The sources of the Old English Martyrology

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Rauer
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Martyrology ◽  
Literary Legacy

For much of the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon interest in literary culture was apparently not as great as it could have been. Medieval and modern commentators have spoken of a pronounced early-ninth-century neglect of English libraries, which seems to have affected contemporary literature as well as the literary legacy which had been inherited from the seventh and eighth centuries. It appears that fewer books and texts were produced; the Latin texts produced may to some extent have been of inferior linguistic quality, and were, so it would seem, used with greater difficulties by a smaller and less educated readership. Comparatively fewer books seem to have survived the ninth century than any other period of Anglo-Saxon history.

Bald's Leechbook and the Physica Plinii

1992 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 87-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Adams ◽  
Marilyn Deegan
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Source Materials

The study of the sources of the Anglo-Saxon medical texts began more than a hundred years ago with T.O. Cockayne's monumental edition of most of the medical, magical and herbal material extant in Old English. Cockayne demonstrated that the most significant text in this corpus, the late ninth-century compilation known as Bald's Leechbook, drew on an impressive range of Latin source materials. Recent work by C.H. Talbot and M.L. Cameron has further extended our knowledge of the classical texts which underlie the Leechbook. Among the significant sources is the text known as the Physica Plinii. Although the Physica survives in several recensions, there has as yet been no systematic study of the relationship between these recensions and the version of the Latin text used by the Old English compiler. The present article investigates Bald's Leechbook as a witness to the history of the Physica Plinii, and demonstrates the complexity of the transmission of the latter work.

Eve in Anglo-Saxon Retellings of the Harrowing of Hell

Traditio ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Glaeske
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Old English Martyrology ◽  
Patristic Exegesis

A spate of recent articles attests to a growing interest in Eve in criticism of Old English literature. However, these same articles demonstrate the narrowness of this interest, as they all focus on Eve in one poem — Genesis B — which is not even an entire poem, but rather a small (albeit significant) interpolation into another poem. Other Old English writings have been little studied: in particular, several prominent occurrences of Eve during the Harrowing of Hell survive in the Old English Martyrology; Blickling Homily 7; a homily De descensu Christi ad inferos in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 121; and the poem Christ and Satan, but have received little comment. In each of these texts Eve supplicates Christ when he descends into hell to free the souls of the biblical patriarchs and prophets after his crucifixion; furthermore, six Old English homilies record Eve's appearance during the Harrowing, although not her active involvement. The Evangelium Nicodemi most fully describes the Harrowing of Hell; Eve's appearance within these texts, however, does not derive from this apocryphon. Moreover, while these episodes incorporate ideas drawn from patristic exegesis, they do not derive directly from patristic writings either; nevertheless, Eve's role in these texts may be an Anglo-Saxon modification of the patristic contrast between Eve and Mary, whereby Eve is portrayed as a type of Mary instead of as her antithesis.

Old sources, new resources: finding the right formula for Boniface

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 15-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Orchard
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Historical Importance ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right

Of all the many Anglo-Saxons who travelled to the Continent, some never to return, Boniface, apostle to the Germans, arguably had the deepest and most enduring inuence; for some, he is simply ‘the greatest Englishman’. But aside from Boniface's historical importance there is much of related interest for scholars of Anglo-Saxon literary culture too: not only does a wealth of hagiographical material survive relating to Boniface and his mission, but there remain a number of letters, poems, and other works written by Boniface himself, alongside a wide range of associated texts. Yet while the literary contexts and merits of (for example) Boniface's poetry have been discussed a number of times in recent years, the primary academic focus on the so-called ‘Bonifatian correspondence’ has tended to be historical, rather than literary. Such a focus has tended to privilege those letters with political or administrative implications above those that deal with more domestic or personal issues, yet it is precisely the latter category which shows the less formal aspects of Anglo-Saxon literary culture, and seems to invite closer comparison with a range of other texts. In particular, the innately repetitious and formulaic quality of much of the correspondence has much in common with that of several other areas of Anglo-Saxon literature in both Latin and Old English, whether in prose or verse, and this article seeks to explore those links in detail, in order to offer a broader literary context for the composition of the correspondence as a whole.

scholarly journals Hybrid forms: translating Boethius in Anglo-Saxon England

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 213-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Opus Geminatum ◽  
Dual Translation ◽  
Hybrid Forms

AbstractCritics have long wondered about the setting and intent of the Old English translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, first into prose and then into prosimetrum. This article situates the dual translation within the broader context of ninth- and tenth-century literary culture, challenging the received view of the two versions as separate projects and arguing instead that the Old English Boethius was conceived and received as a vernacular opus geminatum, or ‘twinned work’. While the opus geminatum and the prosimetrum are generally thought to maintain distinct generic identities, this case study allows for a more capacious understanding of both modes, which I demonstrate were inescapably linked in Anglo-Saxon circles – and which were shaped by a broader aesthetic of prose-verse mixture.

Dry-point glosses to Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis in Beinecke 401

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 195-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip G. Rusche
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Yale University ◽  
English Manuscript

Yale University, Beinecke Library, 401 contains twenty-six leaves of a ninth-century English manuscript of Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis. The manuscript has 189 Old English glosses in ink which were published by A. S. Napier in 1900. Napier also noted the presence of dry-point glosses in the manuscript, and in 1961 H.D. Meritt published twenty-six of these. I have found a total of 160 dry-point glosses and gloss fragments to 153 lemmata in the manuscript, which, other than Meritt's twenty-six, have not been printed before. Dry-point glosses are often neglected in studies of glossing, no doubt due to the difficulty of reading marks scratched into the parchment without ink; I have therefore prefaced my list of glosses and their lemmata with a discussion of dry-point glossing and what it can reveal concerning education in Anglo-Saxon England.

scholarly journals The Tension between Heroic Masculinity and the Christian Self in the Old English Andreas

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Jacek Olesiejko
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Masculinity ◽  
The Devil

The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document