Inside Old English Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell

Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell offers readers a comprehensive insight into the world of Old English.

• Brings together original essays written by prominent specialists in the field in honour of Bruce Mitchell, the eminent Oxford scholar and co-author of the bestselling A Guide to Old English, 6th edition
• Encourages readers to engage with the literary, cultural, intellectual, religious and historical contexts of Old English texts
• Explores the problems scholars face in interpreting and editing Old English texts
• Contributors provide authoritative and informative perspectives, drawing out connections between different contexts and pointing readers towards the essential secondary literature for each topic

JOHN WALMSLEY, Professor emeritus of Englische Sprache und Literatur und ihre Didaktik at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, read English Language and Literature at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, and General Linguistics and Education at Edinburgh and Durham Universities respectively. He held teaching posts at Hamburg University and St. Mary's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before being appointed to his chair at Bielefeld. From 1993 to 1994 he was Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL) Cambridge, England. His publications cover topics in linguistics, applied linguistics and foreign-language teaching, and the history of linguistics. Current interests include the role of linguistics in education, linguistic terminology and its history, and late medieval English grammar.

Acknowledgements xiii

List of Abbreviations xiv

Foreword xvi

Bruce Mitchell xviii

Fred C. Robinson

Introduction 1
John Walmsley

1 Eight Notes on the Beowulf Text 19
Alfred Bammesberger

2 A Point Well Taken: Manuscript Punctuation and Old English Poems 38
Daniel Donoghue

3 The Incomparable Wryness of Old English Poetry 59
Roberta Frank

4 Straining Words and Striving Voices: Polysemy and Ambiguity and the Importance of Context in the Disclosure of Meaning 74
Antonette diPaolo Healey

5 “Eala, geferan and gode wyrhtan”: On Interjections in Old English 91
Risto Hiltunen

6 Speaking One’s Mind in The Wanderer 117
Susan Irvine

7 Wulfstan’s Scandinavian Loanword Usage: An Aspect of the Linguistic Situation in the Late Old English Danelaw 134
Tadao Kubouchi

8 An Aspect of Old English Poetic Diction: The Postpositioning of Prepositions 153
Michael Lapidge

9 Issues for Editors of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in Manuscript Form 181
Bernard J. Muir

10 Language and Style in Two Anonymous Old English Easter Homilies 203
Hiroshi Ogawa

11 Latin Influence on an Old English Idiom: “To Wit” 222
Matti Rissanen

12 Germanic *uargaz (OE wearh) and the Finnish Evidence 242
Fred C. Robinson

13 How the Leopard Got His Spots: English Grammatical Categories, Latin Terms 248
John Walmsley

A Bibliography of Writings by Bruce Mitchell 1956–2004 268

Select Bibliography 279

List of Editions Used 282

Index of Names 287

Index of Old English Words and Phrases 290

Index of Subjects 291

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