Anglo-Saxon England(Volume 31)

One of the most important manuscripts surviving from pre-Conquest England receives penetrating analysis by several scholars. The 'Junius Manuscript' is evaluated from a number of intersecting perspectives, including codicology, decoration, script and punctuation; the confluence of these permits a fresh and convincing dating of this crucially important witness to Old English poetry. This demonstration is strikingly corroborated by an independent analysis of the textual transmission of one of the poems contained in the manuscript – Daniel – which is analysed in connection with another poetic version of the same biblical text, here entitled Three Youths, preserved in the 'Exeter Book'. Ælfric's conception of the creation and fall of the angels is also studied, and this takes us back to a poem in the 'Junius Manuscript', that known as Genesis A. It is shown that Ælfric's conception of the angels, which has no antecedent in the Bible itself, could possibly have been framed by his reading of Genesis A. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications is provided.