Fred C. Robinson is known throughout the world for some of the most original and stimulating work on Old English literature and language published in recent times. This book collects twenty three of his essays, including three substantial new articles on the literary interpretation of Beowulf, the background and value of Ezra Pound’s translation of The Seafarer, and an account of the use of Old English in twentieth-century literary compositions.

The essays vary widely in terms of subject and approach. They include literary interpretation and criticism of the best-known Old English poems (The Battle of Maldon and Exodus for example), an account of the historical, religious, and cultural background to the writing of Beowulf, articles on women in Old English literature and on the significance of names and naming.

The book as a whole is informed by the author’s preoccupation with meaning, context, and language, and their subtle interactions. Its contents are equally characterized by readability and scholarship, and by learning and wit.

Fred C. Robinson

Fred C. Robinson is co-author with Bruce Mitchell of A Guide to Old English (Fifth Edition, Blackwell 1992) and author of many other books and essays on Old English language and literature. He is a general editor of Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile and chief editor of Anglistica, both published in Copenhagen, and an editor of Anglo-Saxon England, published in Cambridge. He has received the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy of America and is a Fellow and past President of the Medieval Academy. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the Middeleuue-verenigung van Suider Afrika. He has been President of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the New England Medieval Conference. He has taught at Stanford, Cornell and Harvard as well as at Yale, where he is Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English.

Jacket illustration: Reproduced by kind permission of Professor Randolph Swearer and Yale University Press from their book Beowulf. A Likeness (1990).