Anglo-Saxons

Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart

Simon Keynes & Alfred P. Smyth, editors

Anglo-Saxon studies generate their fair share of healthy argument and controversy. This volume provides the latest thinking of established scholars from every area of the discipline. Anglo-Saxon literature is dealt with in relation to the Old English Bede and Ohthere’s Report to King Alfred. Ecclesiastical matters are covered in papers on the archbishops of Canterbury, and on Wulfstan of Worcester, as well as in several individual studies of minsters and abbeys. Legal issues are examined in relation to crime and to pagan practices. Subjects as diverse as queens in ninth-century Wessex and coinage in the Danelaw are dealt with alongside land tenure and the role of women. The post-Conquest period is represented by studies on the Bayeux Tapestry, Ramsey Abbey and other Fenland monasteries.

The contributors to this book include such masters of their disciplines as Janet Bately, the authority on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Old English Literature, and Peter Sawyer, the doyen of Early Medieval Scandinavian Studies, together with a whole range of experts including Audrey Meaney, Janet Nelson, Paul Szarmach and Ann Williams.

Simon Keynes is Elrington and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge University and fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. Alfred P. Smyth is director of research and dean of Arts and Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church University College and professor emeritus of medieval history at University of Kent.