Making Sense

"The five essays in this volume discuss texts either from the Old English period or from the transitional twelfth century, and each explores, from differing perspectives, how today's readers make sense of, or construct meanings from, early English documents." "The first two essays specifically focus on the research tools of the Dictionary of Old English as strategic aids in the discovery of meaning. The other three, while also availing themselves of the Dictionary of Old English, focus on how scholarly editing tries to make sense of the complex ways medieval documents themselves attempted to make sense - through evolving translations, variant versions, selective adaptations, explanatory glosses, expansive commentaries - of the "same" texts over this long and linguistically diverse span of time." "From word to dictionary, from Beowulf to Boethius, from prose and verse to prose-and-verse, from Latin sources and resources to Old English transformations, from glosses and commentaries to canon formation, from consuetudinaries to penitentials, from manuscripts to electronic and print editions, these five essays reflect some of the direct and round-about paths scholars take in their search to understand and elucidate our culturally distant primary materials."--BOOK JACKET.