Customer Reviews

Old and Middle English: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies)

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This will surely become THE definitive anthology of Old and Middle English literature. Editor Elaine Treharne includes generous extracts of almost every major work of Old and Middle English.

Her parallel translations are an outstanding feature. As you read, you can improve your understanding of both Old and Middle English. Good whether you're new to this, or returning "rusty" after a lapse.

So many milestones are offered, as to provide a supreme monument to early English Lit. Treharne fulfils her aim, "to provide an extensive selection of literary texts that effectively covers the earliest writings in the vernacular up to the time of Chaucer."

The organisation is unorthodox. Since many medieval texts were passed on orally, and are "not securely dated", Treharne organises them by "extant manuscript date". She departs from usual critical/editorial practice by NOT imposing a date of composition. This method enables the reader to learn about such documents as the four main Old English codices, and, e.g., the Harley MS for medieval English Lyrics.

There's plenty here to inspire or to help with college papers .... The impressive, readable introduction contextualizes the works by surveying national, religious, social and literary history. Other sections deal with manuscript culture, forms of poetry, and language, including a grammatical overview.

A great book for, say, a college readings course, but there's a lifetime's reading here!

For those who wish to become more familiar with Old and Middle English, I reccomend buying this or the new edition (either one is just fine). Whether you just want to see what older english looked like, and read the translations , or to use it as a study tool for learning Old and/or Middle English I reccomend it for both.

It begins with a thorough introduction that tells of the origins of english, a bit about their culture and times, tells about the forms of poetry used in old times, as well as a brief grammatical overview of Old and middle English that compares it to modern English too. However, this is not a grammar book and the few pages dedicated to it are just to give an idea how it works.

For those who are aspiring students of the Old English language, it helps a lot if you are at least familiar with either German, Dutch, Frisian, or Icelandic as those languages have much in common with modern english and even more with the old varieties of english that were not subject to the greeko-latin influence of today's english.

For the old english portions, I reccomend purchasing the Teach Yourself Old English book and 2 CD set. It is a nice set as well and will help you for studying this book.

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With all of these resources, as well as various ones you find on the internet for free in combination with this book, learning at least some Old English will be a very possible task.

This is the first edition of the book, but the newer edition(s) don't add too much more. The nice thing is that this includes en face translations of each work. The translations are very true to the originals, as Prof. Treharne is trying to provide an example of the text, not just the idea of the text. Each text also includes a brief introduction with just enough history to whet your appetite.