Tools:
Bibliography
This extensive, briefly annotated bibliography of Old English studies is divided into the following 18 categories:
-
Beowulf
17.1 Bibliographies
17.2 Concordances
17.3 Facsimiles
17.4 Editions
17.5 General Studies
17.6 Collections of Critical Essays
17.7 Translations
17.8 Pedagogy
1. Bibliographies and General Guides
Bowden, Betsy. Listeners' Guide to Medieval English: A Discography. New York: Garland, 1990. (For audio recordings of OE and ME.)
Deshman, Robert. Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian Art: An Annotated Bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984.
Graves, Edward B., ed. A Bibliography of English History to 1485. Oxford, 1975. (For editions of the historical sources and discussions of them.)
Greenfield, Stanley B. and Fred C. Robinson. A Bibliography of Publications on Old English Literature to the End of 1972. Toronto, 1980. (Exhaustive listings up to 1972; encompasses far more than literature).
Hollis, Stephanie. Old English Prose of Secular Learning. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992. (An annotated bibliographical guide.)
Keynes, Simon. Anglo-Saxon History: A Select Bibliography. Old English Newsletter Subsidia vol. 13. Third revised edition, 1998. Available on-line; see "Electronic Resources.")
Lapidge, Michael, gen. ed. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. (Up-to-date, reliable, and generally an indispensable reference book.)
Pulsiano, Phillip. An Annotated Bibliography of North American Doctoral Dissertations on Old English Language and Literature. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1988.
Quinn, Karen J. and Kenneth P. A Manual of Old English Prose. New York: Garland, 1990. (Lists manuscripts, editions, and criticism, with annotations.)
Robinson, Fred C. Old English Literature: A Select Bibliography. Toronto Medieval Bibliographies Series. Toronto, 1970. (With brief annotations; now dated.)
Szarmach, Paul E., gen. ed. Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1998. (Strong on topics relating to Anglo-Saxon England.)
Annual bibliographies published in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, England; one volume annually, 1972 to present) and in the Old English Newsletter (1967 to present; published currently by the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan State Univ.). The annual ASE bibliography is comprehensive and indispensable but without annotations. The OEN provides current information about OE studies around the world as well as the most detailed--and often the most stylish - reviews of recent publications in the field.)
Current projects by individual scholars are often listed in the annual "Old English Research in Progress" entry in the journal Neuphilologische Mitteilungen.
See also section 12 below (esp. Godden and Lapidge; Greenfield and Calder) and sec. 17.1 (Beowulf).
2. Dictionaries, Concordances, Thesauri
Barney, Stephen A. Word-Hoard: An Introduction to Old English Vocabulary. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale, 1985. (A grouped frequency word-list of the 2000 or so words that a beginning student will encounter in the poetry, listed along with cognate words; includes a brief etymological essay on each word-group.)
Bessinger, Jess, ed. A Concordance to the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. Programmed by Philip H. Smith Jr. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978. (Includes an index of compounds.)
Bosworth, Joseph and T. Northcote Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford. In three parts: main volume 1898; supplement by Toller, 1921; enlarged addenda and corrigenda by A. Campbell, 1972. (The illustrative quotations are extremely helpful if you already read Old English moderately well.)
Holthausen, Ferdinand. Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd ed. with additions by H.C. Matthes. Heidelberg, 1963. (For tracing Indo-European and Germanic roots. A new etymological dictionary has long been under preparation by Alfred Bammesberger.)
Roberts, Jane, and Christian Kay. A Thesaurus of Old English. 2 vols. London: King's College, 1995. (The second volume is an alphabetical list of Old English words giving reference numbers showing where they are cited in the first volume, where vocabulary is grouped topically, e.g. under "outlawry," "sensual pleasure," and so on through all areas of experience. An invaluable resource for studies in language and thought.)
In progress at Toronto: the Dictionary of Old English,
a comprehensive, multi-volume dictionary that will replace
Bosworth-Toller. See Roberta Frank and Angus Cameron, eds., A
Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, Toronto, 1973. As of
2003, entries for the letters A, Æ, B, C, D, and E have appeared
in microfiche and on CD-ROM, and G is expected in 2005. Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986- .
Old English Corpus.
See under Electronic Resources.
3. Grammars, Readers, and Other Language Studies
Baker, Peter S. Introduction
to Old English.
Cameron, Angus. Old English Word Studies: A Preliminary Author and Word Index. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1983. (Includes a microfiche bibliography of studies of particular words.)
Campbell, A. Old English Grammar. Oxford, 1959. (Standard reference volume.)
Cassidy, Frederic G. and Richard N. Ringler. Bright's Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd ed. New York: Holt, 1971. (Step-by-step lessons in the grammar, followed by ample, well-annotated readings in prose and poetry, with a full glossary. Texts are not normalized. Be sure to consult the second corrected printing.)
Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English, 6th ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. (Revised edition with texts illustrating both prose and poetry. Gives a simpler account of the language than Cassidy and Ringler; can be used by students working with or without a teacher.
Mitchell, Bruce. Old English Syntax, 2 vols. Oxford, 1984. (The definitive study of syntax.)
Page, R.I. Runes. Berkeley: U.C. Press, 1987. (A
handy introduction to the subject with close attention to the evidence
from the British Isles.)
Page, R.I. An
Introduction to English Runes. 2nd
edition.
Pope, John C., Eight Old English Poems. Third edition, revised by R.D. Fulk.
Robinson, Orrin W. Old English and Its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992. (Aimed at the beginning graduate student who wishes to learn how to read the various Old Germanic dialects. With useful background information on Old Saxon, Old High German, Gothic, and so forth.)
Sievers, Eduard. An Old English Grammar, trans. into English from the original German. 3rd ed. Boston, 1903.
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse, 15th ed. Oxford, 1967. (No grammar is attached. Long a standard teaching text in Great Britain, but now generally superseded by Mitchell/Robinson.)
4. Books, Manuscripts, and Facsimiles
Biggs, Frederick M., T.D. Hill, and P. E. Szarmach, ed. Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version. Binghamton, NY: SUNY, 1990. (A preliminary publication testing the methods for a major colloborative project that aims to document the sources of OE texts.)
Brown, Michelle P. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts. Univ. of Toronto Press, 1991. (Brief, but with good photos; with short sections on book production, materials and techniques, script, and ornament.)
Budny, Mildred. Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: An Illustrated Catalogue. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997. (Much more than a catalogue, this includes many facsimile pages, beautifully reproduced from one of the key collections of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Meant primarily for students of art history rather than literature.)
Clemoes, Peter, gen. ed. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile. Copenhagen, 1951--. Twenty-nine volumes through 2001. This is a superb set of facsimiles; its creation was inspired by the German bombing of Britain during WWII and the fear that priceless MSS might someday perish without a reliable record of them surviving for future generations.)
Doane, A.N., gen. ed. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile. Binghamton: SUNY. (An ambitious attempt to make available facsimile editions of all the major manuscripts containing Old English. Each manuscript or manuscript group is introduced by a specialist.)
Fontes Anglo-Saxonici, ed. D.G. Scragg and
Michael Lapidge. Univ. of Manchester. (A database register of written
sources used by authors in Anglo-Saxon England. The
current edition is available free of charge via the internet, or on
CD-ROM by
emailing the project at fontes@english.ox.ac.uk
Gneuss, Helmut. "A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100." Anglo Saxon England 9 (1981):1-60. (A foretaste of what is planned to be a complete catalogue of such MSS.)
Ker, Neil R. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford, 1957. (Ker's introduction to this volume includes the best available short account of Old English paleography.) Supplemented by Ker in Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1976): 121-31.
Ogilvy, J.D.A. Books Known to the English, 597-1066. Cambridge, MA, 1967. See also his "Addenda et Corrigenda," Mediaevalia 7 (1981): 281-325.
Ohlgren, Thomas H. Insular and Anglo-Saxon Illuminated
Manuscripts: An Iconographic Catalogue circa A.D. 635 to 1100.
New York: Garland, 1986. (Some 277 MSS are treated, with descriptions
of their illustrations.)
Pulsiano, Phillip, and Elaine M. Treharne, eds.
Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
and Their
Heritage.
Richards,
Mary P. Anglo-Saxon
Manuscripts: Basic
5. Collective Editions: Poetry
Krapp, George P. and Elliott V. K. Dobbie, eds. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. 6 vols. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931-53. (The standard scholarly edition. Not a student edition: no glossaries are provided. The two Bessinger concordances cited above are based on these texts.) The volumes are as follows:
I. Junius MS;
II. Vercelli Book;
III. Exeter Book;
IV. Beowulf and Judith;
V. Paris Psalter and Meters of Boethius;
VI. Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems.
6. Collective Editions: Prose
Grein, Christian W. M. and Richard P. Wulker, gen. eds. Bibliothek der angelsachischen Prosa. 13 vols. Kassel and Hamburg, 1872-1933. (Most of these volumes were reprinted, some with new matter, by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1964-74.)
Early English Text Society editions, 1864-present. (This series consists of a miscellany of both Old English and, chiefly, Middle English texts in both prose and poetry. The poetic editions are by now all superseded; some of the prose editions remain standard.)
7. History
Campbell, James, ed. The Anglo-Saxons. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, l982. (Excellent illustrations. Chapters contributed by various authorities give an historical overview of the period.)
Douglas, David C., gen. ed. English Historical Documents. A comprehensive 12 volume series. The Anglo-Saxon period is addressed in Volume I: c. 500-1042, 2nd. edition, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, and Volume II: 1042-1189, ed. David C. Douglas. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. (All documents are given in modern English translation).
Dumville, David and Simon Keynes, gen. eds. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Boydell and Brewer. Published as of 2004 are 9 vols.:
vol. 1. Facsimile of MS F
vol. 3. MS A
vol. 4. MS B
vol. 5. MS C
vol. 6. MS D
vol. 7. MS E.
vol. 10. The Abingdon Chronicle, AD 956-1066
vol. 17. The Annals of St. Neots.
Dumville, David N. Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar. Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1992. (Six specialized historical essays by a specialist in Celtic as well as English sources.)
Fell, Christine, et al. Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066. London, 1984. (Essays chiefly historical.)
Godfrey, John. The Church in Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962. (Standard survey.)
Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing In England c. 550 to c. 1307. London, 1974. (Standard review of the primary historical texts deriving from the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman periods.)
Hill, David. An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1981. (Offers far more than a set of maps, for each map or chart encapsulates a good deal of historical or economic information.)
Hodgkin, R.H. A History of the Anglo-Saxons, 3rd
ed. 2 vols. Oxford, 1952. (Occasionally useful but not as detailed or
authoritative a review as Stenton's.)
Hunter Blair, Peter. An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England. 1956, rpt. Cambridge, 2003 with a new preface by Simon Keynes. (A standard introductiont that remains useful though now dated in some regards.)
Hunter Blair, Peter. Roman Britain and Early England, 55 B.C.-A.D. 871. Edinburgh: Nelson, 1963.
Keynes, Simon, and Michael Lapidge, trans. and ed. Alfred the Great. Penguin, 1983. (Translations of Asser's Life of King Alfred and other sources for study of this king and his influence.)
Loyn, H.L. Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, 2nd ed. London: Longman1 1981. (An outstanding social and economic history.)
Loyn, H.L. The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England 500-1087. London: Arnold, 1984. (Treats government in the localities as well as the institutions of kingship. Good on Alfred as a pivotal figure in the development of centralized kingship.)
Loyn, H.L. The Vikings in Britain. London 1977. (Treats centrally a subject that remains peripheral in some historical surveys.)
Page, R.I. Life in Anglo-Saxon England. London, Batsford, 1970. (A personal favorite of mine, well researched and stylishly written.)
Pelteret, David A.E., ed. Anglo-Saxon History: Basic
Readings. New York: Garland, 2000.
Plummer, Charles, ed. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1892-99. (A valuable edition that includes all of the A text [the Parker MS] and all of the E text [the Laud MS] plus substantial extracts from other versions of the Chronicle.)
Stenton, Frank M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1971. (The standard political history of the period, admirably detailed as a source of information but sometimes outmoded in its underlying assumptions.)
Swanton, Michael, trans. and ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Rev. ed. London, 2000. A convenient translation of the different recensions, with maps and genealogical charts.
Whitelock, Dorothy. The Beginnings of English Society. Penguin, 1952. (A brief, well-written account of the nature of Anglo-Saxon society. Short chapters on the laws, the church, and so on.)
Wilson, David M. The Northern World. New York: Abrams, 1980. (A survey of northwest Europe during the earlier Middle Ages. Lavish illustrations.)
Wilson, David M. The Bayeux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Colour with Introduction, Description, and Commentary. London: Thames & Hudson, 1985. (Fine illustrations showing the whole of this commissioned history of the Norman Conquest, as depicted through Norman eyes.)
8. Art, Archaeology, and Material Culture
Arnold, C.J. An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1997.
Backhouse, Janet, et al., ed. The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966-1066. London: British Museum Publications, 1984. (Well illustrated.)
Bailey, Richard N. Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England. London, 1980.
Bruce-Mitford, Rupert L. The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial.
Three very weighty and detailed volumes in four parts: (1) Excavations,
Background, the Ship, Dating and Inventory, (2) Arms, Armour, and
Regalia, (3) Silver, Textiles, the Lyre,and other Items (2 parts).
London: British Museum, 1975-83. (An impressive scholarly book
production from every perspective.)
Cramp, Rosemary, gen. ed. The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, for the British Academy, 1984- . 4 vols. published to date.
Dodwell, C.R. Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective. Manchester, 1982.
Evans, Angela. The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial. Rev. ed. London: British Museum Press, 1994. First pub. 1986. (A short and accessible guide to the site and its treasures, with good illustrations.)
Ford, Boris, ed. The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Britain, vol.1: Prehistoric, Roman, and Early Medieval. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988. (With chapters on "The Cultural and Social Setting," Visual Arts and Crafts," "Architecture," and "Music," among others.)
Hodges, Richard. The Anglo-Saxon Achievement: Archaeology and the Beginnings of English Society. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989. (Develops a theory of the origins of Anglo-Saxon England by a process of Germanization of late Roman Britain.)
Karkov, Catherine E., ed. The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England: Basic Readings. New York: Garland, 1999.
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England.
Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1986. (A new edition of this
useful survey is said to have appeared, c. 2004.)
Webster, Leslie, and Janet Backhouse, eds. The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600-900. London: British Museum Press, 1991. (Illustrated catalogue of an exhibit.)
Wilson, David M. Anglo-Saxon Art from the Seventh Century to the Norman Conquest. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. (With 285 illustrations, 73 in color.)
Wilson, David M. The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England. London, Methuen, 1977. (A succinct overview.)
9. Laws, Wills, Writs, and Charters
"Anglo-Saxon Charters." A series being published by the British Academy; nine volumes published as of 2001. (Intended to replace Birch and Robertson, cited below.)
Attenborough, Frederick L., ed. The Laws of the Earliest English Kings. Cambridge, 1922. (With facing-page modern English translations.)
Birch, Walter de Gray, ed. Cartularium Saxonicum. 3 vols. London, 1885-93. (Still a necessary resource.)
Harmer, Florence E. Anglo-Saxon Writs. 2nd ed. Stamford, 1989.
Liebermann, Felix, ed. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. 3 vols. Halle, 1903-16. (Still the standard edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws. With variant textual readings and a German translation.)
Robertson, Agnes J., ed. Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2nd ed. Cambridge, 1956. (Selected documents, with translations.)
Robertson, A.J., ed. The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1925. (Supplements Attenborough, above).
Sawyer, Peter. Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List
and Bibliography. London, 1968. The standard guide to the
corpus of charters.
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. Anglo-Saxon Wills. Cambridge, 1930.
Wormald, Patrick. The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. (A comprehensive study of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon law in its social context; a second volume was planned but is unlikely to be published.)
10. Anglo-Latin and Other Related Literatures
Baker, Peter S. and Michael Lapidge, eds. Byrhtferth's Enchiridion. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995. (An exemplary edition of the bilingual work of the most learned science writer of late Anglo-Saxon England.)
Behaghel, Otto, ed. Heliand und Genesis. 9th ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984. (An edition of two Old Saxon works that present close parallels to Old English ones.)
Bolton, Whitney F. A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, vol I: 597-740. Princeton, 1967. (A second volume covering the period 741-1066 was planned but has not been completed; a consortium of scholars is now engaged in that task.)
Calder, Daniel G. and Michael J.B. Allen, eds. Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry, Vol. 1: The Major Latin Texts in Translation. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976.
Calder, Daniel G., R.D. Bjork, P.K. Ford, and D.F. Melia, eds. Sources and Analogues ... Vol. 2: The Major Germanic and Celtic Texts in Translation. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983.
Colgrave, Bertram, and R.A.B. Mynors, eds. Bede's
Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1969. (An outstanding bilingual edition, Latin and modern
English.)
Lapidge, Michael, ed. and trans., with James L. Rosier. Aldhelm, the Poetic Works. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985.
Lapidge, Michael, with Michael Herren. Aldhelm, the Prose Works. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979.
Lapidge, Michael. Anglo-Latin Literature (900-1066).
Hambledon Press, 1993. With his Anglo-Latin Literature (600-899).
Hambledon Press, 1996. (Two collections of his critical essays.)
Orchard, Andy. The Poetic Art of Aldhelm.
Stevenson, William Henry, ed. Asser's Life of King Alfred. New impression with article by Dorothy Whitelock on recent work on Asser's life of Alfred. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
11. History of Anglo-Saxon Scholarship
Berkhout, Carl T. and Milton McC. Gatch, eds. Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries. Boston: Hall, 1982. (On the scholarly recovery of records pertaining to Old English from the early modern period to the 19th century.)
Damico, Helen, ed. Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline. Volume 1: History (1995). Volume 2: Literature and Philology (1998). New York: Garland. (With chapters on individual persons who have been influential in the modern development of the field of Medieval Studies; many of these scholars were Anglo-Saxonists).
Frantzen, Allen J., and John D. Niles, eds. Anglo-Saxonism
and the Construction of Social Identity. Gainesville: Univ.
Press of Florida, 1997. (With 9 chapters written by specialists tracing
the development of the idea of Anglo-Saxon England from the
Anglo-Saxons to the present day.)
Graham, Timothy, ed. The
Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon studies in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute
Publications, 2000. (Includes eight new essays on the earliest period
of the modern recovery of
the Old English literary records.)
Stanley, E.G. The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1975. (Documents the biases of Anglo-Saxon scholarship of the period c. 1850-1925.)
12. Old English Literature: General
"Anglo-Saxon Literature." In Joseph R. Strayer, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages. New York, 1982-. Vol. 1, pp. 274-88.
Bloomfield, Morton W. "Understanding Old English Poetry." Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968): 5-25. (Stresses that all early poetry is functional, and that its chief aim is the transmission of wisdom. The essay is reprinted in Bloomfield's anthology Essays and Explorations, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970.)
Cameron, M.L. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993. (Surveys the topic and demonstrates the practical basis of a number of OE cures.)
Clemoes, Peter. Interactions of Thought and Language in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995. (Mature and wide-ranging thoughts about both secular and devotional poetry, with close attention to semantic nuance among key words.)
Frantzen, Allen J. Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990. (Provocative study of "Anglo-Saxonism" and its place in Renaissance English and Colonial American culture, with remarks on the politics of Anglo-Saxon studies at the present time.)
Frantzen, Allen J. Before the Closet: Same-Sex Love from Beowulf to Angels in America. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998. (The first 225 pages deal with Anglo-Saxon England; well-researched, particularly in regard to the penitentials).
Fulk, R.D., and Christopher Cain. A
History of Old English Literature.
Gatch, Milton McC. Loyalties and Traditions: Man and His World in Old English Literature. New York: Pegasus, 1971. (An urbane and generous survey of the tenor of Anglo-Saxon thought.)
Godden, Malcolm, and Michael Lapidge, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Old English Studies. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991. (Fifteen essays by specialists. Covers most topics of interest relating to the literature; relatively sparse bibliographical annotations.)
Greenfield, Stanley B. The Interpretation of Old English Poems. London, Routledge, 1972. (Practical essays in criticism by a master of the art.)
Greenfield, Stanley G., and Daniel G. Calder. A New Critical History of Old English Literature. New York: NYU Press, 1986. (Replaces the 1965 edition. A judicious review of the literature and its reception by modern critics, with a chapter on Anglo-Latin by Michael Lapidge.)
Howe, Nicholas. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989. (A study of the fifth-century migration of the Germanic peoples from the Continent as a controlling myth in Anglo-Saxon culture.)
Lee, Alvin A. The Guest-Hall of Eden: Four Essays on the Design of Old English Poetry. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1972. (In the vein of Northrop Frye; an integrative study of imagistic and narrative content of the poetry regarded as displaced Christian myth.)
Lerer, Seth. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1991. (An adept study of intertextuality and literary culture during the Anglo-Saxon period.)
Magennis, Hugh. Images of Community in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. (On themes of feasting, drinking, the hall, the city.)
O'Keeffe, Katherine O'Brien. Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Poetry. Cambridge: CUP, 1990. (An influential study of scribal creativity.)
Opland, Jeff. Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1980. (Influenced by his own valuable work collecting oral literature from Xhosa-speakers in South Africa. Gathers together all the literary records relating to the practice of early Germanic oral poetry. Argues that the poetry was strictly eulogistic, not narrative, in content.)
Pasternack, Carol Braun. The Textuality of Old English
Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press., 1995. (With sharp
insights into the
concept of authorship, approached from poststructuralist perspectives.)
Pulsiano, Phillip, and Elaine Treharne, eds.
A Companion to
Anglo-Saxon Literature.
Shippey, Thomas A. Old English Verse. London: Hutchinson, 1972. (An excellent survey full of sharp insights.)
Stanley, Eric Gerald, ed. Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature. London: Thomas Nelson, 1966. (Includes expert studies of the prose of Alfred's reign, the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan, and other topics.)
Szarmach, Paul E., ed. The Old English Homily and Its Background. SUNY Press, 1978. (Essays by various specialists on the Anglo-Saxon ars predicandi.)
Szarmach, Paul E., ed.. Studies in Earlier Old English Prose. Albany: SUNY Press, 1986. (16 essays by specialists.)
Wrenn, Charles L. A Study of Old English Literature. New York: Norton, 1967. (Now somewhat dated.)
13. Collections of Critical Essays
Bessinger, Jess B., and Stanley J. Kahrl, eds. Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry. Hamden (Conn.): Archon, 1968.
Bjork, Robert E., ed. Cynewulf: Basic Readings. New York: Garland, 1996.
Creed, Robert P., ed. Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays. Providence: Brown Univ. Press, 1967.
Damico, Helen, and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, eds. New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990.
Doane, A. N. and Carol Braun Pasternack, eds. Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages. Madison: U of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Greenfield, Stanley B. Hero and Exile: The Art of Old
English Poetry, ed. George Hardin Brown. Hambledon Press, 1989.
(His collected essays on OE poetry.)
Karkov, Katherine E., and George Hardin Brown, eds. Anglo-Saxon
Styles.
Liuzza, R.M. Old English
Literature:
Critical Essays.
Niles, John D., ed. Old English Literature in Context: Ten Essays. Ipswich: D.S. Brewer, 1980.
Robinson, Fred C. The Tomb of Beowulf and Other Essays on Old English. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. (The first of two projected volumes of his collected essays.)
Stevens, Martin, and Jerome Mandel, eds. Old English Literature: Twenty-Two Analytical Essays, rev. ed. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1976.
Szarmach, Paul E., ed. Basic Readings in Old English Prose. New York: Garland, 1999.
14. Anthologies of Old English Literature in Translation
Bradley, S.A.J. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London: Dent, 1982. (Nearly complete; supplants the earlier Dent anthology edited by R.K. Gordon in the Everyman's Library series.)
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984. (A handy choice of both prose and poetry, including Beowulf. Contains a few errors or oddities.)
Raffel, Burton. Poems and Prose from the Old English. With introductions by Alexandra H. Olsen. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1998. (Translations are done with style, though not always literal.)
Swanton, Michael. Anglo-Saxon Prose. London: Dent, 1975. (A selective set of straightforward translations.)
15. Verse Form
Fulk, R. D. A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. (More than a metrical history; attempts to develop a system of dating OE poetry on metrical grounds.)
Kendall, Calvin. The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991. (Based on the assumption that the poem was delivered orally and/or owes much to oral tradition.)
Lehmann, Winfred P. The Development of Germanic Verse Form. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1956. (Sets the study of OE meter into the context of the Germanic alliterative meter in general.)
Pope, John Collins. The Rhythm of Beowulf, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1966. (Although devoted specifically to Beowulf, Pope's study applies more generally to OE poetry. His theory, based on the supposed use of the lyre to mark time, is more ingenious than probable. His introduction porvides a useful survey of the theories of prior scholars, including Sievers and Heusler.)
Russom, Geoffrey. Old English Meter and Linguistic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987. (Seeks to ground a theory of meter on general linguistic features of the OE language.)
Russom, Geoffrey. Beowulf and Old Germanic Metre. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998. (Carries his metrical investigations into comparative ground with reference to the affinities between OE verse and Old Saxon, Old Norse, etc.)
16. Some Individual Authors and Works
It is generally best to look up each author or work
individually. However, the following editions are
worth special note, beginning with the standard modern editions of
Aelfric's homilies.
Clemoes, Peter, ed. Aelfric's Catholic Homilies, the
First Series: Text. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997.
Godden, Malcolm, ed. Aelfric's Catholic Homilies, the
Second Series: Text . London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.
Godden, Malcolm. Ælfric’s Catholic
Homilies: Introduction, Commentary, and Glossary.
Pope, John Collins, ed. Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection. 2 vols. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967- .
Bethurum, Dorothy, ed. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1957.
Klinck, Anne L. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 1992.
Muir, Bernard J., ed. The Exeter Anthology of Old
English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501.
Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1994. 2nd edition, 2000. (A
CD-Rom version of this edition
is in preparation; it will include a
facsimile of the MS.)
Orchard, Andy. Pride and Prodigies:
Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript.
Scragg, Donald, ed. The Battle of Maldon A.D. 991. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. (A volume produced to coincide with the millennium of the battle. All you ever wanted to know about the poem and the historical incident on which it is based.)
Also worth noting collectively are the titles included in Methuen's Old English Library, London: Methuen, 1933--. (13 small volumes published up to 1970. Useful classroom editions in a standard format, with a glossary in each edition. I know of no list of these publications; check Robinson's Select Bibliography, pp. 12-49, for individual editors and titles.)
17. Beowulf
17.1. Bibliographies
Fry, Donald, K. Beowulf and the Fight and Finnsburh: A Bibliography. Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia, 1969. (Exhaustive up to its date of publication.)
Hasenfratz, Robert J. Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography, 1979-1990. New York: Garland, 1993. (Supplements the following entry. Excellent annotations.)
Short, Douglas D. Beowulf Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1980. (Selective; concentrates on the more recent books and critical essays through 1978, with a brief evaluation of each item.)
See also the bibliographical sources cited in Section 1 above.
17.2. Concordances
Bessinger, Jess B., ed. A Concordance to Beowulf, programmed by Philip H. Smith, Jr. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1969. (For certain purposes this is superior to the other Bessinger concordance cited in Section 2 above, as it gives a complete citation for each simplex of compound words.)
17.3. Facsimiles
Malone, Kemp, ed. The Nowell Codex: British Museum Cotton Vitellius A.XV. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. 12. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1963. (Folio-size facsimile of the whole MS of which Beowulf is one part.)
Malone, Kemp, ed. The Thorkelin Transcripts of Beowulf in Facsimile. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, vol. 1. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1951.
Zupitza, Julius, ed. Beowulf. 2nd ed., with an introductory note by Norman Davis and new photographs. Early English Text Society series no. 245. London, 1958. (With a facing-page diplomatic transcription of the MS.)
See also Kiernan in sec. 17.5 below.
17.4. Editions
Klaeber, Frederick, ed. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 3rd ed. with 1st and 2nd supplements. Lexington: Heath, 1950. (Still the standard scholarly edition, with a wonderful glossary; often used in the classroon, but better with graduates than undergraduates.)
Chickering, Howell D., Jr., ed. Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition, 2nd ed. New York: Doubleday, 1982. (Includes the Old English text and Chickering's translation en face, with an introduction and notes but no glossary. Despite some misprints in the Old English text, not a bad way to approach the poem for people who haven't yet learned much Old English but want to try reading Beowulf in the original.)
Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson, eds. Beowulf: An Edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. (Will probably supplant Klaeber as the preferred teaching edition in the U.S.)
Wrenn, C.L., ed. Beowulf, with the Finnesburg Fragment, 3rd. ed., revised by W.F. Bolton. London: Harrap, 1973.
17.5. General Studies
Bjork, Robert E., and John D. Niles, eds. A Beowulf Handbook. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997. (With 18 chapters written by specialists, each chapter including a chronology of work related to that topic. The most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the state of Beowulf studies).
Brodeur, Arthur G. The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959. (Particularly good on questions of diction; little on social context.)
Chambers, Raymond W. Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem. 3rd. ed with a supplement by C.L. Wrenn. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959. (Very useful for the study of analogues; some of the commentary is dated.)
Clark, George. Beowulf. Boston: Twayne, 1990. (A brief and pointed review of important aspects of the poem; chapter 1 covers its critical reception.)
Earl, James W. Thinking about Beowulf. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994. (Thought-provoking psychoanalytically-oriented writing.)
Goldsmith, Margaret E. The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf. London:Athlone, 1970. (A valuable study of the method of Christian allegory in medieval literature. Goldsmith's claim that the mode of Beowulf is allegorical remains unpersuasive.)
Haarder, Andreas. Beowulf: The Appeal of a Poem. Viborg: Akademisk Forlag, 1975. (Chiefly a history of the poem's critical reception since the early 19th century, with much about the Danish scholar Svend Grundtvig; the last chapter presents a thematic reading of the poem.)
Hill, John M. The Cultural World in Beowulf. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1995. (Includes anthropologically-oriented studies of the feud and gift-giving.)
Huppé, Bernard F. The Hero in the Earthly City: A Reading of Beowulf. Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1984. (A reading of the poem's themes in consistently Augustinian terms. Includes a translation of the poem.)
Irving, Edward B., Jr. A Reading of Beowulf. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968. (A nuanced "new critical" reading; little here on social context.)
Irving, Edward B., Jr. Rereading Beowulf. Philadephia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, l989. (New thoughts and second thoughts on the poem after 20 years. Irving here embraces a theory of the poem's oral-traditional character.)
Kiernan, Kevin S. Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1981. (A reexamination of the physical MS as a prelude to a theory of the poem's 11th- century date and cultural context. Both the theory and some of the paleographical observations on which it is based should be approached with caution. A newer edition has appeared: Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996. Of independent usefulness is Kiernan's Electronic Beowulf, available on CD -ROM through the Univ. of Michigan Press; this includes digitized facisimiles of the MS and early transcripts of the MS as well as much other textual information.)
Niles, John
D. Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983. (In three sections: (1)
Context, (2) Style and Structure, and (3) Interpretation.)
Orchard, Andy. A Critical Companion to
Beowulf.
Overing, Gillian R. Language, Sign, and Gender in Beowulf. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1990. (An approach to the poem through semiotics and feminist criticism. Overing does not offer a new interpretation of the poem; rather, she stresses that it evades interpretation.)
Robinson, Fred C. Beowulf and the Appositive Style. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1985. (A deft study of diction and meaning. Not all readers will accept its hypothesis about systematic ambiguity in the religious language of the poem, or its conclusion that the poet distanced himself sharply from the pagans, necessarily damned, whom he depicts.)
Shippey, T.A. Beowulf. London: Arnold, 1978. (A short and incisive treatment of major aspects of the poem; treats its aesthetics and its mental world well.)
Shippey, T.A., and Andreas Haarder, eds. Beowulf: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1998. (With extensive quotations, expertly translated, drawn from early writings on Beowulf by scholars of different European nationalities.)
Sisam, Kenneth. The Structure of Beowulf. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965. (A short, hard-headed response to some favored modes of aesthetic and exegetical criticism. Sisam prefers to read the poem in terms of the conditions of storytelling before a secular, aristocratic audience.)
Tolkien, J.R.R. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 245-95. (A landmark essay; reprinted in the anthologies by Nicholson, Fry, and Fulk cited in the next section.)
Whitelock, Dorothy. The Audience of Beowulf. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1951. (An historian's view of the poem's possible date and public. One of the earlier attempts to read the poem as directed to a Christian audience, probably in a monastic milieu.)
17.6. Collections of Critical Essays
Baker, Peter S., ed. Beowulf: Basic Readings. New York: Garland, 1995.
Chase, Colin, ed. The Dating of Beowulf.
Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1981. (A smorgasbord of conflicting
theories; some contributions energetically challenge the pre-1981
consensus dating Beowulf to the seventh or eighth century. Reissued
with a new note, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991.)
Donoghue, Daniel, ed. Beowulf: A
Verse Translation.
Fry, Donald K. ed. The Beowulf Poet: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968.
Fulk, R.D., ed. Interpretations of Beowulf: A Critical
Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1991.
Howe,
Nicholas, ed. Beowulf: A Prose Translation.
Nicholson, Lewis E., ed. An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1963. (Emphasis on religious questions.)
17.7. Translations
Alexander, Michael. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Penguin, 1973. (A freely poetic rendering into alliterative verse--too free for most purposes.)
Donaldson, E. Talbot, trans. Beowulf: A New Prose Translation. New York: Norton 1966. Reprinted in Joseph Tuso, ed., Beowulf: The Donaldson Translation, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism. A Norton Critical Edition, 1975. (Slavishly literal to the point of clumsiness. Not always accurate, although this is its chief claim to usefulness.)
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. Beowulf. London: Macmillan, 1968. (A readable version in loosely alliterative four-stress lines. With a helpful introduction by Bruce Mitchell.)
Garmonsway, G. N., trans. Beowulf and Its Analogues. London: Dent, 1968. (Undistinguished prose; the edition is still useful for its convenient grouping of the important analogues in translation.)
Greenfield. Stanley B., trans. A Readable Beowulf. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1982. (A rendering into 9-syllabic meter; an often successful merging of scholarly exactitude and poetic freedom. With a lively introduction by Alain Renoir.)
Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation. New York: Farrr, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Beyond doubt the most accomplished of modern translations of the poem in terms of its own poetic authority. Some teachers of the poem prefer quieter, more literal versions; others love Heaney’s lavish style. Also available in Donoghue’s Norton Critical Edition (see previous section).
Hieatt, Constance B. Beowulf and Other Old English Poems. 2nd ed. Toronto: Bantam, 1983. (Readable prose, with a clear introduction by Kent Hieatt among other study aids; also cheap enough to be used in any course.)
Lehmann, Ruth. Beowulf: An Imitative Translation. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1988.. (Audacious in its attempt to mirror the metrics as well as the alliterative form of the poem precisely. The attempt at metrical fidelity occasionally leads to odd or awkward phrasing.)
Kennedy, Charles W. Beowulf: The Oldest English Epic.
New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1940. (Old-fashioned, in four-beat
alliterative verse, with a substantial introduction.)
Liuzza, R.M. Beowulf: A New Verse
Translation.
Morgan, Edwin. Beowulf: A Verse Translation into Modern English. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1962. (An attempt, now somewhat dated, to bring the poem alive in a contemporary poetic idiom. Four-stress lines. Morgan's introduction stresses poetics.)
Oliver, Raymond. Beowulf: A Likeness. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990. (Not a translation, although it sometimes reads like one. Oliver recreates the poem as it might have been or should have been. With some dramatic visuals by the book designer, R. Swearinger.)
Osborn, Marijane. Beowulf: A Verse Translation, with Treasures of the Ancient North. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1983. (Good visual "treasures" to accompany the text.)
17.8. Pedagogy
Bessinger, Jess B., and Robert F. Yeager, eds. Approaches to Teaching Beowulf. New York: MLA, 1984. (With all manner of tips concerning teaching OE studies in general and Beowulf in particular.)
18. Electronic Resources
These change all the time. The fall issues of the Old
English Newsletter often give details concerning resources
currently available on the web.
The following web sites, listed here in no particular order, are worth note:
Dictionary of Old English: for current
information relating to that Toronto-based project.
http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/
Old English Corpus: the whole corpus of texts
containing Old English, produced in machine-readable form for use in
the preparation of the Dictionary of Old English; this crucial resource
is now available for on-line searching by individuals at licensed
sites, including UW Madison..
http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/oec
The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies,
Georgetown University: a gateway providing links to vast
resources relating to medieval studies in general and Old
English/Anglo-Saxon studies more particularly; these include a subject
guide to Anglo-Saxon culture and a text archive that includes all the
texts in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records as well as selected prose texts.
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth
The Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University:
gives access to the Old English Newsletter homepage, the Rawlinson
Center homepage, several on-line bibliographies, and other useful
resources.
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/
Simon Keynes's Anglo-Saxon History: A Select Bibliography:
this useful bibliography is made available through the Medieval
Institute homepage but is worth citing separately.
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/keynesbib/index.html
Modern English to OE Vocabulary: a website
maintained by William Shipper; meant to be a useful tool for
translating into OE and building up one's vocabulary.
http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/vocmlab/
wordlist.html
Individual web sites maintained by Anglo-Saxonists Simon Keynes (Cambridge), Carl Berkhout (University of Arizona), and Peter S. Baker (University of Virginia). These serve as gateways to various resources, including (a) British projects such as Fontes Anglo-Saxonici (Keynes), (b) publicly available manuscript facsimiles and a bibliography charting the history of Anglo-Saxon scholarship (Berkhout), and (c) on-line instructional exercises for learning the Old English language (Baker):
http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/sdk13/sdk13home.html (Keynes)
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~ctb (Berkhout)
http//:www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/OEA (Baker)
Oxford Text Archive: includes texts in Old
English as part of a vast electronic library.
http://ota.ahds.ac.uk
Iter: an on-line bibliography of medieval and
renaissance studies, updated frequently. In two parts - (1) journals
and (2) monographs. The journals catalogue includes citations from the
complete run of Anglo-Saxon England and other periodicals
that publish in the field of Old English studies. A very useful
supplement to the MLA international bibliography that is available on
CD-ROM.
www.itergateway.org
jdniles@wisc.edu
Updated: 10-Nov-2004