Series introduction
Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center is a scholarly series of monographs and essay collections that present research on the history, literature, and material culture of early medieval England in its wider chronological and geographical context, including its links with the European Continent and the Celtic world. The series places particular emphasis on the study of manuscripts.
submissions
Proposals or completed manuscripts to be considered for publication by Medieval Institute Publications should be sent to Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar, acquisitions editor for the series, or the series editor, Catherine E. Karkov, University of Leeds. All proposals and submissions are evaluated by members of the International Advisory Board of the Center, with independent peer-reviews commissioned by Medieval Institute Publications.
See forthcoming titles in this series.
Editorial board and special advisors
The series' Editorial Board and Special Advisors comprises:
- Lindy Brady, University College Dublin, Ireland
- Kees Dekker, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands
- Nicole Guenther Discenza, University of South Florida, USA
- Helen Foxhall Forbes, Durham University, England
- Timothy Graham, University of New Mexico, USA, Series Editor
- Susan Kim, Illinois State University, USA
- Rosalind Love, Robinson College, Cambridge University, England
Publications
Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon
By Megan Elizabeth Hartman
This book traces the development of hypermetric verse in Old English and compares it to the cognate traditions of Old Norse and Old Saxon. The study illustrates the inherent flexibility of the hypermetric line and shows how poets were able to manipulate this flexibility in different contexts for different practical and rhetorical purposes. This analysis shows what degree of control the poets had over the traditional alliterative line, what effects they were able to produce with various stylistic choices, and how attention to poetic style aids literary analysis.
ISBN: 978-1-50151-832-4 (clothbound), 978-1-50151-368-8 (PDF), 978-1-50151-355-8 (EPUB) © 2020
The Wisdom of Exeter: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Honor of Patrick W. Conner
Edited E. J. Christie
This interdisciplinary volume collects original essays in literary criticism and literary theory, philology, codicology, metrics, and art history. Composed by prominent scholars in Anglo-Saxon studies, these essays honor the depth and breadth of Patrick W. Conner’s influence in our discipline. As a scholar, teacher, editor, administrator and innovator, Pat has contributed to Anglo-Saxon studies for four decades. It is hard to say which of his legacies is most profound.
ISBN: 978-1-58044-782-2 (clothbound), 978-3-11066-306-0 (PDF), 978-3-11066-290-2 (EPUB) © 2020
Late Anglo-Saxon Prayer in Practice: Before the Books of Hours
By Kate Thomas
An examination of the creation of complex devotional programs in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, which were the forerunners of the Special Offices. This is demonstrated through close readings of prayer collections for liturgical feasts, the canonical Hours, prayer before the Cross, private confession, and prayers for protection and healing.
ISBN: 978-1-58044-361-6 (clothbound), 978-3-11066-195-8 (PDF), 978-3-11066-049-4 (EPUB) © 2020
Darkness, Depression, and Descent in Anglo-Saxon England
By Ruth Wehlau
This collection of essays examines the motifs of darkness, depression, and descent in both literal and figurative manifestations within a variety of Anglo-Saxon texts, including the Old English Consolation of Philosophy, Beowulf, Guthlac, The Junius Manuscript, The Wonders of the East, and The Battle of Maldon. It investigates the connection between the burgeoning interest in trauma studies and darkness and the representation of the mind or of emotional experience in Anglo-Saxon literature.
ISBN 978-1-58044-367-8 (clothbound), 978-3-11-066197-2 (PDF) © 2019
The Third Gender and Ælfric's Lives of Saints
By Rhonda L. McDaniel
"The Third Gender" considers Ælfric of Eynsham's treatment of gender as he translates Latin monastic saints' Lives for his Anglo-Saxon lay audience.
ISBN 978-1-58044-309-8 (clothbound), 978-1-58044-310-4 (PDF) © 2018
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Eye and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art by Robert Deshman
Edited by Adam Cohen
Deshman wove together a dense and tightly structured nexus of Early Christian, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian manuscript illuminations, ivories, textiles, mosaics and wall paintings on the one hand, and contemporary exegetical, liturgical and political writings on the other.
ISBN 978-1-58044-121-6 (clothbound), 978-1-58044-122-3 (paperback) © 2010
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Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers: Essays in Celebration of Helmut Gneuss's "Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts"
Edited by Thomas N. Hall and Donald Scragg
The collection opens with Gneuss's Rawlinson Center lecture, delivered just a few months prior to the publication of the "Handlist." The lecture is followed by six essays that examine the scribes, contents, circumstances of production and intended uses of selected manuscripts from the late Anglo-Saxon period and investigate the fates of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts at the hands of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century antiquaries.
ISBN 978-1-58044-137-7 (clothbound), 978-1-58044-138-4 (paperback) © 2008
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Aedificia Nova: Studies in Honor of Rosemary Cramp
Edited by Catherine E. Karkov and Helen Damico
The essays offered to Professor Cramp in this volume, while varied in subject, discipline and methodological approach, center on interpretations of the material world, whether that materiality appears in literature, in stone or in the artifacts removed from an archaeological dig.
ISBN 978-1-58044-110-0 (clothbound) © 2008
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The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches
Edited by Rebecca Barnhouse and Benjamin C. Withers
Its over four hundred images make this manuscript (Cotton Claudius B. iv) one of the most extensively illustrated books to survive from the early Middle Ages and preserve evidence of the creativity of the Anglo-Saxon artist and his knowledge of other important early medieval picture cycles.
ISBN 1-58044-024-X (clothbound), 1-58044-050-9 (paperback) © 2000
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The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Edited by Timothy Graham
The eight essays in this collection consider major aspects of the progress of Anglo-Saxon studies from their Tudor beginnings until their coming of age in the second half of the seventeenth century.
ISBN 1-58044-013-4 (clothbound) © 2000, 1-58044-014-2 (paperback)© 2000
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related, non-series publications
Medieval Institute Publications has also published volumes 34 to 36 of the Old English Newsletter Subsidia.
forthcoming in this series
Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England
Edited by Rebecca Hardie
Æthelflæd (d.918), Queen, administrator of law, military and political leader, is one of the most significant women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, she has never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. It also examines Æthelflæd’s reign and legacy in the context of women’s roles during this period and so challenges a prevailing misconception that the tenth century represents a decline in female agency and power. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary and domestic agency.
Thought and Action in Old English Poetry and Prose
By Eleni Ponirakis
In the burgeoning field of cognitive studies in Anglo-Saxon literature, criticism has tended to focus on the mind in isolation. This book offers a new look at the way authors of Old English poetry and prose explore an intimate relationship between mental and physical acts. In these texts, right or wrong action is not linked to nature, but is the fruit of right or wrong thinking, reflecting an emerging democratization of heroism that crosses societal and gender boundaries and in the case of The Battle of Maldon becomes intertwined with socio-political and cultural meaning. Movement, both physical and mental, is opposed to stasis and can be influenced by external -- human and diabolical -- forces. Through close reading and cross-genre comparisons, Ponirakis demonstrates how Anglo-Saxon poets manipulate this interaction to provide a key to interpretation. Comparison across the most influential prose texts reveals a startling similarity of approach which takes the discussion of the Anglo-Saxon conception of the mind and soul, not to mention conventional generic divisions, onto new ground.
The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry before Bede
By Colin A. Ireland
Seventh-century Gaelic law-tracts delineate professional poets (filid) who earned high social status through formal training. These poets cooperated with the Church to create an innovative bilingual intellectual culture in Old Gaelic and Latin. Bede described Anglo-Saxon students who availed themselves of free education in Ireland at this culturally dynamic time. Gaelic scholars called sapientes (“wise ones”) produced texts in Old Gaelic and Latin that demonstrate how Anglo-Saxon students were influenced by contact with Gaelic ecclesiastical and secular scholarship. Seventh-century Northumbria was ruled for over 50 years by Gaelic-speaking kings who could access Gaelic traditions. Gaelic literary traditions provide the closest analogues for Bede’s description of Cædmon’s production of Old English poetry.
This ground-breaking study displays the transformations created by the growth of vernacular literatures and bilingual intellectual cultures. Gaelic missionaries and educational opportunities helped shape the Northumbrian “Golden Age”, its manuscripts, hagiography, and writings of Aldhelm and Bede.