Anglo Saxon England Volume 30

The pre-eminence of Anglo-Saxon England in its field can be seen as a result of its encouragement of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of all aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture. Thus this volume includes an important assessment of the correspondence of St Boniface, in which it is shown that the unusually formulaic nature of Boniface's letters is best understood as a reflex of the saint's familiarity with vernacular composition. A wide-ranging historical contextualization of The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle illuminates the way English readers of the later tenth century may have defined themselves in contradistinction to the monstrous unknown, and a fresh reading of the gendering of female portraiture in a famous illustrated manuscript of the Psychomachia of Prudentius (CCCC 23) shows the independent ways in which Anglo-Saxon illustrators were able to respond to their models. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications rounds off the book; and a full index of the contents of volumes 26-30 is provided. (Previous indexes have appeared in volumes 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25.)

How did the Anglo-Saxons visualize the world that they inhabited? How did their artwork and iconography help to confirm their identity as a people? What influences shaped their visual imagination? This volume brings together a wide range of scholarly perspectives on the role of visuality in the production of culture. Jewels, weapons, crosses, coins, and other artifacts; descriptive passages in literature; types of script; deluxe illuminated manuscripts; and runes and other written inscriptions, whether real or imagined -- all receive scrutiny in this collection of new essays. Noteworthy for its interdisciplinary scope, the volume features arresting work by experts in archaeology, art history, literary studies, linguistics, numismatics, and manuscript studies. The volume as a whole demonstrates the power of current scholarship to cast light on the visual imagination of the past.

Anglo-Saxon England consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture.

Throughout the centuries of its existence, Anglo-Saxon society was highly, if not widely, literate: it was a society the functioning of which depended very largely on the written word. All the essays in this volume throw light on the literacy of Anglo-Saxon England, from the writs which were used as the instruments of government from the eleventh century onwards, to the normative texts which regulated the lives of Benedictine monks and nuns, to the runes stamped on an Anglo-Saxon coin, to the pseudorunes which deliver the coded message of a man to his lover in a well-known Old English poem, to the mysterious writing on an amulet which was apparently worn by a religious for a personal protection from the devil. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

A major re-examination of an important period in British history

This volume contains studies of texts that have come down to us from pre-Conquest times, thus enhancing our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England.

This volume is framed by articles that throw interesting light on the achievement and reputation of the greatest of Anglo-Saxon kings - Alfred.