Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, Series Number 30)

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, including the nature of textual transmission and recomposition and its relationship to late Old English reader response.