New Distributed Titles Fall 2009 - Oxbow Books

Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Language, Literature, History
edited by Anne Norgard Jorgensen
Though the study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has a long history, this volume is
the first collection of essays assembled to analyze different aspects of the chronicle.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is among the earliest vernacular chronicles of Western
Europe and an essential source for scholars of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England.
With the publication in 2004 of a new edition of the Peterborough text, all six major
manuscripts are now available in the Collaborative Edition. The time is therefore ripe
to reassess the state of scholarly thinking on this most complex and foundational of
documents. This essay collection reflects the nature and importance of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle as linguistic, literary, and historical evidence. In exemplifying different scholarly approaches, it covers the
full chronological range of the text(s) and presents new contributions to well-established debates and fresh directions.
258p, 3 b/w illus, 3 tbls, hardback, 9782503523941, $87.00, Brepols Publishers, December 2009,
Studies in the Early Middle Ages 23.
Saints Edith and Æthelthryth
Princesses, Miracle Workers,
and their Late Medieval Audience
by Mary Dockray-Miller
Guillaume de Volpiano
Un réformateur en son temps (962–1031)
edited and translated by Véronique Gazeau
and Monique Goullet
This is the first French translation of Vie de Guillaume de Volpiano (Vita Willelmi)
by Raoul Glaber. This volume also studies the personality and works of one of
the most important reformist abbots of his time through a hagiographic text.
French text.
128p, paperback, 9782902685615, $26.00(s), Brepols Publishers, December 2008,
Publications du Centre de Recherches Archéologiques et Historiques Médiévales.
This volume narrates the lives of two Anglo-Saxon princesses who were
venerated as saints long after their deaths. St Edith, the daughter of King
Edgar, was renowned as a patron of the arts and the church during her lifetime;
her posthumous miracles included protection of Wilton Abbey and the
English royal family. St Æthelthryth, who retained her virginity through not
one but two royal marriages, also worked numerous miracles at her tomb at
the Abbey of Ely. The poems, composed at Wilton Abbey in the early fifteenth
century, allow us to see how late medieval religious women practiced their devotion to early medieval women
saints. The Middle English verse texts are presented here in the original and in translation with explanatory notes
and glossary. A thorough introduction provides extensive contextualization and analysis of the two poems.
311p, 2 b/w illus, 2 b/w line art, hardback, 9782503528366, $87.00, Brepols Publishers,
December 2009, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 25.
medieval studies
The Book of Alexander
(Libro de Alexandre)
edited and translated
with an introduction and notes
by Peter Such and Richard Rabone
The Libro de Alexandre is an epic poem about the
life of Alexander the Great, written by an anonymous
Spanish cleric in the thirteenth century. It is
the most substantial poem (and almost certainly
the first) composed in the learned cuaderna vía
verse form and provides a unique insight into
the intellectual world from which it sprang. The
poem conveys the grim message of Alexander’s
life, the sense of hubris and the horror of his fall
from greatness and world domination to the
bleak obscurity of the grave. As well as relaying
the story of a great ancient figure, the poet also
comments on the society and political situation of
early thirteenth-century Spain. The combination
of eras makes this poem strikingly representative
of its time. Spanish text with facing-page English
translation and notes.
700p, Aris & Phillips, August 2009, Hispanic Classics.
paperback, 9780856688638, $33.95
hardback, 9780856688645, $70.00(s)
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