Witnesses to the disappearance of a text, palimpsest manuscripts bear the marks of their own genesis, with their original inscription rubbed out and written over on the same parchment.

This collection explores analogies of erasure and rewriting observed in editorial and literary practices underlying the production of texts from medieval England.

Raeleen Chai- Elsholz, Introduction: Palimpsests and ‘Palimpsestuous’ Reinscriptions, pp. 1-17. Abstract: This introduction analyzes the term “palimpsest” in relation to the various types of artifacts of cultural production discussed in the volume’s essays.

Adrian Papahagi, An Anglo- Saxon Palimpsest from Fleury: Orléans, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 342 (290), pp. 21-33. Abstract: This essay examines an Orléans manuscript (s. x/xi) against the background of exchanges between Fleury and Anglo- Saxon abbeys, and suggests it was palimpsested in Fleury.

Peter A. Stokes, Recovering Anglo-Saxon Erasures: Some Questions, Tools, and Techniques, pp. 35-60. Abstract: This essay provides practical instruction in enhancing digital images of damaged or palimpsested manuscripts, encompassing basic principles, hands-on techniques, and the ethics of enhancement.

Jane Roberts, Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context, pp. 61-79. Abstract: This essay looks closely at three Anglo-Saxon glossed psalters and how the palimpsestic layers of gloss and text, language and layout, speak to the meditative reader.

Paul E. Szarmach, The Palimpsest and Old English Homiletic Composition, pp. 81-94. Abstract: This essay proposes that the palimpsest offers a way to understand the composition techniques of Old English homilists, notably Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the anonymous tradition.

Sharon M. Rowley, 'Ic Beda’ . . . ‘Cwæð Beda’: Reinscribing Bede in the Old English Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, pp. 95-113. Abstract: This essay examines literal and metaphorical palimpsests in the OEHE, emphasizing the strategies through which Bede’s translators represent Bede’s voice in direct and indirect discourse.

Florence Bourgne, Vernacular Engravings in Late Medieval England, pp. 115-136. Abstract: Anxious late-medieval vernacular authors saturated their texts with references to engraved writings. These often refer to inscriptions on wax tablets, a fragile albeit professional medium.

Leo Carruthers, Rewriting Genres: Beowulf as Epic Romance, pp. 139-155. Abstract: Investigation of its historical matter in parallel with its generic classifications shows Beowulf to be a literary palimpsest anticipating the historical novel.

Gila Aloni, Palimpsestic Philomela: Reinscription in Chaucer’s “Legend of Philomela", pp. 157-173. Abstract: In rewriting Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Chaucer partially erases his source to make room for his own “Legend of Philomela.”

Claire Vial, The Middle English Breton Lays and the Mists of Origin, pp. 175-191. Abstract: Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the “true” Middle English Breton lays.

Colette Stévanovitch, Enquiries into the Textual History of the Seventeenth- Century Sir Lambewell (London, British Library, Additional 27897), pp. 193-204. Abstract: The mid- seventeenth-century romance Sir Lambewell incorporates accretions from various periods, which reflect the tastes of various audiences and coexist as in a palimpsest.

Jean- Marc Elsholz, Elucidations: Bringing to Light the Aesthetic Underwriting of the Matière de Bretagne in John Boorman’s Excalibur, pp. 205-226. Abstract: Boorman’s film Excalibur enacts medieval theories of light that form the underwriting of successive layers of the Arthurian romance tradition.

Studies of the evolution of the hero, from Beowulf to Lancelot. Andre Crepin, head of the English faculty at the Sorbonne, has made a great contribution to medieval English studies in France and in Europe. These studies in his honour reflect the wide range of his interests in Old and Middle English, fromBeowulf to Malory. Their linking theme is the literary and linguistic evolution of the hero, from the classic expression of the Germanic code to the chivalry of the knights of the Round Table, from Beowulf toChaucer's knight to Sir Lancelot. Beowulf as archetypal hero is both the subject of and the concept behind more than one study; others, attempting to define heroism, grapple with the semantic problem posed by the absence of thisword until very late in the medieval period; and the very notion of heroism is questioned as the passive hero or anti-hero emerges as a literary type, at the same time as the medieval consciousness of self developed. Contributors: GUY BOURGUIN, LEO CARRUTHERS, PETER CLEMOES, ANDY ORCHARD, ERIC STANLEY, JULIETTE DOR, DEREK BREWER, TERENCE P. DOLAN, JILL MANN, JOSSELINE BIBARD, JEAN-JACQUES BLANCHOT, JAMES WIMSATT, TERENCE McCARTHY, GLORIA CIGMAN.