Apart from charters, the homilies in Old English constitute the largest preserved corpus of texts preserved in the vernacular. A new introduction offers insights into this often overlooked source material
The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation
Ed by Winfried Rudolf and Susan Irvine
Series: Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, Volume: 25
Brill 2020
The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation offers important essays on the origins, textual transmission, and (re)use of early English preaching texts between the ninth and the late twelfth centuries. Associated with the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English project, these studies provide fresh insights into one of the most complex textual genres of early medieval literature. Contributions deal with the definition of the anonymous homiletic corpus in Old English, the history of scholarship on its Latin sources, and the important unedited Pembroke and Angers Latin homiliaries. They also include new source and manuscript identifications, and in-depth studies of a number of popular Old English homilies, their themes, revisions, and textual relations. All-in-all, the book offers an introduction to 141 manuscripts
Contributors are: Aidan Conti, Robert Getz, Thomas N. Hall, Susan Irvine, Esther Lemmerz, Stephen Pelle, Thijs Porck, Winfried Rudolf, Donald G. Scragg, Robert K. Upchurch, Jonathan Wilcox, Charles D. Wright, Samantha Zacher.
CONTENTS:
By Winfried Rudolf and Susan Irvine- The Corpus of Old English Anonymous Homilies
By Donald G. Scragg - Sourcing Old English Anonymous Homilies: The Pioneers (Max Förster, Rudolph Willard, and J. E. Cross)
By Charles D. Wright - The Sources of the Pembroke 25 Homiliary
By Thomas N. Hall - New Manuscript Witnesses to the Homiliary of Angers
By Aidan Conti, Stephen Pelle, and Winfried Rudolf - The Lenten Tithe of Days: An Old English Theme and Its Treatment and Sources in Three Anonymous Homilies (Irvine V, Napier LV, and Blickling III)
By Robert Getz - A New Analogue for Some Exegetical Motifs in Assmann Homily XIII
By Esther Lemmerz - The Sources and Composition of Two Old English Sunday Letter Homilies
By Stephen Pelle - Columbanus’s De mundi transitu in Early Medieval England: A New Source for an Old English Homily (Irvine VII) in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343
By Thijs Porck - Jews and Judaizing as Pathologies in the Anglo-Saxon Imagination: Toward a Theory of Early Somatic Anti-Judaism
By Samantha Zacher - The Pains and Pleasures of Vercelli Homily IX and the Delights of Textual Transmission
By Jonathan Wilcox - The Resonances and Roles of Vercelli Homily X in Multiple Manuscripts
Robert K. Upchurch
FEATURED PHOTO:
From: Collection of Homilies. British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv
