Description

Place-names, charters, coins and manuscripts are among the forms of evidence studied in this second volume. The topics range from the course of English settlement in the south-east to the power and influence of a leading aristocratic family in the tenth century and the possible presence of Jews in England in the eleventh. An important liturgical manuscript, the Bosworth Psalter, is more securely localized; the exemplars of the Vercelli Book and its probable area of origin are clarified. Several motifs in Old English literature are elucidated, and the influence of Christian doctrine on the poetry is considered in a survey of scholarly opinion and in a lively discussion on Beowulf. Bede's achievements as a scholar and teacher are examined 1300 years after his birth. The bibliography, noting all contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies in 1972, continues the annual series begun in volume 1.