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This study examines English eschatological homilies of the later twelfth century and their adaptation of both Anglo-Saxon traditions and sources introduced after the Norman Conquest. Later and non-homiletic texts are also discussed when these give clues to the continued prevalence of Anglo-Saxon and twelfth-century eschatological traditions in the later Middle Ages. Chapter 1 introduces the eschatology of the Anglo-Saxon homilists, describes English homily manuscripts written ca. 1150–1200, summarizes scholarly opinions on these texts, and details the author’s approach to the texts’ eschatological ideas. Chapter 2 examines the ‘Visit to the Tomb’ motif, which deeply influenced Anglo-Saxon depictions of individual mortality. Two early Middle English texts––Lambeth III and a treatise on the vices and virtues––contain versions of the motif that indicate a familiarity with the earlier homilies, though they also adapt the ‘Visit to the Tomb’ in new ways. The Old English texts in British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv are the focus of Chapter 3. These include a description of the coming of Antichrist, the first English text of the ‘Fifteen Signs before Doomsday,’ and a typological interpretation of the Babylonian captivity. These pieces draw on both the Old English homilists and works unknown in England until ca. 1100, suggesting that twelfth-century English homilists did not sense any tension in combining ideas from pre- and post-Conquest traditions. Chapter 4 describes the Middle English reflexes of two Doomsday motifs common in the Old English homilies––the ‘Three Hosts of Doomsday’ and the ‘Four Angels of Judgment.’ The persistence of such motifs in later medieval England raises the possibility of a significant influence of Old English works on Middle English homiletic eschatology. The Conclusions section addresses this issue in further detail and suggests avenues of future research, while restating the importance of the twelfth-century homilies for the study of medieval English religious literature.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines some projects of moral regulation, implemented by the agents of the church and king in the late Anglo-Saxon period, which sought to modify and govern marital conduct. Theories of moral regulation are analysed in the Introduction, which also examines Germanic marriage practices, as far as they can be recovered, and the Anglo-Saxon church’s inherited attitudes towards marriage. Manuscripts and texts are examined firstly as projects of moral regulation, and secondly as projects which attempted to alter marital behaviour. In Chapter 1, moral regulation is situated within the context of the Benedictine reform through the examination of one manuscript – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 – as a case-study in the cooperative efforts of the church and king to regulate society. In particular, the legislative and penitential texts which are compiled in MS 201 bear witness to the tendency in late Anglo-Saxon England for legislation to be moralised, and for morality to be legislated. MS 201 also includes the unique copy of the Old English translation of Apollonius of Tyre, and the marital morality inscribed therein perhaps accounts for its inclusion in this predominantly Wulfstanian manuscript. In Chapter 2 the riddles recorded in the Exeter Book are interpreted as literary exercises in regulation. This chapter establishes the possible moral and regulatory agenda of the Exeter Book riddles by offering a new interpretation of, and solution to, one riddle. It also analyses the marriages made manifest in some of the so-called ‘double entendre’ riddles, which regulate the moral relationship following Pauline exegesis: emphasis in these riddles is on the sanctity of marriage, wifely obedience, and the payment of the conjugal debt. Conversely, Ælfric, in his Lives of Saints, idealises marriage as characterised by the absence of all sexual relations. In his Life of St Agnes (examined in Chapter 3), and in his Lives of married saints (SS Julian and Basilissa, SS Cecilia and Valerian, and SS Chrysanthus and Daria, examined in Chapter 4), Ælfric makes non-sexual, companionable, and loving marriage morally paradigmatic. Whilst both marriage and morality have been studied by modern critics, neither topic has inspired extended, specific study (with a few, notable, exceptions), and the nexus between these two topics has been hitherto unacknowledged. Although new, and often profound, insight is gained into Anglo-Saxon texts by considering them in the context of moral regulation, the morality they propose, as well as the regulatory process used to impose that morality, varies across context, text, genre, and author. This conclusion is also true for marital morality, Anglo-Saxon perceptions of which differed in each of the texts chosen for evaluation. This thesis does not claim to be comprehensive; nor does it attempt to synthesise attitudes towards marriage and morality, since a synthesis does not do justice to the richness or complexity with which this topic was treated. It is hoped that this thesis will provide insight into not only individual Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards marriage but also processes of regulation and social control, and, indeed, into the intersection between attitudes and processes.

Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Getty, Michael: A constraint-based approach to the meter of Beowulf--Stanford, 1998.

The anonymous Old English translation of the Admonitio ad Filium Spiritualem ascribed to St. Basil has hitherto been accessible only in the 1848/9 editions ofHW. Norman and the 1974 unpublished PhD dissertation ofL.E. Mueller. This edition takes into consideration the work of both editors, but pursues the relevant issues somethat further, beginning with the ascription of the work to iElfric. I use the single authoritative Hatton Ms 76A as the basis for my text; the critical introduction includes sections on the history of this manuscript and its two transcriptions, its possible relation to known Latin manuscripts of the text, and its orthography, punctuation and accent marks, and a full list of the annotations in the tremulous hand of the Worcester scribe. In considering the transmission of the text to iElfric, I include sections on St. Basil's status as a monastic legislator to explain the text's currency, the penitential tradition and the place of the Admonitio within the iElfiic canon. I conclude with analysis of the Old English text, its linguistic focus, style and structure, arguing that the Old English text may not be as incomplete as has previously been thought. To accompany my text I provide textual notes, a full commentary, which includes identification of the sources of some concepts not found in the Latin, and a Glossary. As Appendices I include a transcription of a part of Bodley Ms 800, the closest available version of iElfric's source, a provisional handlist of manuscripts in British libraries and elsewhere containing part or all of the Latin Admonitio, and a list of the accent marks on Hatton Ms 76A, ff 55-67v, together with a chart to show their line-distribution.

This thesis is a study of an engage, study, activate (ESA) lesson of teaching modals of present deduction. The lesson has been taken from a published English language teaching course book and is typical of the way modal forms are presented to teach epistemic modality in many commercially produced English language teaching course books. I argue that for cognitive, social, linguistic and procedural reasons the linguistic forms and structures presented in the lesson are not straightforwardly transferred to the activate stage of the lesson. Using insights from spoken language corpora I carry out a comparative analysis with the modal forms presented in the course book. I then explore the notion of ‘context’ and drawing on systemic functional grammar discuss how modal forms function in discourse to realise interpersonal relations. Moving my research to the English language classroom I collect ethnographic classroom data and using social semiotic multimodality as an analytical framework I explore learner interaction to uncover the communicative resources learners use to express epistemic modality in a discussion activity from the same lesson. My analysis reveals that the modal structures in the course book differ to some extent from spoken language corpora. It shows that the course book offers no instruction on the interpersonal dimension of modality and thus how speakers use signals of modality to position themselves interpersonally vis-à-vis their interlocutors. The data collected from the English language class reveals that during the lesson learners communicate modality through modes of communication such as eye gaze, gesture and posture in addition to spoken language. Again drawing from systemic functional grammar I explain how these modes have the potential to express interpersonal meaning and thus highlight that meaning is communicated through modal ensembles. Based on these findings I propose a number of teaching strategies to raise awareness of the interpersonal function of modality in multimodal discourse, and for the use of language corpora to better inform teaching materials on selections of modality.

In The Battle of Maldon, the valor of the English who fight is never in question. The infamy of the cowards who flee is evident. The way the poet views the Vikings, however, is slightly less obvious. The poet treats all characters who act within the contract of battle with a sort of biased equanimity—of course, the English are portrayed as more heroic and sympathetic, but the Vikings are referred to in a practical manner as seafarers or warriors. It is my contention that the Maldon poet treats the Vikings as natural parts of the battlefield, as if they had their own maxim pairing and were acting according to expectation. By defining how maxims function in the Old English corpus, illustrating the prevalence of Viking violence leading up to the battle, and presenting literary evidence of a Viking maxim in Maldon and The Battle of Brunanburh, I will define what I believe to be the integral parts of the "Viking maxim" and clarify how its presence in The Battle of Maldon informs the poem overall. / Master of Arts

Responding to the common plea in medieval inscriptions to ráð rétt rúnar, to ‘interpret the runes correctly’, this thesis provides a series of contextual readings of the runic topos in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse poetry. The first chapter looks at the use of runes in the Old English riddles, examining the connections between material riddles and certain strategies used in the Exeter Book, and suggesting that runes were associated with a self-referential and engaged form of reading. Chapter 2 seeks a rationale for the use of runic abbreviations in Old English manuscripts, and proposes a poetic association with unlocking and revealing, as represented in Bede’s story of Imma. Chapter 3 considers the use of runes for their ornamental value, using 'Solomon and Saturn I' and the rune poems as examples of texts which foreground the visual and material dimension of writing, whilst Chapter 4 compares the depiction of runes in the heroic poems of the Poetic Edda with epigraphical evidence from the Migration Age, seeking to dispel the idea that they reflect historical practice. The final chapter looks at the construction of a mythology of writing in the Edda, exploring the ways in which myth reflects the social impacts of literacy. Taken together these approaches highlight the importance of reading the runes in poetry as literary constructs, the script often functioning as a form of metawriting, used to explore the parameters of literacy, and to draw attention to the process of writing itself.

This dissertation examines the literary and historical contexts of four collections of medical material from Anglo-Saxon England. These collections are widely known under the titles Bald's Leechbook, Leechbook III, the Lacnunga, and the Old English Pharmacopeia. As medical literature, these texts have tended to be primarily approached through the lens of the history of medicine or cultural history and folklore. However, as textual compositions carefully engaging with learned culture, these texts are relevant to the wider literary history of the period. The aim of this thesis is to examine these collections within specifically literary contexts, where they have been frequently overlooked. Towards this end, I take the approach of considering each of the four collections as individual, coherent texts, rather than treating them as simply as part of a general corpus of Old English medical literature, as has sometimes been done. This approach is reflected in the organisation of this thesis, which dedicates one chapter to each collection, with a final chapter on the characterisation of medicine within broader Anglo-Saxon literary culture. Each of these chapters details what I view as the distinctive qualities of a particular collection and considers what intellectual and literary milieux it may reflect. Chapter 1 discusses the strategies of compilation and translation employed in Bald's Leechbook and the relation of some passages within the text to translations associated with the Alfredian revival. Chapter 2 considers the incorporation of liturgical material within Leechbook III, while at the same time exploring the relationship of ælfe (elves) and the Christian demonic in these texts. Chapter 3 explores the textual and manuscript relationships surrounding the Lacnunga and argues that this collection reflects interests consonant with early insular expressions of grammatica. Chapter 4 examines the translation style used in the Old English Herbarium (comprising the first half of the Old English Pharmacopeia) and the place of this collection within the context of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform movement. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the representation of medicine within the larger Old English literary corpus and suggests that the depiction of medicine in these sources is ultimately positive, something that perhaps encouraged the flourishing of vernacular medical production we see testified to in the Old English medical collections. It is my hope that by highlighting the literary and learned aspects of these collections this dissertation will bring a new appreciation of these texts to a wider readership interested in Old English literature.

The charms are among the oldest extant specimens of English prose and verse, and in their first form were undoubtedly of heathen origin. In the form in which they have been handed down they are much overlaid with Christian lore, but it is not difficult to recognize the primitive mythological strata. The charms have points of contact with medieval Latin literature, both in form and spirit; and yet they afford us glimpses of the Germanic past, and pictures of the everyday life of the Anglo-Saxons, not found in other Old English poetry.