Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center

Series introduction

Bird-Shaped Brooch, 500–550 C.E., early medieval English. Silver-gilt, garnets. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.

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, Timothy Graham, University of New Mexico. 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:

Timothy Graham, University of New Mexico, USA, Series Editor
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
Susan Kim, Illinois State University, USA
Rosalind Love, Robinson College, Cambridge University, England

Publications

The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry Before Bede

By Colin A. Ireland

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, and hagiography and the writings of Aldhelm and Bede.

ISBN: 978-1-50152-028-0 (clothbound) Coming in January 2022

See The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry Before Bede at De Gruyter

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.

Buy Poetic Style and Innovation in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon from De Gruyter

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.

Buy The Wisdom of Exeter from De Gruyter

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.

Buy Late Anglo-Saxon Prayer in Practice from De Gruyter

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.

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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.

Buy The Third Gender and Ælfric's Lives of Saints from ISD

Cover of Eye and Mind: Collected Essays in Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Art: the title in gold on a green background.

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.

Buy Eye and Mind from ISD

Cover of Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers: The title in gold on a brown background.

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.

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Cover image of Aedificia Nova: blue, gold, and cream glass beads on a lavendar background, with the title in a rectangular box in the middle of the cover.

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.

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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.

Buy The Old English Hexateuch from ISD

The Recovery of Old English: an Anglo-Saxon manuscript on a black background, with the title above

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.

Buy The Recovery of Old English from ISD

related, non-series publications

Medieval Institute Publications has also published volumes 34 to 36 of the Old English Newsletter Subsidia.

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.