The Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures ed. by Richard North, Joe Allard, and Patricia Gillies

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures ed. by Richard North, Joe Allard, and Patricia Gillies Larry Swain richard north, joe allard, and patricia gillies, eds., The Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures. Harlow, England: Longman, 2011. Pp. xvi, 869. isbn: 9781408247709. $58.99. North and company have provided a real service to medievalists. This anthology is a companion to their earlier Beowulf and Other Stories: A New Introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures. While the typical anthologies focus on English literature with minimal examples from other literatures—if any literature from Celtic, Anglo-Norman, or Old Norse at all—this volume then, fills a void in the field. Selections are organized according to headings such as ‘Heroic Poetry,’ ‘Poems on the Meaning of Life,’ ‘Early Chivalry,’ and so on. Under each heading is a selection of texts, some familiar to most readers, others less so. Each selection is preceded [End Page 146] by a brief, succinct, and informative introduction. Many of these are followed by a brief and very useful bibliography. Many, and I believe if not quite all, at least the vast majority, of the selections are examined in the companion volume Beowulf and Other Stories. What also makes this unusual as an anthology is that it includes original language texts as well as modern translations. The page is split horizontally so that the original text is on the top and the translation below it. The translations favor literal representation over elegance; when possible the editors have attempted to replicate the feel of the original, including word order. All in all, this is an unusual and much needed anthology. That said, there are some oddities. First, the title is something of a misnomer. In addition to the three languages mentioned, there are texts from Welsh, Irish, Castilian, Old Saxon, and Occitan. These are welcome texts in such a volume, since as the preface points out, the cultures are all cognate with one another. Yet, there are some odd choices of inclusion and exclusion. In the inclusion category is the Letter to Aristotle under the heading of ‘Writers of the Benedictine Reform,’ for example. This work was preserved in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, the Beowulf manuscript, and was translated anytime between the late ninth and late tenth centuries from Latin. The provenance of the texts in this manuscript are unknown. There is, in fact, no reason to assume that they are Benedictine texts or produced at a Benedictine monastery when the texts in this manuscript were copied. There are many other texts that would reflect the Benedictine Reform, some of which are included here, but many that are not. Some of the organization is also questionable. Judith, for example, is included in a section titled ‘Poems of Devotion’ but it is difficult to see how this poem is devotional. More than half of the poem is a battle scene, and the other half is a beheading. Again this is difficult to see as a devotional poem, whereas there is a significant amount of devotional poetry in the Irish Christian tradition. Another surprising choice in exclusion is that there is not a single text from Latin. This is all the more shocking in that the editors point to the ‘cognate’ cultures of the various vernaculars they do include, yet each of those cultures also produced a significant literature in Latin. A few texts that would illustrate some of their choices would be Dudo of St Quentin on the Viking Wars or The Ruodlieb for the collection’s ‘Early Chivalry’ section. In the case of the latter text, that might be a better choice than the Old English translation of a Latin translation of a Hellenistic Greek original (Apollonius of Tyre) to illustrate early medieval chivalry. In an anthology such as this, the absence of any literature from Latin is a significant weakness. In a similar vein, there are texts from early Anglo-Norman, but no accompanying texts from Middle English. These weaknesses are, however, overshadowed by the clear and evident strengths of the collection. First, the anthology is designed to be used in conjunction...