Anglo-Saxon England (No. 23)

One of the most important primary sources for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England is the charters and manuscripts which survive from the period before 1066. In the present book, two complementary essays treat the charters of mid tenth-century English kings, bringing previously unknown documents to light, establishing the circumstances in which they were produced, and demonstrating that changes in practice in the royal chancery had far-reaching effect on all aspects of Anglo-Saxon script and book production. The question of the medieval representation of women is illuminated by a study of the difficulties which a well-known monastic author, Ælfric, faced in characterizing an Old Testament heroine who used her body to achieve her ends, while a number of traditional assumptions about the property rights of divorced women in England are freshly challenged by close philological analysis of surviving law-codes. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year’s publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

List of illustrations; 1. Record of the sixth conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, at Wadham College, University of Oxford, 1–7 August 1993; 2. A background to Augustine\'s mission to Anglo-Saxon England Rob Meens; 3. The early Kentish ‘divorce laws’: a reconsideration of Æthelberht, chs. 79 and 80 Carole A. Hough; 4. The pattern of Old English burh in early Lindsey Barrie Cox; 5. The language of the \'Fonthill Letter\' Mechthild Gretsch; 6. The `Three Orders\' of society in Anglo-Saxon England Timothy E. Powell; 7. English Square minuscule script: the mid-century phases David N. Dumville; 8. The \'Dunstan B\' charters Simon Keynes; 9. Dry-point glosses to Aldhelm\'s De laudibus virginitatis in Beinecke 401 Philip G. Rusche; 10. Ælfric\'s Judith: manipulative or manipulated? Mary Clayton; 11. Old Latin interventions in the Old English Heptateuch Richard Marsden; 12. More pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey James P. Carley; 13. An eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon missal fragment Nicholas Orchard; 14. Bibliography for 1993 Lesley J. Abrams, Carl T. Berkhout, Mark Blackburn, Sarah Foot, Alexander Rumble and Simon Keynes.