Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century [Paperback]

Ten essays on the study of Old English texts in the twelfth century, first published in 2000.This volume makes a case for the importance of texts written in Old English in the twelfth (and early thirteenth) century, a period hitherto neglected by scholars because of its late date. The ten newly commissioned essays will be of great interest to historians, linguists, English, Anglo-Norman and Latin literature scholars and manuscript specialists, covering a wide variety of significant issues (production, audience, contents, uses amongst others). There is no comparable monograph available on twelfth-century Old English; this book marks the first substantial publication in this new and growing field.This volume makes a case for the importance of texts written in Old English in the twelfth (and early thirteenth) century, a period hitherto neglected by scholars because of its late date. The ten newly commissioned essays will be of great interest to historians, linguists, English, Anglo-Norman and Latin literature scholars and manuscript specialists, covering a wide variety of significant issues (production, audience, contents, uses amongst others). There is no comparable monograph available on twelfth-century Old English; this book marks the first substantial publication in this new and growing field.This innovative collection of essays aims to redefine the limits of Old English scholarship by studying some of the latest reworkings of texts composed earlier in the Anglo-Saxon period and their implications for the development of literary production across time. The essays in the volume constitute new work on a wide range of texts, including homilies, saints' lives, psalters and biblical material; some focus on individual manuscripts incorporating paleographic and orthographic studies; others use modern critical theory to examine later Old English texts; and all highlight the need to redefine our attitude to late recopying. The volume engages with important issues, includingl#(