The Old English Hexateuch is a manuscript of the earliest vernacular translation of the Old Testament books of Genesis through Joshua. The texts belong, in part, to the Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric (950?-1010?) and to several anonymous translators and at least one artist who compiled these translations and illustrated them with nearly four hundred narrative images, which are carefully integrated into the manuscript. The Hexateuch testifies to the creativity and innovation of Anglo-Saxon bookmakers and stands as an important, if little known, witness to the relationship between early book-making technology and the history of literacy. Benjamin C. Withers examines codicological features of the manuscript, focusing on the working processes of the artist and scribes and seeking to understand how they integrated newly translated text with newly developed imagery so deftly. Grounded in art history and literary theory, this work considers the narrative relationships created by the careful design and seeks to place the Hexateuch within the broader social and cultural development of vernacular literacy in the eleventh century.

In Communal Creativity in the Making of the ‘Beowulf’ Manuscript, Simon Thomson analyses details of scribal activity to tell a story about the project that preserved Beowulf as one of a collective, if error-strewn, endeavour and arguing for a date in Cnut’s reign. He presents evidence for the use of more than three exemplars and at least two artists as well as two scribes, making this an intentional and creative re-presentation uniting literature religious and heroic, in poetry and in prose. He goes on to set it in the broader context of manuscript production in late Anglo-Saxon England as one example among many of communities using old literature in new ways, and of scribes working together, making mistakes, and learning.

The essays here take us from the twelfth century, with an exploration of an inventory of Mediterranean textiles from an Ifriqiyan Church, into an examination and reconstruction of an extant thirteenth-century sleeve in France which provides a rare and early example of medieval quilted armour, and finally on to late medieval Sweden and the reconstruction of gilt-leather intarsia coverlets. A study of construction techniques and the evolution of form of gable and French hoods in the late medieval and the early modern periods follows; and the volume alos includes a study of how underwear for depicted in Renaissance paintings and manuscript illuminations serves as a marker of class.

(Re)introducing the texts of the Nowell Codex -- The passion of Saint Christopher -- The wonders of the East -- The letter of Alexander to Aristotle -- Beowulf -- Judith -- Reading the Nowell Codex in the Eleventh Century -- Reconstructing the Nowell Codex -- Dating and placing the scribes of the Nowell Codex -- Extant gatherings -- Judith, St Christopher and the missing gatherings -- Sequence of production -- The images in the wonders of the East -- A's collection of absurdities? -- The two artists of the Nowell Wonders -- Frames -- Colours -- The planning and control of the images -- Variant styles; multiple exemplars -- Scribe A's performance -- The value of the Nowell Codex's prose texts -- Corrections -- Scribe A's density of copying in Beowulf

This book is a new study of the ancient Egyptian poem known in English as The Man Who Was Tired of Life or The Dialogue of a Man and His Ba (or Soul). The composition is universally regarded as one of the masterpieces of ancient Egyptian literature. It is also one of the most difficult and continually debated, as well as being the subject of more than one hundred books and articles. The present study offers new readings and translations, along with an analysis of the text’s grammar and versification, and a complete philological apparatus.

Ten papers which reflect a wide range of research interests into the Old English Hexateuch, an 11th-century manuscript (Claudius Biv) in the British Library which contains one of the earliest extended vernacular translations of the Bible accompanied by 400 illustrations.