The first comprehensive edition and translation of Old English writings on health and healing in more than 150 years. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, vernacular writings on health and healing had a major place in early medieval England. These texts—unique local remedies and translations of late antique Latin treatises—offer insights into the history of science and medicine, social history, scribal practices, and culture. Some cures resemble ones still used today; others are linguistically extravagant, prescribing ambitious healing practices. Alongside recipes for everyday ailments such as headaches are unparalleled procedures for preventing infant mortality, restoring lost cattle, warding off elf-shot, or remedying the effects of flying venom. Medical Writings from Early Medieval England presents the first comprehensive edition and translation from Old English of these works in more than 150 years. Volume I includes The Old English Herbal, Remedies from Animals, Lacnunga, the Peri Didaxeon, and a compendium of miscellaneous texts.

Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf ?is the elegiac narrative of the Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in ?Beowulf ?and its immense emotional credibility Seamus Heaney gives the great epic convincing reality

But how to visualize the poet's story has always been a challenge for modern-day readers. In Beowulf: An Illustrated Edition, John D. Niles, a specialist in Old English literature, provides visual counterparts to Heaney's remarkable translation. More than one hundred full-page illustrations Viking warships, chain mail, lyres, spearheads, even a reconstruction of the Great Hall make visible Beowulf's world and the elemental themes of his story: death, divine power, horror, heroism, disgrace, devotion, and fame. This mysterious world is now transformed into one of material splendor as readers view its elegant goblets, dragon images, and finely crafted gold jewelry against the backdrop of the Danish landscape of its origins."

Born in 1928 in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Duncan Williamson (d. 2007) eventually came to be recognized as one of the foremost storytellers in Scotland and the world. Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller is based on more than a hundred hours of tape-recorded interviews undertaken with him in the 1980s. Williamson tells of his birth and upbringing in the west of Scotland, his family background as one of Scotland's seminomadic travelling people, his varied work experiences after setting out from home at about age fifteen, and the challenges he later faced while raising a family of his own, living on the road for half the year. The recordings on which the book is based were made by John D. Niles, who was then an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Niles has transcribed selections from his field tapes with scrupulous accuracy, arranging them alongside commentary, photos, and other scholarly aids, making this priceless self-portrait of a brilliant storyteller available to the public. The result is a delight to read. It is also a mine of information concerning a vanished way of life and the place of singing and storytelling in Traveller culture. In chapters that feature many colorful anecdotes and that mirror the spontaneity of oral delivery, readers learn much about how Williamson and other members of his persecuted minority had the resourcefulness to make a living on the outskirts of society, owning very little in the way of material goods but sustained by a rich oral heritage.

Old English Heroic Poems and the Social Life of Texts develops the theme that all stories- all 'beautiful lies', if one considers them as such - have a potentially myth-like function as they enter and re-enter the stream of human consciousness. In particular, the volume assesses the place of heroic poetry (including Beowulf, Widsith, and The Battle of Maldon) in the evolving society of Anglo-Saxon England during the tenth-century period of nation-building. Poetry, Niles argues, was a great collective medium through which the Anglo-Saxons conceived of their changing social world and made mental adjustments to it. Old English 'heroic geography' is examined as an aspect of the mentality of that era. So too is the idea of the oral poet (or bard) as a means by which the people of this time continued to conceive of themselves, in defiance of reality, as members of a tribe-like community knit by close personal bonds. The volume is rounded off by the identification of Bede's story of the poet Caedmon as the earliest known example of a modern folktale type, and by a spirited defense of Seamus Heaney's recent verse translation of Beowulf.

This monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as 'The Exeter Book'. Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed'n 2006), has re-named the manuscript 'The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry'. The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology. God's Exiles and English Verse is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture. The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction. Part One, consisting of three chapters, introduces certain of the book's main themes, addresses matters of date, authorship, audience, and the like, and evaluates hypotheses that have been put forth concerning the origins of the Exeter Anthology in the south of England during the period of the Benedictine Reform. Part Two, the main body of the book, begins with a long chapter, divided into seven sections, that introduces the contents of the Exeter Anthology poem by poem in a more systematic fashion than before, with attention to the overall organization of the Anthology and certain factors in it that have a unifying function. The five shorter chapters that follow are devoted to topics of special interest, including the volume's possible use as a guide to vernacular poetic techniques, its underlying worldview, its reliance on certain thematically significant keywords, and its intertextual versus intratextual relations. The riddles, especially those of a sexual content, receive attention in a chapter of their own. In addition, there is a translation of the popular poem The Wanderer into modern English prose, a folio-by-folio listing of the contents of the Exeter Anthology, and a listing of a number of the poems of the Anthology with notes on their genre, according to Latin generic terms familiar to educated Anglo-Saxons. This book is the first of its kind - an integrative, book-length critical study of the Exeter Anthology.

Homo Narrans The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature John D. Niles Awarded second place in the 2000 Chicago Folklore Prize competition "Linking the performed word of the present with the textual record of the past, "Homo Narrans" brings together, in mutually productive ways, what have often been contrasted--folklore and literature. This readable and accessible exploration suggests that narrative and narrating are essential ways humanity fashions and refashions itself."--Mary Ellen Brown, Indiana University "A well-documented and unusually readable and sensible synthesis of much of the work that has been done on oral culture."--"MLR" "A welcome interweaving of areas too often and too simplistically segregated: folklore and literature, oral tradition and written tradition, performance and text."--"Choice" It would be difficult to imagine what human life would be like without stories--from myths recited by Pueblo Indian healers in the kiva, ballads sung in Slovenian market squares, folktales and legends told by the fireside in Italy, to jokes told at the dinner table in Des Moines--for it is chiefly through storytelling that people possess a past. In "Homo Narrans" John D. Niles explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. The book vividly weaves together the study of Anglo-Saxon literature and culture with the author's own engagements in the field with some of the greatest twentieth-century singers and storytellers in the Scottish tradition. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition. His investigation of the poetics of oral narrative encompasses literary works, such as the epic poems and hymns of early Greece and the Anglo-Saxon "Beowulf," that we know only through written text but that are grounded in oral technique. That all forms of narrative, even the most sophisticated genres of contemporary fiction, have their ultimate origin in storytelling is a point that scarcely needs to be argued. Niles's claims here are more ambitious: that oral narrative is and has long been the chief basis of culture itself, that the need to tell stories is what distinguishes humans from all other living creatures. John D. Niles is Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author and editor of many books, including "Beowulf: The Poem and Its Tradition" and coeditor, with Allen J. Frantzen, of "Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity." 1999 296 pages 6 x 9 15 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-2107-7 Paper $24.95s 16.50 World Rights Anthropology, Literature Short copy: "Homo Narrans" explores how human beings shape their world through the stories they tell. Author John D. Niles ponders the nature of the storytelling impulse, the social function of narrative, and the role of individual talent in oral tradition.

Essays lay the groundwork for a theory of humour in Old English literature. Humour is rarely seen to raise its indecorous head in the surviving corpus of Old English literature, yet the value of reading that literature with an eye to humour proves considerable when the right questions are asked. Humourin Anglo-Saxon Literature provides the first book-length treatment of the subject. In all new essays, eight scholars employ different approaches to explore humor in such works as Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, the riddles of the Exeter Book, and Old English saints' lives. An introductory essay provides a survey of the field, while individual essays push towards a distinctive theory of Anglo-Saxon humour. Through its unusual focus, this collection will provide an appealing introduction to both famous and lesser-known works for those new to Old English literature, while those familiar with the usual contours of Old English literary criticism will find here the value of a fresh approach. Contributors: JOHN D. NILES, T.A. SHIPPEY, RAYMOND P. TRIPP JR, E.L. RISDEN, D.K. SMITH, NINA RULON-MILLER, SHARI HORNER, HUGH MAGENNIS. JONATHAN WILCOX is Associate Professor of English at the University of Iowa and editor of the Old English Newsletter. Although the question of humour in the surviving corpus of Old English literature has rarely been discussed, the potential for analyzing this literature in terms of its humor is in fact considerable. In the essays especially commissioned for this volume, the first book-length treatment of Anglo-Saxon humor, eight of the foremost scholars in the field use different approaches to explore humor in the surviving literature of Anglo-Saxon England, in such works as Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, the riddles of the Exeter book, and Old English saints' lives. The articles are prefaced with an introduction surveying the field. Through its unusual focus, this collection will provide an appealing introduction to both famous and lesser-known works for those new to Old English literature, while those familiar with theusual contours of Old English literary criticism will find here the value of a fresh approach. JONATHAN WILCOX is Associate Professor of English at the University of Iowa and editor of the Old English Newsletter.

Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf has long been the standard edition for study by students and advanced scholars alike. Its wide-ranging coverage of scholarship, its comprehensive philological aids, and its exceptionally thorough notes and glossary have ensured its continued use in spite of the fact that the book has remained largely unaltered since 1936. The fourth edition has been prepared with the aim of updating the scholarship while preserving the aspects of Klaeber's work that have made it useful to students of literature, linguists, historians, folklorists, manuscript specialists, archaeologists, and theorists of culture.

A revised Introduction and Commentary incorporates the vast store of scholarship on Beowulf that has appeared since 1950. It brings readers up to date on areas of scholarship that have been controversial since the last edition, including the construction of the unique manuscript and views on the poem's date and unity of composition. The lightly revised text incorporates the best textual criticism of the intervening years, and the expanded Commentary furnishes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. Aids to pronunciation have been added to the text, and advances in the study of the poem's language are addressed throughout. Readers will find that the book remains recognizably Klaeber's work, but with altered and added features designed to render it as useful today as it has ever been.

Born in 1928 in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Duncan Williamson (d. 2007) eventually came to be recognized as one of the foremost storytellers in Scotland and the world. Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller is based on more than a hundred hours of tape-recorded interviews undertaken with him in the 1980s. Williamson tells of his birth and upbringing in the west of Scotland, his family background as one of Scotland's seminomadic travelling people, his varied work experiences after setting out from home at about age fifteen, and the challenges he later faced while raising a family of his own, living on the road for half the year. The recordings on which the book is based were made by John D. Niles, who was then an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Niles has transcribed selections from his field tapes with scrupulous accuracy, arranging them alongside commentary, photos, and other scholarly aids, making this priceless self-portrait of a brilliant storyteller available to the public. The result is a delight to read. It is also a mine of information concerning a vanished way of life and the place of singing and storytelling in Traveller culture. In chapters that feature many colorful anecdotes and that mirror the spontaneity of oral delivery, readers learn much about how Williamson and other members of his persecuted minority had the resourcefulness to make a living on the outskirts of society, owning very little in the way of material goods but sustained by a rich oral heritage.

This monograph is a critical study of the medieval manuscript held in Exeter Cathedral Library, popularly known as 'The Exeter Book'. Recent scholarship, including the standard edition of the text, published by UEP in 2000 (2 ed'n 2006), has re-named the manuscript 'The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry'. The book gives us intelligent, sensitive literary criticism, profound readings of all of the poems of the Anthology. God's Exiles and English Verse is the first integrative, historically grounded book to be written about the Exeter Book of Old English poetry. By approaching the Exeter codex as a whole, the book seeks to establish a sound footing for the understanding of any and all of its parts, seen as devout yet cosmopolitan expressions of late Anglo-Saxon literary culture. The poems of the Exeter Book have not before been approached primarily from a codicological perspective. They have not before been read as an integrated expression of a monastic poetic: that is to say, as a refashioning of the medium of Old English verse so as to serve as an emotionally powerful, intellectually challenging vehicle for Christian doctrine and moral instruction. Part One, consisting of three chapters, introduces certain of the book's main themes, addresses matters of date, authorship, audience, and the like, and evaluates hypotheses that have been put forth concerning the origins of the Exeter Anthology in the south of England during the period of the Benedictine Reform. Part Two, the main body of the book, begins with a long chapter, divided into seven sections, that introduces the contents of the Exeter Anthology poem by poem in a more systematic fashion than before, with attention to the overall organization of the Anthology and certain factors in it that have a unifying function. The five shorter chapters that follow are devoted to topics of special interest, including the volume's possible use as a guide to vernacular poetic techniques, its underlying worldview, its reliance on certain thematically significant keywords, and its intertextual versus intratextual relations. The riddles, especially those of a sexual content, receive attention in a chapter of their own. In addition, there is a translation of the popular poem The Wanderer into modern English prose, a folio-by-folio listing of the contents of the Exeter Anthology, and a listing of a number of the poems of the Anthology with notes on their genre, according to Latin generic terms familiar to educated Anglo-Saxons. This book is the first of its kind - an integrative, book-length critical study of the Exeter Anthology.

The most revered work composed in Old English, "Beowulf" is one of the landmarks of European literature. This handbook supplies a wealth of insights into all major aspects of this wondrous poem and its scholarly tradition. Each chapter provides a history of the scholarly interest in a particular topic, a synthesis of present knowledge and opinion, and an analysis of scholarly work that remains to be done. Written to accommodate the needs of a broad audience, "A Beowulf Handbook" will be of value to nonspecialists who wish simply to read and enjoy Beowulf and to scholars at work on their own research. In its clear and comprehensive treatment of the poem and its scholarship, this book will prove an indispensable guide to readers and specialists for many years to come.

The papers in this volume contribute to a more precise assessment of the interconnections between England and Scandinavia during the period from the establishment of the Danelaw to the Norman Conquest. The essays fall into three groups of concern: history, myth, and the language of poetry. Contents: Introduction: The Vikings and England; The Viking Policy of Ethelred the Unready; The Viking Policy of Ethelred: A Response; Ethelred II, Olaf Tryggvason, and the Conversion of Norway; Norse Mythology and Northumbria: Methodological Notes; Norse Mythology and Northumbria: A Response; Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?; Skaldic Technique in Brunanburh; and Maldon As It Really Was. Co-published with the Old English Colloquium.