Nicole Eddy

The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library is proud to participate in the virtual exhibits hall of the 57th annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, hosted by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Everyone is invited to browse our virtual conference booth: no conference registration required!

Use our online order form to get a 20% discount and free shipping in the US and Canada on all DOML volumes, including new titles:

• Biblical and Pastoral Poetry, by Alcimus Avitus, ed. and trans. Michael Roberts
• Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean: The Eugenian Recension of Stehanites and Ichnelates, ed. and trans. Alison Noble, with Alexander Alexakis and Richard P. H. Greenfield
• The Old English Pastoral Care, ed. and trans. R. D. Fulk
• Writings on Body and Soul, by Aelred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. Bruce L. Venarde
• The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios, ed. and trans. Robert H. Jordan and Rosemary Morris

Outside North and South America, email [email protected] and quote the discount code HX7674 to claim 20% off.

The discounted price is available through the end of May 2022.

The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library is doing early medieval English studies proud with its oh-so-handsome editions and facing-page translations in affordable hardbacks, featuring clear print on nice paper with golden-brown covers and a built-in bookmark. The contents are as impressive as the volumes that contain them, with compact, thoughtful editions and readable translations undertaken by appropriate experts. It is noteworthy that the series is including not just Old English poetry but also a wide range of Old English prose, making some of the less-accessible works from the period available to a broad audience. Andrew Rabin’s collection of the political and legal writings by Archbishop Wulfstan fits the latter category and does not disappoint.

The real treat of this volume lies in presenting the whole sequence of Wulfstan’s political and legal writings in such accessible form. Wulfstan’s obsession with the right ordering of his society becomes clear through the reiteration, including such intriguing details as what it takes to allow social mobility. Other recurring preoccupations are apparent, such as Wulfstan’s concerns with clerical conduct and episcopal obligations, his opposition to married clergy and clerical drunkenness, his concern with maintaining Sunday observance and with the rights of widows, his insistence on payment of tithes and church dues, and his opposition to heathen practices. His legislation occasionally features specificities of legal practice and punishment for crimes, even as the prevailing message is more of a homiletic requirement to be good. Rabin suggests that some of the pieces surviving in the most prominent Wulfstan manuscripts may represent Wulfstan’s copies for his own use, already moving from specific legislation to homiletic exhortation.

Whether Wulfstan’s prescriptions represent realities on the ground of the early eleventh century is hard to tell. The works collected here do, however, give good access to the pattern of thought of an influential reforming archbishop during the reigns of Æthelred and Cnut. Rabin has done a wonderful job of making those works newly accessible.

Jonathan Wilcox
Speculum

Read Full Article >>

Anonymous Old English saints’ lives form a major part of the corpus of surviving literature from early England. Compared to poetry or works by named authors like Ælfric, they have been mainly served by editors and translators piecemeal. Johanna Kramer, Hugh Magennis, and Robin Norris offer a welcome addition to the field with a new collection of Anonymous Old English Lives of Saints in fresh editions and translations. As the editors say, “The lives included in this collection are highly diverse in nature” and form a representative group of vernacular saints’ lives in early England.

Given the transmission of Old English saints’ lives across many disparate manuscripts, this collection does not follow a single manuscript witness. This presents various challenges for the editors since several of the saints’ lives included in this volume pose tricky issues for textual criticism. Despite various challenges, the editors present admirable editions of these works. Some of these saints’ lives are newly edited here for the first time since the nineteenth or early twentieth century, and several of the accompanying translations are the first to appear in print. The edited texts are accurate when checked against previous printings and available manuscripts, and the translations are both literal to the Old English and accessible to general readers.

This collection includes most of the anonymous Old English saints’ lives (excluding those in the Vercelli, Blickling, and Nowell codices) in an anthology unlike any previously published. These hagiographies are often overlooked by those who study early medieval England, and this new volume opens the way for further attention in the future. It will surely become the standard edition for anyone studying anonymous Old English saints’ lives.

Brandon W. Hawk
Speculum

Read Full Article >>

The Anglo-Saxon riddles are a fascinating verbal realm where ambiguity and polysemy, suggestion and a big dose of distraction and deflection make the rule rather than the exception. Andy Orchard paves a way through this slippery territory by bringing together in one place the entire riddle corpus, Latin and Old English, with a detailed and informative commentary.

The size of the work alone bespeaks years of industrious effort. The author revisits all the riddles and the literature on them, and proposes many new solutions. I must mention as well some sharp critical thinking. Orchard’s introduction, for example, disproves much earlier scholarship which drew rigid divisions between the Latin and the vernacular, and instead emphasizes commonalities: a brief glance at the commentary citations of the many points of contact between riddles Latin and English proves the case beyond any real argument.

The two volumes make an immensely valuable contribution to scholarship. The all-inclusive scope of the editions, the detail of the commentary, and the usefulness of the indexes combine for a reader-friendly treatment of a subject which has been most often a monopoly of specialists. Orchard’s work is certainly not the last word on Anglo-Saxon riddling, but it will just as certainly be a first stop for all who want to read and write about these enigmatic texts. The author’s states the expectation that his work will stimulate a new wave of scholarship dedicated to this interesting subject. I can only concur.

David J. Porter
Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Read Full Article >>

There seems to be growing interest in what John Tolan aptly calls the “European Muhammad”: not the historical figure who lived in and transformed early-seventh-century Arabia but rather “a mirror for European writers, expressing their fears, hopes, and ambitions.” Julian Yolles and Jessica Weiss enrich this field by providing ready access to narrative accounts of Muhammad’s life and, crucially, making these texts available not only in Latin but also in accurate and highly readable English translations.

Medieval Latin Lives of Muhammad contains nine works, organized in roughly chronological order with text and translation on facing pages to facilitate comparison. Seven of these works were composed in Latin, while two are mediaeval Latin translations of Eastern Christian texts.

I would strongly encourage university libraries of all types to include this volume in their collections, as it makes important works available for undergraduate research. It will be indispensable for all future scholarship related to the European Muhammad, and I personally found it quite helpful when preparing my own work on this subject.

David M. Freidenreich
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

Read Full Article >>