This book is the first volume in a collective edition, the plan of which includes all the surviving records of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The main body of Anglo-Saxon poetry as it has come down to us is contained in four important miscellany manuscripts, the Junius Manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf Manuscript, each of which will constitute a separate volume in this edition. The remaining minor and more or less scattered examples of Anglo-Saxon poetry will be grouped together, in a volume of volumes of their own.

The Junius Manuscript

Taken from the same manuscript as Cynewulf, the Junius 11 poems-Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan-comprise a series of redacted Old English works that have been traditionally presented as the work of Bede's Caedmon. Medieval scholars have concluded that the four poems were composed by more than one author and later edited by Junius in 1655. All of the poems are notable for their Christian content. Apart from its focus on the Junius 11 manuscript, this collection of essays is also important as a study of how to read, edit, and define any medieval literary text.

Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry is the first book-length study to compare responses to runic heritage in the literature of Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Iceland. The Anglo-Saxon runic script had already become the preserve of antiquarians at the time the majority of Old English poetry was written down, and the Icelanders recording the mythology associated with the script were at some remove from the centres of runic practice in medieval Scandinavia. Both literary cultures thus inherited knowledge of the runic system and the traditions associated with it, but viewed this literate past from the vantage point of a developed manuscript culture. There has, as yet, been no comprehensive study of poetic responses to this scriptural heritage, which include episodes in such canonical texts as Beowulf, the Old English riddles and the poems of the Poetic Edda. By analysing the inflection of the script through shared literary traditions, this study enhances our understanding of the burgeoning of literary self-awareness in early medieval vernacular poetry and the construction of cultural memory, and furthers our understanding of the relationship between Anglo-Saxon and Norse textual cultures. The introduction sets out in detail the rationale for examining runes in poetry as a literary motif and surveys the relevant critical debates. The body of the volume is comprised of five linked case studies of runes in poetry, viewing these representations through the paradigm of scriptural reconstruction and the validation of contemporary literary, historical and religious sensibilities.

Each number contains a List of medievalists and their publications, and a List of doctoral dissertations. Nos. 6-10 include also the report of the Academy.

Christ and Satan is the title of the last of four poems in the eleventh-century Junius XI manuscript of Anglo-Saxon poetry. This critical edition contains text, glossary, textual and explanatory notes, and an essay surveying former criticisms and setting forth the author’s ideas on the poem’s principle of unity. Of particular value to students and scholars of Old English, Christ and Satan makes an important contribution to the understanding of this fine and interesting poem.

It is well known that the old English poem Beowulf begins and ends with funerals and includes the third as a digression part way through. Now, for the first time, a fourth funeral (hitherto disguised as poetic imagery) is identified from archaeological evidence. A detailed analysis of the four funerals establishes their thematic and structural importance, revealing them as pillars around which the poem is built. The poet is revealed as a literate antiquarian of considerable structural skill; one who explores feminist issues, plays with numbers and enjoys a pun; who establishes an ideal then probes its darker side.The author's unique knowledge of Anglo-Saxon culture provides constant surprises and enlightenment. This book will be invaluable to all students of the poem for its fresh and detailed reading, its identification of a coherent structure and its establishment of the integrity of the surviving texts.

The Cynewulf Reader is a collection of classic and original essays presenting a comprehensive view of the elusive Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf, his language, and his work.