Summary

The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg on his Seventieth Birthday edited by Jonathan Wilcox and Hugh Magennis will find its place on the same shelf with these and other such valuable tomes in the discipline. This is a complex and carefully edited book, that showcases the work of some of Professor Scragg’s best students and most admiring professional friends. The contents range from several studies in homiletic literature, one of Professor Scragg’s own passions, to other of his pursuits, including editing theory and orthography. These are not, however, derivative essays that recommend a single adjustment in a reading or to a source study; instead, they are studies that do what Professor Scragg himself did: they observe clues to larger realities, and they point the way to a broader comprehension of our discipline and its several methodologies.

Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
    Jonathan Wilcox, Univeristy of Iowa
• Donald G. Scragg: A Tribute
    Joyce Hill, University of Leeds
• Homiletic and Religious Literature
  • Ælfric and Heroic Literature
      Hugh Magennis, Queen's University Belfast
  • Reading "The Story of Joseph" in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 201
      Daniel Anlezark, University of Sydney
  • Text as Image in Ælfwine's Prayerbook
      Catherine E. Karkov, Miami University, Ohio
  • Confessional Discourse in an Old English Life of St. Margaret
      Jill A. Frederick, Minnesota State University
  • Latin Sermons and Lay Preaching: Four Latin Sermons from Post-Reform Canterbury
      Thomas N. Hall, University of Notre Dame
  • Who Read Gregory's Dialogues in Old English?
      David F. Johnson, Florida State University
  • The Life and Times of Old English Homilies for the First Sunday in Lent
      Elaine Treharne, University of Leicester
• Words, Texts, and Traditions
  • Acribes of the Mind: Editing Old English, in Theory and in Practice
      R.M. Liuzza, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
  • "Þær weard hream ahafen": A Note on Old English Spelling and the Sound of The Battle of Maldon
      Richard Dance, University of Cambridge
  • "Ealde Udwitan" in the Battle of Brunanburh
      Kathryn Powell, DePaul University
  • The Interests of Compounding: Angelcynn to Engla land in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
      Jacqueline A. Stodnick, University of Texas at Arlington
  • Beowulf and the Queen's Cup: Determining the Danish Succession
      Stephen O. Glosecki, University of Alabama at Birmingham
  • "Kinge Athelston That Was a Worthy Kinge og England": Anglo-Saxon Myths of the Freemasons
      Andrew Prescott, University of Sheffield

Author

Jonathan Wilcox is Professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature at the University of Iowa’s Department of English.

Hugh Magennis is Professor of Old English literature at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Reviews

"Donald G. Scragg has been actively shaping the field of Anglo-Saxon studies for more than forty years now. Since his first appointment at the University of Manchester in 1963… Don has been pursuing the intertwined activities of teaching and research, introducing students to the joys of Old English literature and philology in the classroom."
Jonathan Wilcox