The origin of Standard Old English and Æthelwold's school at Winchester

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Gneuss
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Negative Evidence ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Of Greece

‘In literary culture’, Sir James Murray has said, ‘the Normans were about as far behind the people whom they conquered as the Romans were when they made themselves masters of Greece.’ Indeed when the Normans set foot on English soil Anglo-Saxon England was in possession not only of a remarkable literature but also of a highly developed written standard language, known and used in all regions of the country. Most of our Old English manuscripts were written in the late tenth century and in the eleventh in a form of English – although not always quite pure – which the grammarians call late West Saxon. This form of the language is by no means just a dialect, any more than its literature is merely the literary product of a dialect. This fact is first brought home to us when we examine the negative evidence – the rareness before the end of the tenth century of texts in dialects other than West Saxon and their almost complete absence after this time, a state of affairs for which various explanations might be found, historical factors among others. Considerably more important, however, is a positive criterion: texts in this late West Saxon were written and read in other parts of the country too, in Kent (Canterbury), in Mercia (Worcester) and indeed even in Northumbria (York). Moreover, texts which had originally been written in Anglian were transcribed into late West Saxon, as was a large part of Old English poetry. There can be no doubt: in our Old English texts of the eleventh century we are dealing with a standard literary language which, although based on a dialectal foundation, had extended its domain beyond the borders of this dialect.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

Unfulfilled promise: the rubrics of the Old English prose Genesis

1999 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 111-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin C. Withers
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Formulaic Language ◽  
English Prose ◽  
The People ◽  
Sacred History

The Old English prose Genesis contains a series of innovative rubrics, unparalleled in the Vulgate tradition, which divide the story of Genesis into a series of holy biographies of the patriarchs Noah, Abraham and Joseph. These rubrics, added to the text in the eleventh century, use formulaic language derived from contemporary documents such as Anglo-Saxon wills and thereby regulate how Genesis was to be read and interpreted by an aristocratic layman or novice monk. The rubrics blend ancient Hebrew narratives, stories of the saints and the legal conventions familiar to the reader in order to portray ‘sacred history’ as an unbroken, legally sanctioned inheritance. They emphasize the Covenant of God with Abraham and the people of Israel and assure the contemporary reader that he too will inherit an unfulfilled promise manifested in God's covenant with the patriarchs.

Wynflæd's wardrobe

1979 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gale R. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Relative Value

An Old English document, composed probably in the middle of the tenth century and extant in a not very careful, mutilated, eleventh-century copy, London, British Library, Cotton Charter, VIII, 38, lists the bequests of a woman named Wynflæd. The bequests of clothing in this will are particularly interesting. Anglo-Saxon testaments do not itemize elaborate garments as do some English wills of the later Middle Ages; they refer to clothing only rarely, and then sometimes in general terms. Wynflæd's will is unusual in mentioning several different items of clothing and in specifying them more precisely. Descriptive references to non-military clothing are uncommon in Old English texts generally. Although many garment-names are documented, some which occur only in glossaries or translations from Latin may never have been in common use in England and some words are of uncertain meaning. In most cases the sex of the wearer of a named garment and the relative value of the garment are unknown. The garment-names in Wynflæd's will, by contrast, refer to items of clothing which were certainly worn by women at a known date and were valuable enough to be bequeathed.

Old English poetry, verse by verse

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 95-130
Author(s):  
Eric Weiskott
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Half Line ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Critical Editions ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
State Of Affairs

AbstractCertain syntactical ambiguities in Old English poetry have been the focus of debate among students of metre and syntax. Proponents of intentional ambiguity must demonstrate that the passages in question exhibit, not an absence of syntactical clarity, but a presence of syntactical ambiguity. This article attempts such a demonstration. It does so by shifting the terms of the debate, from clauses to verses and from a spatial to a temporal understanding of syntax. The article proposes a new interpretation of many problematic passages that opens onto a new way of parsing and punctuating Old English poetry.In this essay in the history of poetic style, I demonstrate that the sequence in time of Old English half-lines sometimes necessitates retrospective syntactical reanalysis, a state of affairs which modern punctuation is ill-equipped to capture, but in which Anglo-Saxon readers and listeners would have recognized specific literary effects. In the second section, I extrapolate two larger syntactical units, the half-line sequence and the verse paragraph, which differ in important ways from the clauses and sentences that modern editors impose on Old English poetic texts. Along the way, I improve the descriptive accuracy of Kuhn's Laws by reinterpreting them as governing half-line sequences rather than clauses. I conclude with a call for unpunctuated or minimally punctuated critical editions of Old English verse texts.

Water and the Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
The People ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Textual Records

As a third volume in the series Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, this work illumines how an understanding of the impact of water on the daily lives of the people and the environment of the Anglo-Saxon world can inform reading and scholarship about the period. The text considers the impact of waterscapes on social and cultural structures. Similar lines of enquiry consider the impact of bodies of water on Old English poetry, on place names that delineate types of watery bodies, and on human interactions. Specifically, the volume chronicles Anglo-Saxon exchanges with wetlands, sacred wells and springs, landing spaces, bridges, canals, watermills, river settlements, as well as a variety of other waterscapes. The volume’s examination of the impact of water features on the daily lives of the people and the environment of the Anglo-Saxon world fosters an understanding not only of the archaeological and material circumstances of water and its uses, but also the imaginative waterscapes found in the textual records of the Anglo-Saxons.

XVII.—Recent Translations of Old English Poetry.

PMLA ◽  
1903 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-458
Author(s):  
James M. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Past

The desire was expressed some years ago that we might soon have in English a collection of translations of Old English poetry that might fill the place so well filled in German by Grein's Dichtungen der Angelsachsen. This desire is now in a fair way of accomplishment, and much has been done during the past ten years, the period embraced in this paper. As was naturally to be expected from the work previously done in criticism of both text and subject-matter, Beowulf has attracted more than ever the thoughts and efforts of translators, for we had in 1892 the rhythmical translation of Professor J. Lesslie Hall and the prose version of Professor Earle; in 1895 (reprinted in cheaper form in 1898) the poetical translation of William Morris and A. J. Wyatt, the editor of Beowulf; in 1901 the prose version of Dr. J. R. Clark Hall, author of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; and only the other day, in 1902, the handy prose version of Professor C. B. Tinker.

Two composite texts from Archbishop Wulfstan's ‘commonplace book’: theDe ecclesiastica consuetudineand theInstitutio beati Amalarii de ecclesiasticis officiis

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 233-271
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Editorial Work

The great monument of tenth-century Anglo-Saxon monastic liturgy, theRegularis concordia, has been particularly fortunate in its twentieth-century devotees. The most prominent was Dom Thomas Symons, who published numerous learned articles on the text and, in 1953, an edition and translation that are still immensely valuable. More recently, Lucia Kornexl has re-edited theConcordiawith its continuous Old English gloss from London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, and provided an exhaustive collation against the second Latin copy in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina B. iii. Building on this detailed editorial work, Kornexl's introductory chapters also suggest new and helpful ways of regarding the transmission of this text and the authority of its two extant manuscripts.

scholarly journals The departure of the hero in a ship: The intertextuality of Beowulf, Cynewulf and Andreas

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Francis Leneghan
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Church

This article identifies a new Old English poetic motif, ‘The Departure of the Hero in a Ship’, and discusses the implications of its presence in Beowulf, the signed poems of Cynewulf and Andreas, a group of texts already linked by shared lexis, imagery and themes. It argues that the Beowulf-poet used this motif to frame his work, foregrounding the question of royal succession. Cynewulf and the Andreas-poet then adapted this Beowulfian motif in a knowing and allusive manner for a new purpose: to glorify the church and to condemn its enemies. Investigation of this motif provides further evidence for the intertextuality of these works.Keywords: Old English poetry; Beowulf, Cynewulf; Andreas; Anglo-Saxon literature

Lists of saints' resting-places in Anglo-Saxon England

1978 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 61-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Rollason
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Scholarly Edition ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
Topographical Feature ◽  
Usual Formula

Secgan be þam Godes sanctum þe on Engla lande ærost reston is the title of a short document in Old English which is extant in two manuscripts, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201, pp. 149–51, and London, British Library, Stowe 944, 34v–39r. These manuscripts are dated to the middle and the first half of the eleventh century respectively on the evidence of their script. A third copy was once in London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D. xvii but was destroyed in the fire of 1731. The only scholarly edition is that of Felix Liebermann. The document mentions the resting-places of eighty-nine saints: all but one of these places are in England and all but ten of the saints were active in England. The usual formula is of the type, ‘Ðonne resteð sanctus Congarus confessor on Cungresbirig’ (37b), but in many cases the place is further defined by reference to some topographical feature, most often a river, as, for example, ‘Ðonne resteð sanctus Iohannes biscop on þare stowe Beferlic, neah þare ea Hul’ (5a).

scholarly journals The Ely memoranda and the economy of the late Anglo-Saxon fenland

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 333-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory Naismith
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Material Resources

AbstractConsisting of six short Old English texts written in the early eleventh century, the Ely memoranda illustrate how a major and recently refounded Benedictine abbey managed its landed endowment. Two of the memoranda relate to generous help provided by Ely to Thorney, and four concern Ely's own lands. The collection as a whole reveals much about interaction between monasteries, monastic perspectives on material resources and investment in them, the economy of eastern England, and the context of record-keeping. This article offers a new edition and translation of the texts, and surveys the contribution the memoranda make to understanding of cultural and economic history.

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