Learning And Literature In Anglo Saxon England

An collection of essays by specialists in the field examining Anglo-Saxon learning and text interpretation and transmission.

Reveals the rich emotional experience of teaching and learning as revealed in Anglo-Saxon literature.

The essays collected in the second volume are concerned principally with the tenth-century renaissance of English learning, largely in response to the initiatives of a small number of energetic scholars and teachers, such as Dunstan and Ethelwold. In combination these studies illustrate the idiosyncratic, but advanced, state of Anglo-Saxon learning.

At the close of the ninth century Alfred the Great lamented the decay of teaming in England and proposed a program of official translations and scholarly study to set his country back on the path of intellectual inquiry. In his Preface to Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care, Alfred equated a knowledge of texts with the right governance of self and state. That document, rich in the history of Anglo-Saxon England and suggestive of the uses of literacy, has long been a canonical text in the teaching of the Old English language, and it begins Seth Lerer's study of the place of texts in the construction of the Anglo-Saxon literary imagination. Beowulf, the Old English Daniel, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Exeter Book Riddles--all contain scenes of reading and writing, moments of self-conscious inscription and decipherment that have the power to alter the reader's conception of the mythical and historical, the commonplace and the fantastic. Lerer analyzes these scenes, which, taken in sequence, contribute to a reassessment of Old English literature, its nature and social function. He seeks to understand the workings of the lit-erate imagination in the history and fiction of the Anglo-Saxons. In the course of the book he addresses questions about how a Christian literature evokes its pagan past; about the nature of authority in Anglo-Saxon history, politics, and literature; and he considers how scholarly approaches to these questions--whether by medieval or by modern readers--create canons of literary history. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature is the first book-length study to consider the construction of an early English cultural mythology of writing. Lerer's philological and historical explication of the texts provides new approaches for assessing representations of reading and writing in pre-Conquest literature. His book is a timely and provocative addition to medieval studies.

The Anglo-Saxon Literature Handbook presents an accessible introduction to the surviving works of prose and poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England, from AD 410-1066. Makes Anglo-Saxon literature accessible to modern readers Helps readers to overcome the linguistic, aesthetic and cultural barriers to understanding and appreciating Anglo-Saxon verse and prose Introduces readers to the language, politics, and religion of the Anglo-Saxon literary world Presents original readings of such works as Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Fresh perspectives on the English clergy, their books, and the wider Anglo-Saxon church.

The essays in Latin Learning and English Lore cover material from the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon literary record in the late seventh century to the immediately post-Conquest period of the twelfth century.