such as "Deor" and "The Dream of the Rood."

Customer Reviews:

The most vital book on the subject in fifty years.......2004-08-14

North has done something no author has done with regard to his subject in far too long; he actually took the time to look into it and put forth his own thoughts instead of regurgitating the works of others. (Most notably Stanley's "search for AS paganism") Just when I thought there was little ground left to break on the subject, along comes North's book and challenges long held and long overlooked aspects of Anglo Saxon pagan belief. From the onset of the book to the final chapter on Paulinus and the Stultus Error (which is brilliant I would like to add)I did not set this book down once. A must have for the student of Anglo Saxon culture and Theodisc Heathens alike. Brilliant work from a brilliant scholar. Wes thu Peter North hal!

good Heathen stuff.......2001-08-01

While I found Mr North's overall view of Anglo Saxon Heathenry a bit short, his specific information and his comparitive knowledge and examples with the rest of the Germanic world is a treasure for todays Heathen/Asatruar. If you can spare the $, and are not new to Heathenry, get this book. You will be amazed at what hints of Heathenry survived in Anglo Saxon literature. Wes Heathens Hal! :-)

Ruling Women: Queenship And Gender in Anglo-saxon Literature

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Ruling Women: Queenship And Gender in Anglo-saxon Literature
Stacy S. Klein
Manufacturer: University of Notre Dame Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Critical Companion to Beowulf

ASIN: 0268033102

Book Description

In Ruling Women, Stacy S. Klein explores how queens functioned as imaginative figures in Anglo-Saxon texts. Focusing on pre-Conquest works ranging from Bede to Aelfric, Klein argues that Anglo-Saxon writers drew upon accounts of legendary royal wives to construct cultural ideals of queenship during a time when that institution was undergoing profound change.

Also a study of gender, her book examines how Anglo-Saxon writers used women of the highest social rank to forge broader cultural ideals of femininity, even as they used female voices to articulate far less comfortable social truths. Capitalizing on queensÂ' strong associations with intercession, Anglo-Saxon writers consistently looked to royal women as mediatory figures for negotiating sustained tensions, and sometimes overt antagonisms, among different peoples, institutions, and systems of belief. Yet as authors appropriated legendary queens and inserted them into contemporary Anglo-Saxon culture, these royal "peaceweavers" simultaneously threatened to destroy existing unities and to expose the fragility of seemingly entrenched social formations.

Book Description

Monsters and the monstrous, whether from the remote pagan past or the new world of Christian Latin learning, haunted the Anglo-Saxon imagination in a variety of ways. In this series of detailed studies, Andy Orchard demonstrates the changing range of Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards the monstrous by reconsidering the monsters of Beowulf against the background of early medieval and patristic teratology and with reference to specific Anglo-Saxon texts.

The immediate manuscript context of the monsters in Beowulf is analysed, shedding light on the poet's treatment of the theme of the monstrous and its integration into his work, and a series of parallel discussions consider a range of medieval treatments of the same theme in a variety of analogous texts (all provided with translation), in Latin, Old English, Middle Irish, and Old Icelandic.

The twin themes of pride and prodigies are suggested by tracing changing attitudes towards the concept of pride and establishing a close link between the proud pagan warriors depicted in Christian tradition and the monsters they fight, and with whom they become increasingly identified.

An appendix contains new editions and translations (some for the first time in English) of the Liber Monstrorum, The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and The Wonders of the East.

Originally published in 1995 by Boydell & Brewer.

Customer Reviews:

Great approach to an under-read poem.......2007-02-07

There is increasing interest in the 21st century with "Beowulf," that old Old English poem -- largely, I think, because it can be read as a parable for the United States and its War on Terrorism. Orchard's book offers a way of seeing the poem that reveals the work's contemporary nature. It helps make the U.S. v. Terrorism parable more visible. In short, Orchard's book and the poem itself are well worth a fresh read if you haven't taken a look at "Beowulf" since high school or college.

Ian Myles Slater on: Much Ado About Monsters.......2004-12-31

Andy Orchard's volume, "Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the 'Beowulf'-Manuscript," concludes with careful editions of Latin and Old English texts, and modern English translations. It opens with a superb introductory discussion, which is effectively a short book in itself, and probably could have stood alone with some expansion. (But then we wouldn't have the full texts and their translations.)

Taken as a whole, it fills a void in "Beowulf" studies. Since it took a long time to fill, I am relieved to report that it was worth the wait. And the comparatively reasonable price of the paperback edition -- reasonable given that is on Old English literature, a subject of limited interest, and published by a University press -- is more good news.

In addition, the volume is of some importance to the growing interest in medieval ideas about strange people, creatures, and places, and the part they played in concepts about the physical world, and what they revealed about the Will of God. And it contributes to other branchs of medieval studies, as well; even to our knowledge of the image of Alexander the Great. (Yes indeed, the Middle Ages had the equivalent of a "Hollywood Version" ... .)

So, what exactly does it contain, and why is it important? The monsters in the "Beowulf" manuscript would be just Grendel, Grendel's Mother, and the Dragon, and maybe some of the sea-creatures Beowulf fought, right? Actually, no.

"Beowulf" survives in a unique eleventh-century manuscript, officially designated Cotton Vitellius A.xv. That means that the seventeenth-century collector Sir Robert Cotton kept it on the top shelf of a bookcase marked with a bust of the Emperor Vitellius, and that it was item number fifteen on that shelf, after he had it bound with a group of four unrelated (except for being English) texts from the twelfth century. The original, shorter, form is known, after the earlier collector who wrote his name on the first surviving leaf, as the Nowell Codex.

It was recognized by scholars fairly early on that the original codex contained five works. (Any others were lost, with parts of two of the survivors, before it was rebound, in addition to the damage sustained in an eighteenth-century fire.) These five are: "The Passion of St. Christopher," an account of a legendary giant / Christian holy man; "The Wonders of the East" and "The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle," translations of two Latin accounts of strange creatures encountered in the Orient by Alexander the Great; and, following "Beowulf" itself, "Judith," an Old English verse adaptation of a story from the Apocrypha in the Vulgate Bible, unfortunately incomplete. (For those unfamiliar with the story, it features a heroine who has to deal with a heathen invader, whose behavior, at least, is monstrous. Like David -- or Beowulf -- she comes back with a trophy to prove her story.)

"Beowulf" has been receiving attention for almost two centuries now; "Judith" came to scholars' attention even earlier, in a collection of Anglo-Saxon Biblical translations and paraphrases, edited by Edward Thwaite, and published way back in 1698.

But the prose texts, Christian (but not Biblical) or semi-classical, instead of Germanic, have been treated as embarrassing stepchildren (if not worse); although some received individual editions, drawing on other manuscripts when possible, their main treatment *as a group* was a barely-usable volume from the Early Texts Society, edited by Stanley Rypins, "Three Old English Prose Texts" (EETS Original Series No. 161, 1924). It was published about a dozen years before Tolkien insisted on putting the monsters in "Beowulf" at the center of the study of the poem. (And when I say barely-usable, I mean that I tried hard to work with it. Rypins seemed very good at reporting the state of some texts which appear to have confused the scribes who had copied them. Yes, it was *supposed* to be a "diplomatic edition" -- but some diplomatic editions offer more help than others.) Orchard elsewhere described it as "less than satisfactory."

It was almost thirty years after Rypins' edition before Kenneth Sisam published the observation that the Nowell Codex seems to have been a collection of stories about monsters and heroes, and that the selection of texts may not have been random, but represented how "Beowulf" was seen in the late tenth or early eleventh century. And that this possibility deserved attention from critics.

The sort of thing that only a genius of Aristotelian proportions -- or possibly a child -- would think to mention. Completely obvious, naturally, *once* it has been brought to your attention.

Critical consideration of the issue soon followed; although the source materials remained hard to find, with editions scattered, and often imperfectly edited for use in Beowulfian studies. The fact that these were translations from Latin texts with their own confusing histories only compounded the problem.

In the meantime, it had been noticed long before that Beowulf's own King Hygelac appeared, in a garbled form, in a Latin collection, the "Liber Monstrorum." (Yes, Harry Potter fans, an actual "Book of Monsters.") This work, in its turn, seemed to have its own, complex, relationship with the Alexander-texts in the Nowell Codex. And, after Sisam's observation, its separate circulation suggested that the Nowell Codex would not have been a unique example of interest in strange and bizarre (or just very large) inhabitants of lands far and near.

And the "Wonders of the East" itself turns out to have a complicated history, the original version apparently having been presented to medieval readers as a communication to a Roman Emperor, Hadrian or Trajan, and not originally part of the Alexander Cycle at all, although dependent on it. But it had been drawn in (or drawn back in); what, if anything, did that say about the role of Alexander in medieval thought?

And there are lots of other questions. But systematic treatments of what the texts meant for Anglo-Saxons, especially the versions in their own language, have been frustratingly hard to find. (That something interesting was going on was evident. "Wonders" contains examples of the word *waelcyrige* -- now familiar in the Norse-derived form of "valkyries" [valkyrjar] -- in actual use by an Anglo-Saxon scribe, even if the referents are semi-classical, not Germanic.)

As studies and translations of individual texts have appeared over the years, some information has become available to the "common reader." The Old English "Wonders of the East" is translated in Michael Swanton's "Anglo-Saxon Prose." Latin versions of "Wonders" and "The Letter of Alexander" are translated, with much else, in Richard Stoneman's "Legends of Alexander the Great." (Both books were published in the Everyman series, and both, apparently, are out of print. Stoneman's translation of "The Greek Alexander Romance," a more distantly related work, is still available from Penguin, as is Ken Dowden's version of it in B.P. Reardon's "Collected Ancient Greek Novels.")

In "Pride and Prodigies" Andy Orchard has brought together critically edited Latin and Old English texts of "The Wonders of the East" and "The Letter of Alexander," with modern English translations of the Old English, and a Latin text, with translation, of the "Liber Monstrorum." In the substantial introductory section, Orchard considers how the Old English versions are adaptations of the Latin sources, and the possible relationship of these adaptations to the ideas at work in "Beowulf," and whether this sheds any light on well-known parallel incidents in Icelandic literature. The "Liber Monstrorum," a sort of grab-bag of anecdotes from a great variety of sources, many classical, is sorted through for similar insights. Connections are made with continental literatures, and Celtic (mainly Irish) traditions, as well. This is very good, if perhaps a little over-rich for some readers. (I thought I knew the material reasonably well, but I went to my shelves for saga translations, and "Beowulf and Its Analogues" -- it turned out that Orchard was, of course, much, much more reliable than my memories, but I wasn't wasting my time.)

"The Passion of St. Christopher" is part of a tradition of "Lives of the Saints," and offers a different set of problems, and, understandably, the text is not included in an already well-stuffed volume; and the discussion of it is subordinated to the other works. But a text, translation, and study of this work, as part of the "Lives" literature, the Christopher tradition, and in terms of beliefs about monsters, also would be welcome.

Pride and Prodigies; a Cellar of Scholarly Wisdom.......2000-04-01

As a PhD Candidate in Old English, I have found Andy Orchard's text, Pride and Prodigies, to be invaluable in my own studies. Orchard offers the foremost translations in the field of Old English and Latin texts, like "The Wonders of the East." These texts are used to elucidate the question of monstrosity in the Beowulf manuscript, first raised by J.R.R. Tolkien. Though it is difficult to come to any consensus about these monsters, Orchard charts the progression of the manuscript, not fearing to consider the validity of the theme on a continuum.

Book Description

"This innovative, well-researched study looks at anti-Judaic rhetoric in the Old English and Latin texts of Anglo-Saxon England-a land lacking real Jews. The author isolates a common pool of inherited images for portraying the Jew, and teaches us to hear, especially in the vernacular, their increasingly dark and disturbing inflections."
---Roberta Frank, Yale University

"The Footsteps of Israel is a fascinating study of a pervasive stereotype. Scheil's analysis of how Jews, with no real physical presence in Anglo-Saxon England, captured the imagination of writers of the period, is a superb achievement."
---Louise Mirrer, President and CEO, New-York Historical Society

"The elegance of Scheil's prose weaves a unifying thread through the vast literary and historical tapestry he presents, moving with grace from Latin to Old English, from Bede to later authors, from Wordsworth and Blake to modern writers. He speaks elegantly of these texts' conversations with the past, and the Jews emerge as both enemies and spiritual antecedents of the 'New Israel' of Anglo-Saxon England."
---Stephen Spector, State University of New York, Stonybrook

Jews are the omnipresent border-dwellers of medieval culture, a source of powerful metaphors active in the margins of medieval Christianity. This book outlines an important prehistory to later persecutions in England and beyond, yet it also provides a new understanding of the previously unrecognized roles Jews and Judaism played in the construction of social identity in early England.

Andrew P. Scheil approaches the Anglo-Saxon understanding of Jews from a variety of directions, including a survey of the lengthy history of the ideology of England as the New Israel, its sources in late antique texts and its manifestation in both Old English and Latin texts from Anglo-Saxon England. In tandem with this perhaps more sympathetic understanding of the Jews is a darker vision of anti-Judaism, associating the Jews in an emotional fashion with the materiality of the body.

In exploring the complex ramifications of this history, the author is the first to assemble and study references to Jews in Anglo-Saxon culture. For this reason, The Footsteps of Israel will be an important source for Anglo-Saxonists, scholars of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, scholars of medieval antisemitism in general, students of Jewish history, and medievalists interested in cultural studies.

Old English Literature: A Short Introduction (Blackwell Introductions to Literature)

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Old English Literature: A Short Introduction (Blackwell Introductions to Literature)
Daniel Donoghue
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

History | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Medieval | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Literature & Fiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0631234861

Book Description

This innovative and intriguing introduction to Old English literature is structured around what the author calls 'figures' from Anglo-Saxon culture: the Vow, the Hall, the Miracle, the Pulpit, and the Scholar. These unconventional categories not only situate Old English texts within a cultural framework but also create new connections between different genres, periods and authors: for example, between prose and poetry, the vernacular and Latin, and the obscure and the well known. The book is based on the author's many years' experience of teaching Old English literature and combines close textual analysis with historical context, making it suitable for both new students and general readers.

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