Old English Riddle No. 39

PMLA ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 61 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 910-915
Author(s):  
Erika von Erhardt-Siebold
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
English Poem

Like the Old English poem 74 on metempsychosis, which will soon be discussed in another article, the present poem 39 has puzzled Anglo-Saxon scholars ever since Dietrich in 1859 suggested the solution Day. Later proposals, Time and Moon, are hardly more convincing than the first. In presenting here the solution Hypostasis Death I wish to say that I consider it to be supported not only by the contents of the poem, but also by historical material, from which it may be concluded that during the early Middle Ages speculative theologians inclined towards the belief in the reality of death.

Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part II, Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis and related works

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 73-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Kitson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Traditions

Part I of this article1 treated the three main streams of lapidary knowledge current in the early Middle Ages (the classical encyclopaedists, the patristic2 and the medical traditions, with particular attention, in the last-named, to the lapidary of Damigeron and its recensions);3 gloss traditions, terminology and popular beliefs about jewels in Anglo-Saxon England; and the origin and content of the Old English Lapidary, with a new edition of it. This part II treats the lapidary passage in Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis; a Hiberno-Latin tract De Duodecim Lapidibus (henceforth DDL) used by Bede; and (with a critical edition) a tenth-century Latin hymn Cives celestis patrie, quite likely composed in Anglo-Saxon England, and closely based on Bede's work.4

Two Uses of Apocrypha in Old English Homilies

1964 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton McCormick Gatch
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Important Influence ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Restricted Number

It has long been recognized that the homilies preserved in Old English from the early Middle Ages are almost entirely derived from Latin writings. It has also been known that, in selecting sources for adaptation, the Anglo-Saxon writers did not subject Latin materials to rigorous tests of orthodoxy and canonicity. Several important studies have been devoted to analysis of the relation of homilies which derive from apocryphal literature to their sources. They show that a relatively restricted number of apocryphal documents exercised an important influence on the popular religious literature of the late Old English period.

Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of The Winton Domesday

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Barlow ◽  
Martin Biddle ◽  
Olaf von Feilitzen ◽  
D.J. Keene
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Domesday Book ◽  
Royal City ◽  
The City

London and Winchester were not described in the Domesday Book, but the royal properties in Winchester were surveyed for Henry I about 1110 and the whole city was surveyed for Bishop Henry of Blois in 1148. These two surveys survive in a single manuscript, known as the Winton Domesday, and constitute the earliest and by far the most detailed description of an English or European town of the early Middle Ages. In the period covered Winchester probably achieved the peak of its medieval prosperity. From the reign of Alfred to that of Henry II it was a town of the first rank, initially centre of Wessex, then the principal royal city of the Old English state, and finally `capital’ in some sense, but not the largest city, of the Norman Kingdom. This volume provides a full edition, translation, and analyses of the surveys and of the city they depict, drawing on the evidence derived from archaeological excavation and historical research in the city since 1961, on personal- and place-name evidence, and on the recent advances in Anglo-Saxon numismatics.

The probable derivation of most of the illustrations in Junius II from an illustrated Old Saxon Genesis

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Raw
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Old Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
History Of

Junius II in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is the only one of the four principal manuscripts of Old English poetry to be illustrated. The pictures are important not only because they form one of the most extensive sets of Genesis illustrations of the early Middle Ages but also because the text which they illustrate is a composite one, 600 lines of which were translated into Old English from an Old Saxon poem probably of the second quarter of the ninth century. By tracing the sources of these illustrations one can throw light on the history and transmission of the text as well as on the history of manuscript art in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

Sepulchral Jews and Stony Christians

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathy Lavezzo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Temple

This chapter examines the unstable geography of Christian and Jew during the Anglo-Saxon period through an analysis of Bede's Latin exegetical work On the Temple (ca. 729–731) and in Cynewulf's Old English poem Elene. It takes as its starting point how Bede and Cynewulf tackle a material long associated with Jewish materialism, stone, in comparison with Christian materialism and descibes their accounts of the sepulchral Jew as well as the stony nature of Jews. It also considers how Bede and Cynewulf construct Christianity by asserting its alterity and opposition to an idea of Jewish carnality that draws on and modifies Pauline supersession. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Bede's and Cynewulf's charged engagements with supersession and “Jewish” places contribute both to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon material culture and to the important role that ideas of the Jew played in such materialisms.

The prefix un- and the metrical grammar of Beowulf

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calvin B. Kendall
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Old English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wide Area ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
English Poem ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Considerable Period

Two rules of the metrical grammar of the Beowulf poet are the subject of this paper. One concerns the variation of stress on the prefix un-; the other pertains to the alliteration of compounds. The two are correlated. The paper rests on the premise that the ‘metre’ of an Old English poem is only one function of a set of regularities that make it something we call verse rather than prose. Separately these regularities may be described as ‘rules’; taken as a group, the rules comprise a metrical grammar. Each Anglo-Saxon scop absorbed such a grammar during the course of long immersion in the poetic tradition of his culture. No two scops' metrical grammars could have been exactly alike; in addition to individual differences, there must have been regional and dialectal variations, although the poetic tradition ensured remarkable uniformity over a wide area and a considerable period of time, and only at the end of the Old English period, with let us say The Battle of Maldon, are significant changes manifest. Further investigation would therefore be needed to determine to what extent the rules here described apply to other grammars.

scholarly journals Glossa do enigm biskupa Aldhema (ok. 639-709)

2011 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 275-289
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Chudzikowska-Wołoszyn
Keyword(s):  
Original Writing ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Language ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Celtic Culture ◽  
Latin Culture ◽  
The Church

Though the Latin language appeared on British Island in common with Roman Invasion, exactly after 55 AD, yet his real popularization had become until after 597 AD, in which the Romans missionary gets to the Anglo-Saxon Canterbury and started great evangelization on this lands. The British Clergy and Aristocracy were very quickly mastered the arcana of Latin language which in this days was a synonym of a culture and a imperial traditions. Anglo-Saxon like any another nation managed to subordinate to themselves the Church language and not resign at the same time about an old traditions and fondness. Remarkable thing is that the anglo-saxon literature was creating on the spur of the three abnormally valuable inspiration source – the Roman, Irish and nativ influence – settled in Celtic culture. Creativeness of an Adhelm who was writing about VII and VIII AD was perfectly mirrored the colour of medieval culture of British Island. His corpus of a hundred riddles display over the reader unprecedented in early middle ages universal. In Sherborne bishop enigmas we can find an Irish boldness which didn’t want to fight with the Greek and Roman paganism but on the contrary it foster an advancement of Christian latin culture. In riddles we can find an Irish culture as well which cherish the bard tradition, attached attention to art of word and found an likes in that what is mannerism and vivid. And finally the Roman culture along with latin alphabet and monastery scholarship contribute to final combined all of drifts forming the original writing of Adhelm.

Marking Boundaries in Beowulf: Æschere’s Head, Grendel’s Arm and the Dragon’s Corpse

2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 521-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thijs Porck ◽  
Sander Stolk
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Poem

Abstract In the Old English poem Beowulf, several body parts are put on display, including Grendel’s arm at Heorot and Æschere’s head on top of a cliff. The first instance has been widely discussed by various scholars, who have tried to find out why and where the arm was hung. By contrast, scholarly treatments of the second instance are relatively scarce. This article places the exhibition of Æschere’s head by Grendel’s mother in the context of similar practices of decapitation and display in Anglo-Saxon England. It will be argued that the placement of the head of Æschere on top of the cliff towering over Grendel’s mere resembles the Anglo-Saxon heafod stoccan, ‘head stakes’, which acted as boundary markers. The monster’s act, therefore, would not strike as foreign to the Anglo-Saxon audience, but would be familiar. As we will show, the identification of Æschere’s head as a boundary marker, placed at the edge of the monsters’ domain, also has some bearing on the interpretation of other potential boundary markers in the poem, including Grendel’s arm and the dragon’s corpse. Lastly, we will argue for a new reading of two textual cruces in Beowulf’s speech prior to his fight with Grendel.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Francesca Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Modernism ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Changing Attitudes

The Introduction situates David Jones’s work as a poet–artist within the broader currents of high and late modernism, particularly within the context of a tradition of medievalism in twentieth-century poetry. It draws on Alexander Nagel’s conception of the medieval modern to show how Jones approaches the culture and history of the early Middle Ages as a form of live material open to play and adaptation. The Introduction also reframes our understanding of David Jones’s perception of himself as Anglo-Welsh in relation to changing attitudes to early medieval Welsh (Celtic) and English (Anglo-Saxon/Teutonic) history over the course of his lifetime. This discussion introduces the monograph’s central argument: as a poet of the medieval modern, Jones plays with and reworks early medieval English histories, narratives, and artefacts in order to challenge the singularity and exceptionalism of an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ canon.

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