Old English Literature

Critical Essays

R. M. Liuzza

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780300129113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Recognizing the dramatic changes in Old English studies over the past generation, this up-to-date anthology gathers twenty-one outstanding contemporary critical writings on the prose and poetry of Anglo-Saxon England, from approximately the seventh through eleventh centuries. The contributors focus on texts most commonly read in introductory Old English courses while also engaging with larger issues of Anglo-Saxon history, culture, and scholarship. Their approaches vary widely, encompassing disciplines from linguistics to psychoanalysis.

In an appealing introduction to the book, R. M. Liuzza presents an overview of Old English studies, the history of the scholarship, and major critical themes in the field. For both newcomers and more advanced scholars of Old English, these essays will provoke discussion, answer questions, provide background, and inspire an appreciation for the complexity and energy of Anglo-Saxon studies.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• The Cultural Construction of Reading in Anglo-Saxon England
• Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word
• The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity Before the Norman Conquest
• Orality and the Developing Text of Caedmon’s Hymn
• Reading Cædmon’s “Hymn” with Someone Else’s Glosses
• Birthing Bishops and Fathering Poets: Bede, Hild, and the Relations of Cultural Production
• Kinship and Lordship in Early Medieval England: The Story of Sigeberht, Cynewulf, and Cyneheard
• The Thematic Structure of the Sermo Lupi
• Social Idealism in Ælfric’s Colloquy
• The Hero in Christian Reception: Ælfric and Heroic Poetry
• Didacticism and the Christian Community: The Teachers and the Taught
• The Editing of Old English Poetic Texts: Questions of Style
• Anglo-Saxons on the Mind
• Sundor æt Rune: The Voluntary Exile of The Wanderer
• From Plaint to Praise: Language as Cure in “The Wanderer”
• The Form and Structure of The Seafarer
• En/closed Subjects: The Wife’s Lament and the Culture of Early Medieval Female Monasticism
• The Devotional Context of the Cross Before a.d. 1000
• Stylistic Disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood
• God, Death, and Loyalty in The Battle of Maldon
• Maldon and Mythopoesis
• Contributors
• Index