Unlocking the Wordhord: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory of Edward B. Irving, Jr. by Mark C. Amodio (review)

Abstract

758 Reviews its generously unifying idea, which will indeed open the door to further interdisci? plinary exchange, while also offeringsomething of use on a disciplinary level. There is, for instance, some very welcome creative discussion of personal authorial style in Momma's and Orchard's examinations of ^lfric and Cynewulf, which should with luck make a difference in a discipline replete with anonymous and misattributed texts. A small number of minor criticisms which should not detract from the finally good impression which this volume leaves on the reader: the unnecessarily vain biography section at the end could alternatively have been a glossary of stylistic terms (my stu? dents will thus have to be referredto Howe's useful bibliography on pp. 176-78 to sort things out for themselves). A paragraph of text seems to be missing on pp. 157-59. The whole volume is generally well presented and accurately edited, except for the Abbreviations section, which contains some badly garbled titles (CLA, OLD, Hist. Ahh.). University of St Andrews Christine Rauer Unlocking the Wordhord: Anglo-Saxon Studies in Memory ofEdward B. Irving,Jr. Ed. by Mark C. Amodio and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe. Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press. 2003. x + 359pp. $78; ?48. ISBN 0-8020-48226 . This important collection offers fourteen essays on Old English literature and philology , focusing predominantly on Old English verse (especially biblical and heroic verse) and on problems of editing and lexicography. Including a variety of approaches from some ofthe most important scholars in the field, the book constitutes a veritable snapshot of the current state of thinking on the broader field which Irving himself helped define. Reading the iconography of embroidery rather than of poetry, Gail Ivy Berlin finds a subtle political agenda in her fascinating study of the animals appearing in the Bayeux Tapestry margins ('The Fables of the Bayeux Tapestry: An Anglo-Saxon Perspective'). Slipping under the radar of the Normans who probably commissioned the tapestry, these seemingly innocuous marginalia, according to Berlin, represent a subversive reaction against the invaders by provocatively juxtaposing fables of oathbreaking and treachery with the figures of the primary visual field. The collection closes with four meticulous lexical studies. Jane Roberts reviews the semantic range of the perennially troublesome aglceca in 'Hrothgar's "admirable courage"'. Antonette di Paolo Healey, in 'Questions of Fairness: Fair, Not Fair, and Foul', takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the thousand-year history of the word fcegerj"fair'.We learn how a term primarily applied to physical beauty came eventually to be applied to a sense ofjustice (as in the phrase 'not fair') and to connote 'moderate, not excessive', and how it came to be applied almost exclusively to women (it applied to both men and women equally in the Old English period). Stripping away later layers of accretion affordsus a brief glimpse intofceger's original sense, 'capturingall that is beautiful to Anglo-Saxon eyes' (p. 266). Janet Bately compiles and analyses a range of words relating to courage in 'Bravery and the Vocabulary of Bravery in Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon\ finding that these words appear most often in the context of expectations of bravery or the statement of ideals, not in contexts of actual bravery. Finally, in 'Sex in the Dictionary of Old English', Roberta Frank ends the collection with a lively analysis of editorial strategies in dealing with sexual terms through various periods of editorial history. A number of other essays are equally engaging, though I cannot treat them all in detail in a brief review: Robert Bjork, 'N. F. S. Grundtvig's 1840 Edition of the MLRy 100.3, 2005 759 Old English Phoenix: A Vision of a Vision of Paradise'; A. N. Doane, 'Beowulf and Scribal Performance'; John Miles Foley, 'How Genres Leak in Traditional Verse'; Timothy Graham, 'King Cnut's Grant of Sandwich to Christ Church, Canterbury: A New Reading of a Damaged Annal in Two Copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'; Nicholas Howe, 'Falling into Place: Dislocation in the Junius Book'; Sarah L. Keefer, ' "Ic" and "We" in Eleventh-Century Old English Liturgical Verse'; Michael Lapidge, 'Cynewulf and the Passio S. Iulianae'; Donald Scragg, 'A Reading of Brunanburh'; and...