Æthelweard’s chronicle, in a rugged and distinctive Latin, covers history from Creation down to 975, just before he wrote the work. He bases it largely on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and parts of his chronicle provide valuableinformation about this Old English work, here in Æthelweard’s Latin translation or paraphrase. Æthelweard was a high-ranking lay leader. He addresses the work to his cousin, Matilda, abbess of Essen in Germany. Here the famous and dramatic story (which also exists in Old English) of prince Cyneheard and king Cynewulf is given, as well as sections on ninth and tenth century history.

Medieval and modern accounts of old age are notable for the sheer abundance and diversity of the characteristics they identify. This chapter contemplates how contrasting qualities associated with old age actually connect in Old English poetry, dwelling particularly on the relationship between wisdom and sorrow, and introducing a new theoretical framework in the form of trauma theory. It points out the considerable presence of aged poets in the corpus, focusing particularly on Beowulf and Cynewulf’s epilogues. These texts stress that living into old age inevitably constitutes a kind of survival, one which involves witnessing destruction and terrible losses. The subsequently heightened intellectual, verbal, and creative capacity of the elderly sometimes resembles a kind of post-traumatic growth as understood within trauma theory. The parts of old age that are broadly positive (especially wisdom) and those that are negative (grief and loss) therefore emerge as inseparable.

Constructions of adulthood tend to be under-studied and under-theorised. In the face of this challenge, this chapter focuses on three vernacular verse hagiographies – commonly known as Guthlac A, Juliana, and Andreas – as well as Judith, which centres on a deuterocanonical Old Testament figure. In different ways, these poems all depict maturity as associated with increased social usefulness. Masculine youthful waywardness seems to be more of a source of interest to poets than similar behaviour in women, but it is an underappreciated quality of Old English poetry that unruly youth in women is represented; in particular, St Juliana rebels against societal expectations in a manner that is explicitly linked with her youth. Nonetheless, the seemingly later poems, Andreas and Judith, both problematise – in different ways–the idea that growth through adulthood is always, or even commonly, a linear, teleological drive towards physical and intellectual excellence.