Judith (University of Exeter Press - Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies) [Paperback]

Mark Griffith (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0859895688 | ISBN-13: 978-0859895682 | Publication Date: January 1, 1998 | Edition: 1

Undergraduates frequently find the fine Old English poem Judith the most stimulating of the surviving texts from the Anglo-Saxon period. In the past thirty years, it has attracted a wide range of literary criticism both in the UK and the US. Feminist critics of English literature have been particularly interested by the ways in which the poet has adapted the traditional masculine heroic ethos of Old English poetry to a story figuring a violently active female protagonist.

 

Yet there is no available edition of Judith that is either comprehensive or up to date, or which at all explains how and why the poem is worthy of our attention. This new edition aims to fill this gap. It includes a full Introduction and commentary by the editor, plus a comprehensive glossary, bibliography and appendices.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“We have here a Judith edition for the twenty-first century, and fortunately it is a good one. This is a fine, full edition of a splendid Old English poem; and if Griffith had definitively solved every conceivable textual, critical, and literay historical problem, it would in a way be disappointing. As it is, we have a new edition of the poem to read and work with, and a new generation of students can read Judith with more enjoyment and much more scholarly confidence than they could before.” –Speculum, Oct 2000

(Speculum )

“This edition will certainly establish itself as a key resource for the teaching and study of a poem which has attracted increasing interest in recent years.  It is an edition which sets out to meet the requirements of a different generation from that which Timmer served.” –Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April 2000

(Journal of English and Germanic Philology )

“This is an excellent book, full of interesting and absorbing material. Particularly to be admired is Griffith''s ability to be both erudite and literate in his presentation of often rather dense detail.” –The Medieval Review, April 1999

(The Medieval Review )

“This is a superb contribution to Old English scholarship, packed with useful and new information, attractively presented and priced. Judith, a lively narrative poem, has finally found an editor responsive to its charms, one apparently incapable of thoughtlessness, neglect, or unkindness. Much devotion has gone into the making of this edition, along with impeccable judgement.
“Griffith is probably unmatched in his sensitivity to and appreciation of the sounds, syntax, and style of Judith. And he makes at least as many original observations as there are lines in the poem.
“In this new edition, the poem - in all its comic inventiveness and flouting of convention - is more alive and appealing than at any time in the three-hundred years since it first appeared in public.” –Notes and Queries, March 1999

(Notes and Queries )

“ . . . Mark Griffith''s excellent new edition . . . His ninety-three-page introduction is a model guide to the major technical areas in Anglo-Saxon studies: codicology, language, dating, source-study and metrics (including a brilliantly lucid exercise in the analysis of metrical grammar, the area which perhaps offers the most stimulating contribution to stylistics in the modern analysis of Old English) . . . He has set a new benchmark for producers of modern editions of the Old English poems.” -Times Literary Supplement, September 25 1998

(Times Literary Supplement )

Language Notes

Text: English

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: University of Exeter Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0859895688
• ISBN-13: 978-0859895682
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #838,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, important edition, January 9, 2003

By 

Michel Aaij (Montgomery, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Judith (University of Exeter Press - Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies) (Paperback)

Reviewers have called this edition, the first true re-edition of the poem since 1953 (Dobbie's, in the ASPR) 'superb' and 'excellent,' and I agree.

'Judith' is a brief heroic fragment found in the same manuscript as 'Beowulf,' and shares some of its characteristics--a stress on heroism, an interest in the trappings of warfare, traditional Old English battle-motifs, as well as a thoroughly complicated position on the heroic woman. Its source is the no longer canonical Book of Judith, telling the story of Judith of Bethulia's victory, through deceit and seduction, over Assyrian general Holofernes, which culminates in his beheading (immortalized by many Renaissance artists, in sculpture by Donatelli, and in painting most famously by Caravaggio. You can admire Michelangelo's somewhat non-descript version in the Sistine Chapel; the sexiest, without a doubt, is Giorgone's portrayal of Judith with her foot on Holofernes' head, showing a beautiful leg).

The Old English version is an adaptation, not a translation--gone is Judith's deviousness, the uncomfortable (for a Christian readership) combination of holiness and seduction. Many details and almost all the names of the participants are not included by the poet; the focus now is Judith's submission to God in typically Anglo-Saxon heroic fashion.

What makes Griffith's edition so valuable is its sheer length: 223 pages for a fragment only 349 lines long. The introduction is indeed superb, presenting not only the manuscript and the linguistic, orthographic, and metrical features of the text, but also, at length, the poem's deviations from its source, and its literary import, a discussion sometimes missing from editions of Old English poems. The discussion includes extensive mention of and reference to earlier work on the poem, especially of the poet's Christianization of his source, and the position of the poem vis-a-vis Old English heroic and Christian (patristic) tradition; the bibliography is comprehensive and up to date. The text is followed by detailed commentary and useful appendices; for me, most handy is the line-by-line comparison of the Vulgate and the OE poem.

Accessibility of style, extensive material, and comprehensive discussion make this edition a must-have for students of Old English literature. I am very pleased with the book, and recommend it highly.