A writer can put direct speech into the mouths of the characters within his story or he can report their speech indirectly, and his use of different methods of presenting or suggesting their speech is one of his most potent means of creating characterization and of controlling the effect of his story. In general the character who is given direct speech is more dramatically effective, more ‘real’, than the one who is represented through indirect speech; on the other hand, the many gradations within the broad category of ‘indirect speech’ allow the writer much more scope in the variety of function and the subtlety of effect that can be created. This is as true of early writers as of the modern novelist, and Ælfric is one who was clearly aware of the potentiality of both direct and indirect speech in reinforcing the message which he wished to bring home to his audience. This can be illustrated especially well from the saints' lives which he derived from Bede, where the source is more exactly known than it usually is and where comparison is possible not only with the Latin but also with the earlier Old English translation.

Although a great deal has been written about the sources and manner of compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its various versions, very little attention has been paid to its earliest section – the annals covering the period from the landing of Julius Caesar, s.a. 60 BC, to the coming of Hengest and Horsa, s.a. 449. Eight of these annals deal with the history of Britain and derive their material from the chronological summary at the end of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastical. The remaining twenty-four (1–45 and 62–155) deal with world history, and the origin of their information is a matter of dispute. Plummer claimed that they are derived from ‘some epitome of universal history, the source of which I have not yet been able to trace’. Hodgkin, on the other hand, considered that the composition of the Chronicle was intimately connected with that of the Old English Orosius and took Orosius to be a major source for the annals in question:

Critics have long wondered about the setting and intent of the Old English translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, first into prose and then into prosimetrum. This article situates the dual translation within the broader context of ninth- and tenth-century literary culture, challenging the received view of the two versions as separate projects and arguing instead that the Old English Boethius was conceived and received as a vernacular opus geminatum, or ‘twinned work’. While the opus geminatum and the prosimetrum are generally thought to maintain distinct generic identities, this case study allows for a more capacious understanding of both modes, which I demonstrate were inescapably linked in Anglo-Saxon circles – and which were shaped by a broader aesthetic of prose-verse mixture.

Strap-ends represent the most common class of dress accessory known from late Anglo-Saxon England. At this period, new materials, notably lead and its alloys, were being deployed in the manufacture of personal possessions and jewellery. This newly found strap-end adds to the growing number of tongue-shaped examples fashioned from lead dating from this period. It is, however, distinctive in being inscribed with a personal name. The present article provides an account of the object and its text, and assesses its general significance in the context of a more nuanced interpretation of the social status of lead artefacts in late Anglo-Saxon England.

This article discusses the unfinished mappa mundi found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 265, dates it to a late-eleventh-century (c. 1065–95) production in Worcester, identifying it as a nearly exact and earlier analogue of two later twelfth-century English maps of the world from the Ramsey area (Oxford, St John's College 17 and London, British Library, Harley 3667). Contained as it is in a collection of Wulfstanian materials, the Worcester map's relationship to these so-called ‘Bryhtferthian’ maps requires a rethinking of how such maps may have circulated and functioned outside of a computisitical context. The close connections between these three maps further point to a unique, late Anglo-Saxon tradition of mappae mundi thus far unrecognized.

The Holme Riddles are a collection of 144 English riddles preserved in London, British Library, Harley 1960. Although the manuscript dates from the mid-seventeenth century, some of these riddles are apparently rooted in ancient Germanic tradition. One of these, an ancient ‘world-riddle’ according to the editor, is a version of the ‘oak-ship’ riddle:

Q. wn j lived j fed the liveing now j am dead j beare the live[in]g & with swift speed j walk our the liveing

A. a ship mad[e] of oake groweing feeds hogs with acorns now b[e]ars men & swims our fishes.

Lexical and stylistic features indicate that the Preface to the Old English Bede was composed by a writer different from the anonymous Mercian who translated the body of the text. The Preface, therefore, cannot be taken to reveal aspects of the original translator's aims or attitude to the text. Recently discovered collations of the burnt manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi, made by John Smith prior to the 1731 fire, provide further insight, indicating that a copy of the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List was attached to the Preface by the mid-tenth century. Thus the origins of the Preface may lie in an Alfredian or post-Alfredian initiative to disseminate the translation at some time later than its actual creation.

It is an index perhaps of changing historiographical trends that the importance of Alfred's illnesses in the moulding of his outlook, both as a layman and as a king, now hardly needs to be emphasized. In the course of the 1990s, Alfred became gradually better understood as a man of the 890s. Yet Victorian sensibilities have died hard. Both Plummer and Stevenson detected an ‘atmosphere of morbid religiosity’ in Asser's account of Alfred's illnesses in ch. 74, and both refused to associate this atmosphere with the ‘historical Alfred’, in view of his well-attested military successes. The recent resurrection of this approach by Alfred Smyth has only served, however, to emphasize the need for greater sensitivity to the ideals and expectations of the society within which Alfred was operating. Smyth's unsuccessful attempt to expose Asser's Life as a later forgery relies heavily upon his assumption that the text is a work of hagiography, because it supposedly portrays Alfred as ‘a saintly king, wrapt up in prayer [sic], and enduring some form of physical disease’. It should therefore be stressed that royal sanctity was an entirely posthumous phenomenon in Anglo-Saxon England, and, in the case of kings, nearly always acquired through an appropriate manner of death.

In the nineteenth century, John Romilly Allen confidently claimed that the iconography of the Crucifixion with the robed or ‘fully draped’ Christ was a phenomenon of Celtic art, found in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, distinguishable from the ‘Saxon’ type in which Christ wore a loin-cloth. Other features of the Saxon type were the presence of the sun and moon above the arms of the cross, instead of angels as in Ireland; and the figures of the Virgin and St John at the foot of the cross, without the spear- and sponge-bearers, the latter pair appearing only exceptionally at Alnmouth, Northumberland; Aycliffe, County Durham; and Bradbourne, Derbyshire. Clearly two different versions were identified in this analysis, but no attempt was made to clarify the chronological relationship between the examples cited, and only the geographical distribution of a small number of examples was considered. Romilly Allen's confidence in distinguishing ‘Celt’ from ‘Saxon’ on the basis of art styles, even for the pre-Viking period, is not always shared today, as the continuing discussion of the origins of several important manuscripts shows. The terms ‘Insular’ and ‘Hiberno-Saxon’ used to describe much of the art from the sixth century to the eighth underline die perceived difficulties.

The Old English prose Genesis contains a series of innovative rubrics, unparalleled in the Vulgate tradition, which divide the story of Genesis into a series of holy biographies of the patriarchs Noah, Abraham and Joseph. These rubrics, added to the text in the eleventh century, use formulaic language derived from contemporary documents such as Anglo-Saxon wills and thereby regulate how Genesis was to be read and interpreted by an aristocratic layman or novice monk. The rubrics blend ancient Hebrew narratives, stories of the saints and the legal conventions familiar to the reader in order to portray ‘sacred history’ as an unbroken, legally sanctioned inheritance. They emphasize the Covenant of God with Abraham and the people of Israel and assure the contemporary reader that he too will inherit an unfulfilled promise manifested in God's covenant with the patriarchs.

No detailed study has ever been made of the East Saxon kingdom, and general works of Anglo-Saxon history usually devote only a few lines to it. Some incidents are well known, such as the conversion of Saberht in 604 by his uncle Æthelberht of Kent, and the apostacy of Sigehere during the plague of 664, while his co-ruler Sæbbi remained Christian. These events are frequently cited as evidence for the workings of overlordship or for the existence of joint kingship in Anglo-Saxon England, though in order to appreciate their true significance they must be placed in a wider context of East Saxon history. Other events from the East Saxon past are less well known, but the fact that East Saxon kings ruled part of Kent for at least six years and that their royal family was one of the few to survive until the ninth century are indications that the East Saxon province was one of the more significant minor kingdoms. Their relative neglect is due to the scarcity of written sources: no East Saxon chronicle has survived, and charters are few and often imperfectly recorded. Inevitably many areas of the East Saxon past must remain obscure, but the situation is not as bleak as it might first appear. East Saxon sources, although few, are varied, and illuminate different aspects of the kingdom's history. The evidence they contain is reviewed first, before more general conclusions are drawn about the East Saxon system of kingship and the relations of East Saxon kings with other kingdoms.

In an article published in 1986 Michael Lapidge1 noted the occurrence of the term Umbrensium (from Humbrenses/Umbrenses) in both the U-text of Theodore's Indicia2 and the anonymous, eighth-century Whitby Vita S. Gregorii.3 This is by no means the only point of contact between the two works. Perhaps the most memorable episode in the Vita S. Gregorii is that of Gregory's weeping for the soul of Trajan, his tears having the effect of baptizing the dead emperor.

The use of demonstrative behaviour in political communication in the tenth and eleventh centuries (for example, proskynesis to obtain pardon) has been examined extensively over the last two decades, especially with regard to Ottonian and Salian Germany. So far, however, there has been no attempt to study its operation in Anglo-Saxon England. This paper aims to do so, looking for examples in narrative sources of demonstrative piety, reactions to rebellion, arbitration, petition and so on, and exploring how far the Anglo-Saxons were influenced by their continental neighbours and how far narrative sources themselves might have transmitted ideas.

This article investigates the relationship of the Wilfrid and Cuthbert Lives, confirming that Bede re-presented the life of Cuthbert in response to Wilfridian criticism. It then examines why that was necessary c. 720, arguing that it fits not just with a probable episcopal interregnum at Lindisfarne after Eadfrith's death, as suggested by Kirby, but also with Acca's promotion of St Oswald and Heavenfield, which undercut Lindisfarne's cult of St Cuthbert and status as the mother church of Bernicia. At stake were both Lindisfarne's survival as an episcopal see and its distinctive type of monkbishops. These represented a different model of episcopacy, championed by Bede, from that espoused by the Wilfridians.

Having just killed the dragon, and with death ‘ungemete neah’ (2728b; ‘exceedingly near’), Beowulf begins to speak, remarking first on his lack of a son:

Nu ic suna minum syllan wolde

guðgewædu, þær me gifeðe swa

ænig yrfeweard æfter wurde

lice gelenge. (2729–2732a)

The language here seems almost neutral, but at least two of the terms are suggestive. The ‘guðgewædu’ (‘war-garments’) that he wishes to leave to his son recall most notably the elaborate gifts of weapons and horses – including the saddle that the king used in battle (1037b–1043) – that Hrothgar had given him following the fight with Grendel, implicating him, as John M. Hill and Stephanie Hollis have argued, in the Danish succession. Similarly, in using ‘yrfeweard’ (‘guardian of an inheritance’), he calls attention to the king's role in protecting the tribe's wealth, although the poet may expect the audience to hear more in the compound since ‘weard’ appears often in the final part of the poem in descriptions of the dragon. Thus, even though Beowulf does not mention this failing again, his remark draws together a theme not only signficant in the Geatish section of the poem, but also present from the opening descriptions of Scyld's reign: part of a king's responsibility is to see that the succession is secure in a son.

Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Fragm. lat. I. 56, a single detached leaf written in Anglo-Caroline minuscule of mid-eleventh-century date and containing a number of neumed metra of Boethius, was recently brought to the attention of Dr M. T. Gibson1 by the Keeper of Manuscripts in Frankfurt, Dr Gerhard Powitz.2 Dr C. Page identified it as part of the ‘Cambridge Songs’ manuscript, Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5. 35 (fols. 432–41). The leaf throws valuable new light not only on the subject of musical notation in late Anglo-Saxon England, but also on the composition of one of the best-known collections of medieval Latin lyrics.3

The nineteen-line Old English poem known as Wulf and Eadwacer has proved a notorious lodestone and analytical trap for critics; and still another interpretation of it may seem futile, if not presumptuous. Nevertheless, I believe no more firmly in my interpretation than others have believed in theirs: that is, I am no less confident that it will clear up most of the verbal and situational mysteries the poem presents; that it will enable us to see the lyric as structurally whole; that it will help us appreciate even more its aesthetic qualities; and that it will gain a critical consensus. To achieve such modest goals, I shall have to consider assumptions about the mind-set of the Anglo-Saxon audience as well as the poem's structure, diction, tone and imagery. It will thus be well to have the poem before us, and I venture a poetic translation which I shall comment on in due course.

My article begins in true medieval fashion with a retraction. A few years ago I argued that The Wanderer and The Seafarer involved two imaginary speakers rather than one. Ever since the publication of this argument I have been assailed by doubts of its validity, not only because most persons whose judgement I trust in such a matter have been either politely noncommittal or vociferously hostile, but because I myself, in returning again and again to the poems, have been less and less convinced that their texts would support my reading. The decisive moment came, I think, when I read P. L. Henry's strong reinforcement, from the Celtic side, of Dorothy Whitelock's view of The Seafarer as the monologue of a religious ascetic who had chosen exile on and beyond the sea for the love of God – a peregrinus pro amore Dei of a sort well known in the British Isles from before Bede's time to Alfred's wherever Celtic Christianity had taken root. In thus returning to Professor Whitelock's interpretation I found myself completely convinced of its superiority. Since that time I have altogether abandoned my former view of The Seafarer, and with it my view of The Wanderer also, and I welcome the opportunity to say so.

Recent research has focused attention on the ‘Lotharingian connection’, that is to say the close links between the English and German churches in the middle of the eleventh century. Its best known manifestation is the presence of a significant number of German (mainly Lotharingian) clerics at the English royal court. This phenomenon seems to have its origin in the reign of Cnut (1016–35), and the purpose of this paper is to shed light on two aspects of Cnut's contacts with Lotharingia. First, an explanation is advanced for Cnut's baptismal name, Lambert. Secondly, attention is drawn to a hagiographical source which provides evidence for a visit by Cnut to Cologne.

Oral literature research entered Old English literature through Albert Lord's 1949 dissertation, eleven years later to become The Singer of Tales, and Francis P. Magoun, Jr's ensuing essay, ‘The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry’.1 As I have pointed out elsewhere,2 these two scholars were not the first to identify and discuss the recurrent phrase or ‘formula’ in the poetry; German Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century had analysed the use of commonplaces of diction (or Parallelstellen) to try to determine authorship and to establish the text of various poems. What Lord and Magoun originated was the idea of an explicit and necessary connection between the formula, defined by Milman Parry as ‘a group of words regularly used under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’,3 and a poem's orality. Following the lead of Parry's ground-breaking analyses of Homeric epic and the Parry–Lord field work on South Slavic oral epic, they and scholars following them reasoned that the source of formulaic structure lay in a tradition of oral verse-making and that formulaic phraseology was a kind of poetic idiom fashioned over generations by bards responding to the continual pressure of composition in performance. Only if his mind were well stocked with phrases of metrical shape – if, in short, he had learned his poetic language well – could an oral poet fluently tell his tale in the form of traditional verse.